“It’s not his son who is lying,” Lucy said. “It’s bugged me since the interview yesterday, but Ginny was very quiet and she didn’t really look us in the eye.”

“She’s a twelve-year-old kid being interviewed by two federal agents,” Nate said. “We need to tread really carefully.”

Though Nate was being cautious, she had him thinking.

Lucy gathered up the photos. She wanted to look at them again, just to see if she missed anything. She looked at the log in the folder. They’d been taken the Thursday after the Albrights disappeared—nearly a full week. According to the Kerr County Sheriff’s Department, they didn’t go into the house on Monday when they were doing a welfare check. The FBI enlisted a locksmith, who unlocked the property after they secured a warrant.

But there had been no information at that point about their whereabouts.

“Laura, is it unusual that you were unable to find anything on their computers or phones about their plans? No maps or searches or research? No one goes to Mexico without some sort of plan, even last minute.”

“We never recovered their phones. We had a warrant to ping them, but they never popped, telling me they took out the batteries and then destroyed them. If you’re trying to avoid police, you get a burner phone. The computers in the house showed no sign of travel research, but those are just the ones left behind. There was a laptop missing, and family believed that was Mrs. Albright’s work computer, which was never logged into the Internet for protection of client data. A lot of accountancy firms have superfirewalls because of the financial data and risks. Albright likely would attach a flash drive to export the old-fashioned way.”

There was no evidence found of cell phones or a computer with the bodies.

Becky’s best friend said that she gave no hint that she was leaving town. That Tori had grabbed her from practice and she told her friend that she’d call later.

What if the mom felt threatened? Asked her girls to come home, then planned to run? Pick Ricky up on the way … except they couldn’t. Because someone stopped them.

Or they weren’t planning on leaving the country, but maybe she wanted to send the kids away because she thought there was some sort of threat to her family. Had she considered going to the police? Maybe she agreed to embezzle the money for someone else … and got cold feet. Sent the kids away with her husband so she could go to the police without fear of them being in danger.

“I want to talk to that bank manager again,” Lucy said. “If he knew Denise Albright, why didn’t he notice that something was amiss?”

“She was a good actress. Or he didn’t want to see anything wrong.” Laura shrugged. “Would he even remember three years later?”