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“We’re gonna need the weight of the Sheriff’s Department to get to those property or rental records,” Matt said. “Millie …”
“I already called Briggs on it,” the diner owner said.
“When is Trent arriving?” Matt turned to Cassie.
“They’re ten minutes away,” she replied. “I’ll text him to meet us at the diner.”
Matt could feel the adrenalin surging through his veins. “We’ll need Lucas to work his magic.”
“I’ll give him a heads up.”
Once the team got together, everything started falling into place. Trent sent his deputies to search the house for evidence, while Lucas tracked down the rental agreement on the property. The lease was signed by one Riccardo Rossi, assuredly an alias, but still a lead. There was also a copy of the driver’s license and a passport. The Reaper had created an entirely new persona for this particular op. He paid in cash, though, and there were no credit cards linked to the particular Riccardo Rossi that matched the person on the ID.
“He didn’t want to leave a paper trail,” Millie commented.
“Lucas, can you turn up any archived satellite images on that property?”
“I’ve been running a search for the past hour and a half, querying several web mapping service databases. The most popular one’s recorded image was three years ago. I’ve hit one that was recorded two weeks ago, but no cars were parked outside.”
“Aren’t most vehicle’s license plate numbers blocked out?” Millie asked.
“We can request the original image with appropriate paperwork,” Lucas said. “Trent’s already on it.”
Lucas had also run a facial recognition search on the picture of the driver’s license. So far it had turned up two hits at an eighty-five percent match. Riccardo Rossi was a chameleon and changed his physical appearance to suit his target. In one, he had long hair and a beard. In another, he was clean shaven with glasses. Eighty-five percent match was usually not close enough, so those they had discovered may not even be a persona of The Reaper.
Another two hours passed.
Different identities potentially belonging to The Reaper continued to surface. Different citizenships, different countries, but the team was fairly certain that the cartel’s assassin had started out as an Italian hitman.
A beep from one of Lucas’s laptop turned up a photo.
Matt’s brother did a fist pump, a look of disbelief on his face. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What do you have, Lucas?” he asked impatiently.
“Digital pictures contain location information called geotagging,” Lucas said. “There was a parade down that street on St. Patrick’s Day so I narrowed it down to that date and searched a popular picture-sharing app. We have two hits; both have two vehicles parked out front.”
Lucas rubbed his palms together in glee before he set his hands on the keyboard and his fingers went flying.
It could have been a few seconds, but, for Matt, it was an eternity. Finally, his brother clucked his tongue and said, “Bingo.”
“Vehicles are from two different rental companies in Atlanta,” Lucas said. “The Lexus has a vehicle locator service.”
“What are you doing?” Millie asked when Lucas brought up the Lexus website and another screen in hexadecimal format. “Are you hacking the website?”
“Just ‘accessing.’ Shit,” Lucas muttered. “The Reaper has disabled the vehicle locator.”
“Shit. Can you get it back on line?” Matt asked, his body rigid with tension.
“Yeah, just a sec.”
The seconds turned into minutes. Long minutes.
“Lucas, we don’t have much time,” he gritted through his teeth, fighting the urge not to yell at his brother. “If you can’t get it back on line, we’ll have to call someone who can.”
His brother cast him an irritated look. “Let me guess? AGS? You’re willing to ask Viktor for a favor?”
“If I have to,” Matt muttered. He’d beg on his knees if it meant getting Grace back.
