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“Mr. Anderson, I understand that you’d prefer to have nothing to do with my family, but time is of the essence in cases involving missing children, even more so when it’s a teen in my line of work. Arguing with you will only waste time that’s best suited to trying to locate Isabelle. While the sheriff’s department is wonderful at keeping the county safe, this is entirely outside of their wheelhouse, and to wait until a team can get here from Seattle will waste precious hours that trust me, you don’t want wasted,” she warned, her heart stuttering at the look that crossed Tyler’s face at her words. “You don’t even have to see me. I need five minutes with her computer and to ask Hailey some questions to ascertain the direction we should take here. If the case isn’t something that needs my expertise then I’ll be gone as soon as the team gets here, but it’s better for us to learn that now than in two to three hours,” Justine stated calmly, keeping her attention from lingering on Tyler as she finished, so his reaction to it wouldn’t affect her tone.
“And if your expertise is needed?” Grace asked when Barb slid her hand onto Grant’s arm, stopping him from advancing any further.
“Honestly, pray it’s not,” she said truthfully, making Grace’s eyes widen in shock. “Are we in agreement?” she added back towards Grant and Barb.
“No…I won’t…”
“Dad,” Tyler said cutting him off as he rubbed Hailey’s shoulder, the tears in her eyes pulling at Justine’s heart deeply. “Don’t be an idiot right now. Isabelle is more important than having to accept help from a Crawford. I’ll stay with Hailey, show Justine her computer while you call the rest of the family, see if anyone’s heard from Isabelle since yesterday,” he added, and the dark look he shot towards Jeremy and Caroline kept them from saying a word as he motioned towards the hallway that led to the twins’ bedroom.
Justine’s eyes met his in the space outside the door as Hailey moved into the room, the questions in them urging her to lean into him but she resisted—barely. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to have to tell you like this,” she whispered to him before moving into the room behind Hailey.
“This is Isabelle’s,” Hailey said, motioning to the laptop on the desk. “I usually just use my iPad when school’s out since we have to turn in our Chromebooks, but Isabelle always carries her laptop with her.”
The fact that it was still there said Isabelle didn’t run away, but she was already certain of that. She sat down at the desk, bringing up the login screen and glanced towards Hailey with as best of a comforting smile as she could muster. “Do you know her password? If not, I’ll have to get some help from someone in D.C.”
“Umm…” Hailey glanced at Tyler before looking back to her.
“It’s okay, Hailey. You can tell her whatever you know. Justine knows how to keep a secret clearly,” he said, lifting a brow her way. His tone was a bit snarky, but his eyes showed his love was still there calming her wildly racing heart.
“If you’d prefer not to say it, you can type it in instead,” Justine suggested, watching as Hailey did, a hint of color in her cheeks and Justine understood why she didn’t want to speak it in front of her brother. Most older brothers wouldn’t want to know that their seventeen-year-old little sister was thinking about sex, let alone using it in her password.
“How can this help?” Hailey asked when Justine started pulling up emails and her sister’s social media accounts. The DM’s seemed to be complete, which helped immensely, and Justine quickly sorted through the different accounts until she found the UL’s three main ones. It seemed that Isabelle either didn’t see the messages from the first two, or had ignored them, forgetting the photo was the same on all of them when she began responding to him.
“If Isabelle and this boy are somewhere, we can hopefully find him through his account,” she said, before taking out her computer to sync the information to forward to Moe to run through his system. It would be quicker than her doing it one by one. “Now,” she added turning around to look at the girl, “what did Isabelle tell you about this guy she was meeting?”
“Not a lot honestly,” Hailey said, her face tightening. “Her last date hit on me, said he’d wondered if we’d kiss alike since we looked nothing alike, after I asked him about something he was interested in, which upset her, so she hasn’t wanted to talk about guys with me as much since then. She said he was nineteen, at college in Vincent but living there year round now and working, which is why he was too busy to come down here to meet up with her.”
Justine nodded, asking more basic questions until Moe messaged her back with the info she needed. Her breath stuck in her chest seeing the similarities to old cases in it, and her neck tensed, knowing this had just gotten ten times harder. The words the phrases these sickos used were far too common to be a hundred percent certain that it was the same lure being used, but there was more than enough here to say it was feasible.
“What is it?” Tyler asked drawing her attention off the screen and towards him as he leaned against the doorjamb. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think Isabelle was talking to a nineteen-year-old college student,” she admitted.
“Then who was she talking to?” Hailey asked.
“Someone much more dangerous, someone that uses a lure in photos to get people interested and away from their normal routine to abduct them,” she answered honestly. Lies at this moment were pointless and would only put more distance between their families.
“No, that can’t be. She talked to him Tuesday night on her computer. I came in and she said she had to go, but it was him. I saw him moving and talking. It wasn’t just a picture,” Hailey stated.
“Unfortunately with AI, it’s possible to fake an entire video, but if there’s a history on it, it’s possible we can use it to backtrack his location,” Justine said, calling Moe to check on it.
“You said the video chat was Tuesday night? Do you know about when?” Moe asked and Justine glanced at Hailey for help.
“Nine, nine-thirty at the latest.”
“Let me dig into the computer traffic from then and see what we get.”
“Do you need anything else from us until a team can get out to you, Justine?” Melissa added.
“Can you call Sarina in? This is probably about the best time to tell you that I had her continuing to research UL-23. I was up to date on everything she found until…I went on vacation,” Justine hedged since Hailey and Tyler were in the room and listening. “If we’re going to find them, we need everyone on it.”
“We’ll discuss you not listening to directions when we’re done,” Melissa said, and she bit back a smile. There wasn’t a whole lot they could do to her since she still planned to leave once things were handled.
Justine ended the call, pulling up the information on her computer to dig into all of the history of UL-23.
“I take it your expertise isn’t in simple missing or abducted kid cases?” Tyler said, pulling her attention back towards her. “Is it?”
“No, it’s not,” she answered him, and he nodded, his eyes holding hers seeing more than she needed him to see in this moment—far more but it was comforting in a way for it to be out finally. Even if it was just the tiniest hint of it.
