Page 56 of Cold Silence
“Um…yeah…yeah, that would work.” He could barely get his head around her agreeing to this and even embracing it.
“You’ll all need civilian clothes for this event, and it’s formal.”
“I should be able to manage that,” Travis said. “As long as I can find a formal wear rental place that caters to guys our size.”
“Coop hates formal wear, so I’ll put him on finding a place.” Gage laughed.
Claire shook her head. “You’re so mean.”
“He’ll get me back.” Gage sounded confident in his take and not at all upset. “This is just the kinds of thing guys in the teams do.”
Travis’s phone rang. “It’s Sierra.”
He answered and put her on speaker.
“The DNA has come back for the samples we recovered at the institute,” she said. “That includes the Band-Aid wrappers and bloody tissue. Unfortunately, it didn’t return a match to anyone in the federal database and it’s too soon to compare to the one you overnighted from Mike Robb. Our DNA team will compare it as soon as it finishes processing, which will be sometime tomorrow.”
“Anything else produce a lead?” Travis asked, hoping for a yes.
“Not yet. We had zero matches on the fingerprints in databases. Something we all expected, but we’re still comparing fingerprints to the staff. The most promising would have been from the keyboard in the server room, but Warren White’s prints were the only ones lifted, and he has reason to be using that computer.”
“He does, but he’s also on our radar as a potential suspect,” Travis said. “We’d get you his DNA but he’s out of town, and honestly, finding his DNA on the keyboard doesn’t help since he has authorization to be in the server room.”
“Right,” she said.
“Anything else to share?” Travis asked.
“As you can imagine, we lifted a large number of prints in the public areas, which we haven’t yet finished. It’s a time-consuming task as it’s a manual process.”
“Thank you for keeping after it,” Travis said.
“We hope to finish today, and I’ll let you know what we find.” Sierra ended the call.
“We keep striking out,” Claire said.
“I prefer to look at it as we’re just eliminating leads so we can focus on the right ones,” Travis said.
“And that’s what makes you a good operator,” Gage said. “You keep looking forward.”
Travis wasn’t so sure about that. For work, yeah. In his life with Claire, no. He needed to change that. God would want him to look forward unless he was looking at the past to reminisce over good things. Or to see how God had been faithful. How He’d brought Travis through so many trials. He would bring him through this one and show him the way with Claire, wouldn’t He?
The computer sounded an alarm, and Claire turned back to it. “Jackson’s done. Coop chose to run the desert scenario. I didn’t pick up on any obvious injury for him and he ran it in record time.”
“It’s his back,” Gage said.
“You mean he did better than me?” Travis asked.
“He did better than both of you.”
“Oh, man.” Gage ran a hand over his head. “I’ll never live that down. Letting an Army grunt beat me.”
“Well, I’ve always told you Army is superior, but…” Travis laughed.
Claire rolled her eyes and pressed the speaker button for the simulation room. “Go ahead and come on in here. Please bring the virtual device with you.”
Jackson and Coop entered the observation room.
“Tell me I bested this guy’s score,” Jackson said to Claire the moment his foot crossed the threshold and clapped Travis on the back.
