barely reach it; it was in the most awkward spot in the entire closet. She stood en pointe, silently thanking Becks for making her take ballet, got her fingers on the tape. Heard as much as felt something in the center of the roll.
She pulled the tape to the edge of the shelf, and the thing in the middle fell out. It thumped against the floor and she panicked. She had to find it. Whatever it was. She went on hands and knees like an oxy addict chasing her last pill.
There.
Smooth plastic, no larger than her thumb, a serrated metal wheel at the top—
A lighter. She flicked the wheel, pushed down the handle. A yellow flame spouted up. No more than two inches high.
A nail was dangerous. A flaming-hot nail was a weapon.
She let go. No reason to waste the butane—
She heard someone walking down the hall. Not Rodrigo, different steps. Lighter, surer. Jacques.
Shit.
She stood on tiptoe, pushed the lighter and the electrical tape back into the corner where she’d found them. Jacques reached for the door.
She sat, realizing Rodrigo had left the orange peel and the extra bottle of water. His problem, not hers.
The deadbolt snapped back. She willed her breathing to slow—
The light flicked on. Jacques stood in the doorway.
Don’t look on the shelf, don’t look in the corner. Don’t.
“Kira. Been busy, I see.”
18
Barcelona
Rebecca didn’t like scrolling through Kira’s phone records. She felt a little like she was reading a diary. But she had no choice. Back at the apartment, she logged into the Unsworth family account. Naturally she knew the password, didn’t need to fumble for it. Naturally she’d brought her FBI-issued laptop on the trip, vacation or no. She could hear her daughter: Always prepared, Mom, nothing ever gets past you, somehow making the words sound like an accusation.
No surprise, Kira spent more time texting than calling. Like everyone else, she received a lot of robocalls—the IRS has blocked your credit card, we can help. Those all went to voice mail. Her outgoing calls were limited mainly to Rebecca, Brian, and other family members, fewer than a dozen numbers.
Her texting circle was far larger. Rebecca counted more than sixty recipients. A handful of numbers received most of the action. Rebecca knew three on sight; Kira’s best friends from high school. She could guess at others. The 802 and 412 numbers probably belonged to Kira’s first-year roommates, from Vermont and Pittsburgh. A 510 number showed up for a month, then abruptly vanished after a flurry of 3 a.m. texts. Kira had mentioned a boy from Oakland. A trust-fund artist, she’d said.
Others were mysteries. Brian and especially Tony might know some, but they were putting up posters on La Rambla. Without much discussion, she and Brian had decided that keeping Tony busy would be good for his mental health. And theirs. She hadn’t heard anything yet from Rob Wilkerson, but she had to assume that CC had kept his word and was having Mossos officers check hospitals.
At the moment these records were her best lead. And by “best” she meant only.
Metadata, the NSA called these lists. Even without knowing exactly what the texts said, the pattern revealed plenty. They were spokes radiating from the hub that was Kira, thickening and thinning as friendships and romances came and went. If communication was life, metadata was its DNA.
The FBI and NSA used database software to comb these records for numbers known to belong to criminals or terrorists. Even then Rebecca liked to scan them herself to see if anything popped: A three-minute, 2 a.m. phone call to a number that otherwise only appeared in texts. A desperate attempt to reach a lover before an attack, maybe. A flurry of texts at the same time every day for a week, as a plan took shape.
Rebecca hoped to spot a similar anomaly in Kira’s records. If nothing else, she wondered if Kira had been in contact with someone in Europe before the trip. If the kidnappers had targeted her, maybe they had laid the groundwork before she landed.
But Kira hadn’t talked or texted with anyone in Europe before she’d arrived here. Not on her phone, anyway. Maybe she’d used another channel. An instant-messaging service like Kik or WhatsApp. Her Instagram account—Kira7SUns. Possibly Facebook, though she was more active on Instagram. Facebook was the choice of parents and other dinosaurs.
So the lack of texts didn’t absolutely prove anything. But Rebecca had learned over the years that only the most careful perps avoided texting.