He tied their hands and feet together with sharp cable ties, wrapped a scarf around their open mouths, then pulled their cell phones out of their bloody pockets. He grabbed both of their right hands and tried each of their respective index fingers, placing them on the button for Touch ID. And the phones unlocked. Once inside, he deleted all the security codes and replaced them with his own. On one of these phones the last number dialed would give him what he wanted. The location of their client. The organization that was threatening Piet Hoffmann and his family. He did the same with the laptops on the desk—opened them with fingerprints. But he had to use one of their thumbs, almost broke it off unlocking. A quick check of the phones and computers showed what he expected—communication had been encrypted. But he had the most important thing, the telephone number of the person he was trying to find. He could work on the encrypted contents in Grens’s apartment later.

Chapter 29

The two cadets were sitting on a bench in the shade outside the local police station, each with an ice cream in their hands. When Ewert Grens pulled up, they both jumped into the same seats as before. No one said anything for the first few kilometers; the detective superintendent had made it clear he didn’t want to talk, and the cadets were young and inexperienced enough to respect that. Though Grens’s body was on its way back to the capital, his mind was still with the foster parents who loved every centimeter of their home. He’d gone there to find a missing girl, or at least something that might lead to finding her. He’d achieved neither. But he knew more now.

He knew Zana Lilaj had become Hannah Ohlsson.

Knew that Hannah Ohlsson had started asking questions about who she was not long after her placement.

He knew that when she was fourteen, an older boy’s sudden deadly fall had changed everything for her. Or maybe that was just part of the process, when her search for herself accelerated? Maybe one violent experience had triggered other violent memories?

He knew that one night she’d burned every photograph of herself, tried her best to erase Hannah just like Grens once tried to erase Zana.

And then she left, disappeared, never to return.

“How did it go, Superintendent?”

Grens stared straight ahead at the three-lane highway. The chatty cadet had managed to stay silent for almost an hour, which was an eternity in his world—and maybe he just didn’t have any more silence inside him.

“I mean, with the family and all?”

“I’m more interested in how it went for you. Did you find anything?”

“We found something.”

“Like what?”

“Something about a balcony incident. And a police report the adoptive parents filed for their missing daughter.”