Page 45 of Lost Hours
He gave a sharp nod.
Sierra moved her hand to a tall, well-built man with red hair who had an arm around the woman next to him. With her dark brown ponytail, she looked far too young to be on this top-notch team.
“This is Grady Houston.” Sierra waved a hand toward the redhead.
“You have something go boom, I’m your guy.” Grady grinned, and the woman next to him rolled her eyes.
Sierra shook her head. “He’s our ballistics, firearms, and explosives expert. The ever patient woman next to him is his wife, Ainslie, one of our forensic photographers. And next to her is our other photographer, Chelsea Vale.”
They didn’t offer their hands, so Nolan nodded and smiled.
Sierra stepped down the line. “Last, but not least are my assistants, Chad Powell and Jeremiah Paulson.”
Nolan shook hands with Chad, who had thinning dark hair and a slight build, then with Jeremiah, who was tall and wiry. His red hair outshone Grady’s.
A sudden commotion behind them took Nolan’s attention. An average-height, but well-built, guy with jet-black hair bounded from the pilot’s door and jogged across the tarmac. He had a twinkle in his almond-shaped eyes. “I’m here. Let the party begin.”
Sierra groaned. “Meet Dylan Wix, our most recent partner addition. He’s an IT expert, and as you can see, also a pilot. He’ll be collecting all of the electronics.”
“I mean, not justanypilot.” He blew his fingers and brushed them across his chest. “One of the top pilots in the area.”
“Based on what rating?” Grady’s tone was liberally laced with sarcasm. “The Dylan Wix rating scale?”
“I could say according to a recent internet poll, but I assume you’d think I fixed the voting.” Dylan belted out a laugh.
“As you can see,” Sierra said. “He’s the life of our party.”
“Yeah,” Nolan said. “We have one of those on our team as well.”
“Doesn’t most every team?” Mina asked. “I know I’ve met a lot of life-of-the-party people on the teams I served on over the years.”
“An insecure guy might infer that you mean this in a derogatory way,” Dylan said. “But I always say we only have one life to live. Why live a dull one?”
“Be that as it may,” Sierra said. “Today is all about the minutia of a crime scene. Actually, three crime scenes.”
“To that end,” Blake, a guy who seemed all business all the time, said, “Sierra and I’ll visit each scene with you while our team gets the vans in place and prepares to work.”
“I’ll take charge of one scene,” Sierra said. “Then assign the others to Chad and Jeremiah so we can process them simultaneously. I’ll review all the findings and the scenes again before we conclude our work. Any questions?”
“I just want to confirm that all of the results will come to me,” Mina said.
Blake nodded and lifted an iPad from under his arm. “I have a contract here that we’ll sign stipulating that very thing. You can also authorize us to share with anyone you might want to be included in this document as well.”
“Just me for now,” she said. “If that changes, I’ll let you know.”
Nolan wanted to say something. To argue. But he gritted his teeth and stood quietly while the Veritas staff eyed him and Mina, likely looking for any tension that might exist. He didn’t want to communicate any unease. Mina had every right to get the forensic reports delivered to her, and she had every right not to share them with him. She said she would, and he hoped she did, but he knew she would only give him information she thought pertinent for him to know.
Not that he could do the same thing with her. Everything his team learned had already been shared with her, and everything they learned in the future would go via El as well.
Sierra clapped her hands. “Then let’s get to the first crime scene. We have the address of the escape room, and we’ll meet you there.” She started off, and Blake followed her.
Mina and Nolan caught up to them.
“We have an envelope that needs processing too,” Mina said. “It once held one of the escape room invitations sent to the team. Unfortunately, all of the invitations were surrendered to the man in charge of the evening and the other envelopes destroyed, so this is the only remaining one. It’s in my car.”
“And you should know,” Nolan added, “it was thrown in the trash, so you might find interesting residue that has nothing to do with the mail delivery or origination.”
“We’ll mark that as exhibit one,” Blake said.
