“Yeah?” he replied, his own eyes bleary from constant, close reading.

“Did we ever look at Claire’s email exchanges?”

“I didn’t know people her age still even used email,” he replied only half-joking.

She ignored the crack and pressed ahead.

“In one text, Jerebko asks her for it and she gives it to him. But then they keep texting. I would have thought they’d have switched over to email exclusively at that point. But they kept chatting on the app as if nothing had changed.”

Dolan rifled through some papers until he found what he was looking for. He held up a single sheet.

“It looks like your tech unit got her email password from the provider and sent it to us. But everybody has been so busy that it looks like no one has actually gone through the messages yet. Why do you ask?”

“I’m curious to see if they ever actually communicated off-app.”

“Well, have at it,” he said, handing her the page as he stood up. “I’m going to go shake the dew off the lily if you know what I mean.”

“No idea, Dolan,” she replied, scowling. “You’re very cryptic.”

“I’m saying I’m going to the restroom to urinate,” he said in a tone that suggested he was extremely proud of himself. He managed to just get out the door before getting nailed by the pen she threw at him.

Refocusing, she plugged the password into Claire’s email account and pulled up her inbox. She went to the date of the text when Jerebko first asked for her email address and searched for any messages that seemed related. One titled “Re: LOL” seemed to fit the bill. She opened and read the email.

It took physical effort to prevent her jaw from dropping at what she saw.

She looked over at Murph out of the corner of her eye. He was oblivious to her, scrolling through his phone as he stood in the corner of the room. She opened the next message in the exchange and nearly gasped. Each subsequent message gave her a little internal jolt that required concerted effort not to display.

When she reached the final message, Jessie leaned back in her chair. Her mind was racing. What she saw was provocative and potentially game-changing. But as she sat quietly, trying to look normal, she realized that if she told Dolan, he’d want to pursue it in the standard G-man fashion, coming in hard and fast.

But if Jessie’s instincts were right, that wouldn’t work. The way to get to the truth in this case required something more subtle—the kind of manipulation that Dolan wasn’t capable of. But she was.

The only problem was that if she showed up with him and her marshals in tow, there was no way she could get to the truth. She needed to be alone, to create a sense of security for her prey; to make the subject think that she was there to help rather than catch.