“No, but we need whatever information he has. He didn’t kill Victoria—but I’m certain he knows who did. I’m going to lay out for him what we believe happened based on forensics—show him some photos and lead him into believing we have more than we do. But it’ll only work if he can’t reach Randolph if he tries.”

“So is this a federal case or an SAPD case?” he asked.

“Like Lucy said, it’s mine,” Jennifer said, “but any information Lucy gets that she can use to solve her case she runs with. And we get an assist and all the goodwill of the FBI and AUSA showered upon us.”

Mike laughed.

“Seriously, Mike, it’s a win-win for all of us.”

If the plan works, Lucy thought.

Chapter Thirty-two

FRIDAY, LATE MORNING

Mitch never came home last night.

Sean didn’t sit on his house the entire time, but he set up a camera discreetly in his driveway. If he passed it, the camera would activate. Sean didn’t care about the data, but the camera would alert him that it had been activated.

He’d told Lucy, but she was pursuing another angle. She promised to talk to Detective Reed about Mitch, but that didn’t mean the detective could do anything about it. But now he’d been off the grid for twenty-four hours and his office hadn’t heard from him.

There were some things he could do that bordered on illegal, but at this point finding Mitch was the number one priority.

On his secure home computer, Sean ran a trace on Mitch’s credit cards.

Bingo.

Mitch had filled up with gas in Austin, near the bank that he had visited the other day. Had he gone back? What was at the bank? A security deposit box? An account? A person? Why was he there?

He had a hotel room in Austin last night, was he still there? Why?

Sean decided to take a risk. He sent Max a text message that he had a line on Mitch, then hopped in his car and left.

Max spent the morning doing more research on Simon Mills.

She’d thought he was a lawyer, but in fact he wasn’t. He’d gone to law school after college but never took—or passed—the bar. He worked as a paralegal for a year, then started buying and selling property with his sister, Victoria. He made a pretty penny doing it, and there was nothing overtly illegal about his business. He didn’t appear to buy low and sell high; he bought properties that had been on the market awhile and needed work, then did the work and sold them.