Chapter 4 #2
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Liam agreed.
“Then why disable the cams on floor ten?” Mendez asked as Liam shut and locked the glass door.
“Because where’s the Feds’ focus right now and where is it not?” A.J. held both palms in the air.
“Disabling the cameras only on this floor was a distraction.” It was a strategic move.
A smart one, too. “If the gunman had access to the service elevators he probably came and went that way, pulled the fire alarm when he got to the ground level, then waited for the crowd to rush out. He slipped out unnoticed.”
Mendez produced a notepad from inside his blazer pocket and flipped through a few pages. “The room you mentioned on the eleventh was checked out. Same with the neighboring rooms. A couple in eleven ten, a single female in eleven twelve, and a couple with a child in eleven-zero-eight.”
“I’d like to take a look at the cameras on the eleventh floor,” Knox said. “Can we head to security?”
“We have people down there still going through the footage from the day,” he replied.
“So, they won’t mind a break.” A.J. winked and slapped Mendez on the back before walking past him toward the door.
“Liam and I can check out the rooms while you view the cams.” Wyatt held out his palm.
“Yeah, okay.” Mendez handed him an access card.
After a few minutes, they entered the security area on the second level of the hotel. “We’re going to take over the cams for a couple minutes,” Mendez told the two FBI agents who were sitting in front of the screens.
Knox sat next to Mendez once the agents left, and A.J. remained standing off to his left.
“So.” Mendez grabbed the mouse. “I’ll start when the fire alarm was pulled and go backward, I guess.”
“The cams in this hotel are shit,” A.J. said a minute later. “No great angles of any of those rooms, either.”
“Wait. Stop it there.” Knox scooted to the edge of his seat to get a closer look at the screen when Mendez paused it. “Switch to slow motion.”
A man and woman were walking down the hall then moved out of sight of the camera. “Rewind it.” He watched another few seconds. “They’re heading for the service exit.”
“We can’t prove that. It’s conjecture,” Mendez said.
He leaned back in his chair. “Forty seconds after those two are in the hall, the alarm is triggered on the first floor.”
Mendez went back over the footage again. “I’ll see if I can get a better look at the couple. You think she’s his spotter?”
“No, I think she’s his hostage,” Knox answered.
“Head down. Ball cap. The man knew what he was doing,” A.J. said. “He never looks at the cameras. She doesn’t try to hide her face, though.”
Knox stood. “He could have a gun to her back. Too hard to tell.”
“I have a feeling the beautiful Quinn will be calling you back to let you know this woman never made it to her new hotel. I guarantee she’s on that missing person list,” A.J. said.
“See the bag he’s got, too?” Mendez zoomed in on the screen. “Guessing that’s the rifle. Something else in there, too. Computer, maybe.”
Knox’s cell vibrated a second later. “Hey, which room are you thinking?” he answered.
“My money is on eleven twelve,” Liam replied.
Knox shifted the phone away from his ear to share the news. “Eleven twelve, that’s the woman’s room, right?”
“Yeah, let me call Quinn.” Mendez grabbed his phone and left.
“Looks like our shooter may have taken a hostage with him,” Knox told Liam.
“Not an accomplice?”
“The tech in here isn’t exactly top of the line, but nah, from the looks of it, I don’t think she’s in on it.”
“All right, we’re heading your way now.” Liam ended the call.
Mendez returned a few minutes later. “Her name is Sarah Reardon. And you were right, she’s on the list of people our agents have been trying to locate. Agent Quinn’s calling her family now.”
Knox sat back down. “I’d like to look at more footage and see how the shooter initiated contact. Since there’s no vantage point of her room on camera, we’ll have to check the other angles in the hall and outside the elevator.”
A few minutes later, Wyatt and Liam joined them in the office. “Anything?”
“The gunman must’ve hacked the security systems remotely. We have the man and woman on camera exiting the elevators and heading to her room before the first shot was fired.”
“Maybe she met him at the hotel bar, and he persuaded her to invite him up to her room?” Liam speculated.
“But he has no bag when he heads to her room, so how’d he get his gun inside?” A.J. pointed out.
“We’re going to need to scroll through all the hotel footage from the moment she checked in up until the shooting,” Knox said.
“I have to meet with your father’s Secret Service detail. They should arrive at Bennett’s new hotel soon. We can head to the field office afterward, and maybe Quinn will have more for us to go on at that point. I’ll have the team over there get started on this now.”
The guys weren’t used to working this closely with so many official agents, but it did have its advantages—like having an entire office devoted to the case.
“So, the shooter kills the cams in the lobby and on the tenth for a distraction. He exits the hotel after pulling the first-floor fire alarm and takes this woman with him as his stay-out-of-jail card,” Knox summed up what they’d learned once they were back in the Suburban ten minutes later and en route to Knox’s parents’ hotel outside Uptown.
“The gunman bought himself at least nine hours with his tenth-floor camera act,” A.J. said from the back seat. “You think this Sarah woman is still alive?”
“No one died this morning from the shooting,” Knox answered softly. His parents didn’t get hit. The bodyguard survived. “I sure as hell hope that’s the way the story remains.”