Page 77 of Avenging Angel

Daisy sighs. “There have been enough secrets. No need to add more, I suppose.”

I walk over to her and pull her into my arms. “It was with good intentions, and your heart was in the right place. We all see that. But if you’re going to offer yourself up as bait again, then everyone needs to be on board.”

Jack’s shoulders loosen as he closes the distance between himself and Daisy. “Owen spent weeks wondering what had become of you. Please don’t put him through that again. The wondering is far more destructive than the knowing.”

Daisy releases her arms from around my waist and hugs her teammate. “Thanks for speaking up. Sometimes tough love is what’s needed to get through my thick skull.”

Owen raps on the door twice before coming in, holding up an old-school dumb phone. “This may be the key to finding Eva and Genevieve.”

Chapter thirty-one

Daisy

“How is a phone the key to finding Genevieve? It can’t be hers because she told me that none of the girls were allowed to bring their phones on the field trip.” I walk over and reach for the phone, but Owen rears his gloved hand back to keep it from my grasp.

“This is evidence,” he says as he makes his way to the computer, plugs in the phone, and then runs a virus scan on the contents. “I need to preserve the chain of custody. We dusted it for prints, photographed it, and cataloged it. As soon as I crack the E2E encryption, Special Agent Dunbar will take it to the FBI field office in Medford, where they are holding Kenneth Johnson for further questioning. But I can’t have anyone touch the phone without gloves.”

Angel looks at me and then shifts his chin toward Owen. I take the hint and ask my brother, “How long will it take to decrypt the phone?”

“It’s a dumb phone, but it’s the only one on the market that allows for encrypted texts via Signal. The good news is that it can be broken far easier with the physical phone than when it needs to be done remotely. Instead of days, weeks, or possibly even years, we’re talking only a few hours, a day at most.”

Not sure how to best broach the topic, I end up blurting out the words. “I know who took me.”

That stops Owen in his tracks; his fingers no longer flying across the keyboard. He looks at me, saying nothing as he waits for me to continue. I tell him everything.

Even when I’m done, my brother just sits there. He doesn’t flinch or blink. He doesn’t fly off the handle like I expected him to. He simply takes the time to digest what I’ve told him.

When he finally snaps out of his trance-like state, he says, “I can’t make an arrest on a vision, Daisy. I need to follow the evidence.”

Roger places a comforting hand on my shoulder while he asks Owen, “Besides the phone, what evidence were you and your agents able to find?”

Owen leans back in the chair, hands clasped and relaxed at his waist. Though he’s doing his best not to show his anger by pretending to be calm, his pulsating jaw muscles give him away. My brother is beyond mad and barely holding it in. I’m impressed by his restraint, and like Jack said, I should have had more faith in my brother.

“Let’s start with Brad. We know that his plan was at least a year in preparation based on the donation to the school from his offshore account. He departed the area just prior to Genevieve’s abduction, ensuring his RV is located near the Rogue River in Grants Pass along with the NPS truck he was towing behind him. That truck has a GPS in it, giving him an alibi.”

“We already know that,” I tell him.

Owen grits his teeth. “Yes, and we also know that Brad had an ATV that he parked three miles north of the Stillwaters Campground anywhere from four to eight hours prior to the events unfolding. What we didn’t know is that there was a secondary ATV stashed near the campground meant to be the getaway vehicle.”

“We would have heard an ATV if it approached,” Jack says. “Jeremy and I were patrolling the campground all night while Faith and Jaxon got some sleep.”

Jaxon cuts in. “The same goes for Faith and me. Once we were awake, we also would have heard it. Even if Brad had pre-positioned the ATV, all of us would have heard it when he left the scene.”

Owen shakes his head. “Not if it was electric. Based on the tread patterns we found near where Daisy was shot, the ATV was a DRR EV Adventure. It’s virtually silent with a regenerative braking system, meaning that on a descent, power is fed back into the battery. With an extended range, it can travel 65 miles or more without a peep. While I’m not a fan of electric vehicles because you can’t just gas up and go, this one is worth its weight in gold.”

Vinny grunts. “That’s how he escaped quickly and undetected. I had the drone patrolling the area within two minutes of Daisy going down.”

“That drone should have been in the air long before it actually was,” Jeremy says in an almost accusatory tone.

Roger reminds him that the tree cover in the area would have rendered the drone practically useless. Even with the thermal imaging, there would have been too many heat signatures to identify anyone in particular. “This would be the first abduction made in broad daylight, and we couldn’t have known that he would change his modus operandi. This is clearly a coordinated effort that’s been in the works for quite some time. I feel as though the change directly results from us getting close. Now we need to tighten the noose.”

Jack asks, “Owen, where did you find the phone?”

“When we lost the getaway trail at Crater Lake Highway, we noticed that the mud from the tires of the secondary ATV pointed westward. There are a bazillion places he could have gone off trail in those few short miles. Or he could have purposely done that to throw us off and then turned northward toward the rim. He’s smart enough to do something like that. Once the scene was secured, I left Jordan to work with two federal agents while I went back to the spot where Brad left his first ATV under the brush and bushes to start at the beginning. That’s where I found the phone. Brad must have dropped it. Bad news for him, great news for us.”

“We don’t even know what’s on it,” Jaxon says. “Nor do we know where he is.”

I understand my brother’s excitement and why he believes the phone will lead us to Genevieve’s location, especially once I told him who the mastermind is behind the abductions, the big fish, so to speak. Brad is somehow involved, but Logan Bloom is running the show.