Page 25 of Night Hawk
She smiled up at him for only a flash before she returned her attention to the dog. She’d loved dogs since she played with the neighbor’s poodle, named Sprinkles, and she wasn’t kidding when she’d told Clay she wanted one someday. She would have to change jobs for that to happen, and she wasn’t ready to make a change. Maybe wouldn’t ever be ready. She loved being an agent.
She kept petting Pong’s soft fur but looked at Erik. “Why a Lab?”
“Temperament. Sniffer dogs need to be methodical in their searches. Be calm, handle confined spaces, and be around a lot of people and not get easily excited. Labs fit that profile.”
“Our family gives him a lot of practice with the last one.” Clay grinned.
“That we do.” Erik laughed.
“We should get started,” Aiden said.
She reluctantly got up and wondered if Clay would ever want a dog. Or children, which would mean an even bigger commitment to time off. She might love dogs, but children were foreign to her, and she didn’t know if she ever wanted to be a mother.
Embarrassed at the route her thoughts were taking in front of his siblings, she slipped into the nearest chair and took her time getting her phone out of her purse and setting it on the table.
Clay went to the whiteboard, but the door opened, and Sierra stepped in. The dark circles were gone from under her eyes, and she had a spring in her step. “Don’t mean to intrude, but I have a couple of things for you.”
She handed a flash drive to Erik. “Will you put the slideshow up on the TV?”
Erik inserted the drive in his computer. A photo of one of the high school bedrooms filled a screen. Toni’s stomach churned at the sight.
“We all saw this last night,” Clay said. “What are you seeing that we aren’t?”
“Next picture, please, Erik.” Sierra took a seat at the table as he advanced the slide. “This image is the same as the first one, but Nick cropped and enhanced it for me. You can clearly make out the carving on the inside of the bedpost.”
Sierra looked at Toni. “Nick’s our cyber expert and handles everything computer related for us and, Erik takes care of computer needs for this team.”
Erik frowned. “I could’ve enhanced this for you.”
“Nick pulled an all-nighter and was in his lab. You were still sleeping.”
Erik clicked the arrow, and it advanced to a close-up of a bedpost. Engraved into the wood was a tiny crown above back-to-back Rs.
“It’s him.” Toni fired an excited look at Clay. “It really is Hibbard. He’s involved. It’s the same bed as the video we have from Safe Harbor.”
“How can you be sure?” Drake leaned forward.
“Hibbard’s first name is Rich, and he goes by Richey Rich from the cartoon.” Clay sounded excited about the lead too. “He uses their family logo—the double Rs you see on the screen—which proves his involvement.”
Sierra gave them all a satisfied smile. “I also analyzed the notes you both received. The paper matches and both were printed on the same printer.”
“How can you tell?” Clay asked.
“Erik.” She wiggled her finger, and he advanced the slides again.
She stood and stepped over to the screen where the corner of the note had been magnified. She pointed at the edge. “An old dot matrix printer was used to create the notes. You can see the perforations on the side of the page where they’ve removed the tab that feeds the paper into the printer.”
“We had one of those when we were kids,” Erik said. “I remember the fanfold paper and how the pins on the side grabbed it and pulled it through.”
“Exactly,” Sierra said. “And the next slide will tell you how I know they were the same printer.”
Erik tapped a key on his laptop, and the slide advanced to a close-up of the wordshigh school.
“As you can see, a dot matrix printer creates letters by connecting dots together. In this example, the g in high is missing the dot in the right corner. It’s the same everywhere the letter appears in the document.”
She looked at Erik. “Last slide, please.”
He advanced to a slide that looked exactly like the prior one.
