quickly, as if her grief itself were illicit and needed hiding.
“Becks? You okay?”
Brian must have seen something in her face. She nodded. She didn’t want to talk about her feelings. She was glad when he didn’t press.
“Anything on the records?”
“Just the guy’s number. It’s French. The texts start early yesterday morning.”
“Surprised he didn’t block it.”
“Kira would have thought that was weird. Maybe a deal breaker. Anyway, I just got off the phone with Jake Broadnik. He’s running the number, says he’ll have something soon.”
Brian nodded. He knew Broadnik too, though they weren’t close. The Tailored Access Operations guys kept to themselves.
“We put up like a hundred posters,” Tony said. He pulled one from the plastic bag he was holding to show her. MISSING: KIRA UNSWORTH, 19, AMERICAN. REWARD FOR INFORMATION.
Two pictures: a face shot from high school graduation, Kira grinning, the sun shining from her eyes, and a full-body picture guaranteed to get noticed.
Rebecca’s phone number and email address below. At the bottom, again: MISSING. REWARD IF FOUND.
“They’re good,” Rebecca said. “Did anything else strike you from Friday night, Tony? Anything weird, anything that didn’t fit?”
“One thing—” Tony stopped. “I remember it hitting me on the Métro home. Maybe it’s ridiculous.”
“Nothing’s ridiculous.”
“Like his French was too perfect somehow. Like he was acting and wasn’t French at all. If that even makes sense. I almost said something to Kira. He was too perfect. Then I figured she’d just tell me I was jealous, that’s how you pick up girls if you’re not a loser, Tony.”
Which sounded like something Kira in a less-than-charitable mood might say.
“I should have warned her.”
“Tony.” She wrapped her arms around his skinny body. “You couldn’t have known.”
But he detached himself, pushed her away, stalked off to his bedroom.
Rebecca grabbed the posters and the tape. “I’m gonna go for a walk. Put some up.”
“Becks—”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from Rob or Jake. Look at her phone records, see if anything pops.”
* * *
A few minutes later she stood in the Plaça de Catalunya, a giant concrete square at the north end of La Rambla. Double-decker buses and taxis rolled past. Tourists milled around an oddly sinister clown who wore pure white face paint and juggled four balls in endless loops. Rebecca swung her head side to side with a metronome’s regularity, clocking the crowds. As if she could make Kira appear by staring hard enough.
Her phone buzzed. “Jake.”
“This guy—well, judge for yourself.” His voice had a strange edge.
Jake wasn’t normally coy. He must have something he didn’t want to tell her. “Go.”
“The number’s clean. Like spotless. It was lit up for the first time a month ago, in Paris. Up by Saint-Ouen, northern Paris, that big market up there, right?”
“Les Puces, right.” The market had come up before in counterterror investigations.
“So assume the phone was stolen and jailbroken and he bought it there.” Jailbreaking a phone meant prying into the core software and modifying it so that it could run on any carrier and download apps that Apple or Google hadn’t approved. Any decent hacker could do it. The phone might be glitchy but it would look normal.
“Sure,” Rebecca said.
“Anyway. Your guy hooked the phone up to Orange S.A.; prepaid, there’s no account, no credit card. Pure burner. But the phone was off. At least the mobile connection is off. Airplane mode, basically. Obviously, whoever has it could still use it through Wi-Fi to download apps, surf.”
“Obviously.”
“But understand, even that’s a little bit dangerous for him. Every time he uses it, the phone’s browser picks up cookies, and the more cookies get planted, the bigger the digital trace, even over Wi-Fi. Think of it this way: A specific phone’s browser is trackable like a specific computer’s; unless you have the skills to make sure it’s generic, and that’s not impossible, but it’s trickier on a phone than a computer. Pretty easy to download Tor for a computer, not so much for a phone.”
“So you have his browser, Jake? You can tell me what sites he visited?”
“No, he didn’t use the phone enough. He only lit it up once. One call, to the Paris mayor’s office—”
“What?”
“The main number, for less than a minute. Probably just to check the phone was working. Then nothing until the texts to Kira in Paris and then in Barcelona.”
“Everything else was wireless?”
“Correct. On the regular networks the phone was only ever used to message your daughter’s phone and that test call.”