If there’s a lot on the table, you can be pretty sure that there’s also a lot going on under the table. All too often where you find money you find corruption. It’s as if the two things are joined at the hip. It may take some time, but dig deep enough into one and you’ll most likely find ligaments connecting it to the other.

“Listen,” I said to Sasha. “I know you have orders to wait so you can try to track down Blake’s associates, but if you have any idea where he is, we need to move on him—especially now that Mannie is free. If we can get both of them, I think Mannie might work with us and give up the contacts you’re looking for.”

She didn’t respond.

“Can you get us to Blake?”

Though she took her time answering, at last she did. “Yeah. I think so.”

While she pulled up the material we needed, Greer spoke with DeYoung about getting an FBI SWAT team dispatched, and I phoned Ralph to fill him in on what we’d learned.

Once we had DeYoung’s approval and the address from Sasha, I realized that, despite how badly I wanted to be on the incursion team, the location wasn’t anywhere near us. SWAT would get there long before we would—and this was time-sensitive. If Blake was there, we needed to move on him right away before he fled or changed locations again.

“I’m not going to make it there in time,” I told Ralph.

“We’ll go in heavy. We’ll get this done.”

“Right. If possible, get me an eye on things. Have one of the SWAT guys send a video feed to my FDD account either from his body camera or helmet cam. We’ll watch things go down from here.”

“Roger that.”

“This is the best shot we’ve had in a long time. Good luck.”

I logged into my Federal Digital Database account and waited for the live footage to come through.

Finding Sasha this morning might’ve just been the break we’d been waiting for.

38

Timothy Sabian had a restless night, and when he finally rolled out of bed, it was nearly ten o’clock. He wandered into the kitchen to get some breakfast and saw the typewritten note waiting on the table: Look downstairs.

His heart clenched. Someone had been in here. Someone had left that note for him.

That’s not true, Timothy. You know that’s not true. You left this note here yourself.

“No. I didn’t. I wouldn’t have.”

But you did.

“I don’t go in the basement. Just like Emily didn’t after that night when Elena was killed.”

You haven’t even written the end of Emily’s story yet. Go and see. Go and see what’s in the basement.