Alex slid into a chair beside her with his laptop open. “Hey. I decided to keep searching for where Lloyd Zenko might have crossed paths with EG and then decided to check if the cell they found on Eric Pierce intersected with Zenko’s in the last year.”

“What did you find?”

“Nothing.”

Yael frowned. “He could have used a burner. They could both have used burners.”

Alex nodded. “Yeah.”

She knew Alex was starting to doubt that Eric Pierce was Evi1Geni-us. If she was honest, so was she. But the data had fit so perfectly…

“Did you run Pierce’s cell against the murder locations?”

Alex nodded. “No hits. But there were hits for other locations at the time of the murders.”

Yael’s jaw tightened as she stared at Eric Pierce’s HR file. “Someone from that firm was assigned to locations in the vicinity where the murders took place. Did EG swap cell phones with Eric Pierce, or…” She looked at Alex as details clicked into place. “Swap employee files.”

Alex leaned forward and pointed to the screen. “All anyone would need to do is switch employee numbers and all the wrong info would populate regarding work schedule.”

“We crosschecked work locations with murders and came up with someone EG set up as a patsy.” Yael wanted to curse. “But EG must work at the same firm. He has to know we’re onto him which is why he switched the employee numbers.”

Yael checked the associated banking details with Eric Pierce’s employee number but they lined up with Pierce’s home address.

EG definitely knew they were onto him which was why he’d tried to kill her last night.

She needed to tell Alex that her attacker had taken her family’s portrait. It was only a matter of time before EG figured out her real identity and revealed it to the world.

It didn’t change anything. There was nothing she could do to change it. Worrying about it wouldn’t help them catch this guy. It might get her taken off the task force and she couldn’t afford for that to happen.

“Can we ask a manager if they remember who they sent to Houston over the New Year? Or see if they have another employee number on record for Pierce that someone else is now using?”

Ashley nodded and turned away to make the phone call.

“He probably already covered his tracks. I doubt he’d use the number originally assigned to Pierce. Too easy to trace,” Yael said despondently. She pulled up the list of employees for the company. Over a thousand. She looked at Alex a little deflated. “He could have already deleted his real file or altered the photo and data in the HR database. That’s what I’d do to confuse the issue. Mix up a few random files so we don’t know which are true and which aren’t.”