Unfortunately, the timing of the surveillance operation hadn’t coincided with Dakota’s sleepover birthday party after all, which meant Addison had had to spend the night in Hallandale with her father.

Morrow was nearly done but needed more coffee before she could finish her report. Stiff, she got up, surprised that the office, so peacefully empty in the predawn, was now filled with the nine-to-fivers.

She was returning to her desk and pondering taking Addie to the beach on the weekend when Jake Zhu waved her over to his cubicle.

“Good morning, Jake. Still using the crutches, I see.” Morrow sipped from her mug. “What’s up?”

“You know the Miami-Dade burglaries you’d asked me to monitor?”

“Yeah, for the task force.”

“I just got a heads-up from my colleague there. They’ve made a recent arrest.” Zhu swiped through his phone. “Clete Younger Loften.”

“Really?”

Zhu held up Loften’s mug shot. “Looks like they executed warrants in Allapattah in the motel where he lived.”

“All right, send me everything you can on this. I’ll need to alert my supervisor.” Morrow looked around unsuccessfully for Weggnor. “I’ve got to finish something. This is good. Thanks, Jake.”

At her desk, Morrow downed half of her coffee. With renewed energy, she wrapped up her report. Then she began reading the material on Loften that Zhu had sent to her. One of the first things she did was submit Loften’s name to the data bank for the task force pursuing The Collector. Then she submitted it to other national systems.

It would take a little time to process.

Morrow then read through all the key points of what she had so far: that Loften had been arrested, found with a serrated knife, and identified as the subject behind the Palm Mirage Creek attack; that it was believed he stalked and studied his targets online; that he appeared to be a drifter who’d traveled to a number of states.

After digesting what she knew of Loften, Morrow sent off an urgent note to her supervisor, Sebastian Weggnor, requesting she talk to the Miami-Dade investigators with an eye to interviewing Loften in relation to her work on the task force.

Several moments later, Weggnor answered.

Interesting. I’ll call my counterpart at Miami-Dade now and get right back to you.

Weggnor’s reaction to her information and request was somewhat deflating. He was known to be a straitlaced, by-the-book type who rarely left his desk. In the time she waited, Morrow reread everything with a growing feeling that Loften’s arrest was a potential lead in the case. Then she went to Zhu to see if he had been able to dig up anything more from his sources.

“Working on it, Terri.”

“Thanks.”

Before she returned to her desk, Weggnor stood at his door and called her into his office.