“Perhaps if he was,” my boss growled, bending down so he could see me as well, his furrowed brows and clenched jaw in the frame beside Owen, “he’d know better than to hack into firewalls that he has no business messing with.”
I groaned. “What’d you do?”
Owen cleared his throat. “Your ghost, Caleb Harrison. When I went to look him up to see what was out there, doing my normal due diligence on a name we come in contact with, all his credentials, his birth certificate, driver’s license, it all looked—I dunno—too shiny is the only way I can put it.”
“You’re saying it looked fake?”
He nodded. “How he was getting his PhD, his trip out to Oregon, he was just so ordinary, and not at the same time. Like why was he there? It was so random.”
“And?”
“And I was checking into him last night, not digging deep, and it was all too easy. Everything was right there for anyone to find.”
“I don’t understand,” Benji admitted, turning to me. “What does that mean?”
“It means that Caleb Harrison isn’t at all who we think he is.”
“How so?” he asked me.
“Caleb Harrison is entirely fabricated. He doesn’t exist.”
“Really?” Benji sounded excited. “Are you serious?”
“It would seem so,” I said, tipping my head at the screen.
“It turns out,” Jared began, “that Caleb Harrison is, in reality, Heath Sears, a DEA agent out of Seattle. When Owen dug deeper and ended up hacking into the DEA database”––he turned and glared at his ward before turning back to face me and Benji––“all the alarms went off, and I got to be on the receiving end of a blistering tirade from a friend.”
“Is Owen in trouble?” Benji asked innocently.
“No,” Jared assured him, using his calm, soothing tone since he wasn’t talking to either me or Owen. “I explained that we had been alerted to a situation, were running down a lead, and apologized for not giving her a heads-up before we started poking around in a federal database. In the end, she was appreciative, since she was as yet unaware that Agent Sears was missing.”
“Why didn’t she know that?” Benji prodded my boss.
“She’s a bit too far up the food chain to be keeping tabs on individual agents, but she was able to tell me fairly quickly that someone dropped the ball.”
“No one noticed he was gone.”
“Heath has been undercover for the last eight months.”
“And no one checks up on agents who are undercover?”
Jared sighed deeply. “Again, mistakes were made.”
“That probably cost Agent Sears his life,” I chimed in.
“Yes,” Jared agreed.
“Does someone get in trouble for that?” Benji wanted to know.
“Someone gets more than fired for that, yes,” Jared explained.
“He’s been missing for months,” Benji reiterated, stuck there on the failure of people to check on one of their own.
“I know, and this is why I don’t work for anyone else anymore,” Jared muttered under his breath.
“So whyever is Owen in trouble if he uncovered the fact an agent no one was checking up on was missing and then alerted people to that fact?” Benji pointedly asked Jared.
“Because,” Jared began, “Owen knows better than to break into the DEA database without express permission. There are channels one needs to go through so one does not have federal charges leveled at them, charges that could land them in prison for the rest of their natural lives!”
The thunderous boom of Jared’s voice made me wince, made Owen thunk his head down onto the desk, and made Benji, for whatever reason, smile wide.
“It’s so nice to see how worried you are about dear Owen,” he sighed. “Now, what do we need to do about Heath? Is it our duty to apprise Chief Brasher of this latest development, or have you already done so?”
“I thought there was a deputy there of some kind,” Jared commented.
I shook my head. “Lots of changes since I got here.”
“It sounds like,” he agreed. “Tell me about this Brasher.”
I filled him in quickly.
“Okay, so Brasher will be briefed by Special Agent Parish and her team, who are out of Seattle, as was Sears. My friend alerted them, and they’re en route as we speak. They’ll make contact with Brasher, and Parish’s team will aid in the search out at the property tomorrow.”
“Copy that,” I replied.
“You may see the FBI as well.”
“And the good news is we’ll find out what happened to Heath Sears.”
“Does Brasher know everything you do?”
“He does.”
“Good,” Jared replied tiredly. “Since I was given Parish’s direct line, I’ll let her know that the chief has all the pertinent details, so maybe you won’t be bothered any more tonight.”
That would be good, since my plans for the evening did not include talking to anyone but Benji. I only wanted to focus on Benji. “Thanks, boss.”
He nodded.
“And good job, Owen. I appreciate the security system you sent with Rais too.”