Taylor's cellphone buzzes. He takes it out of his pocket and starts scrolling. Looking at me he says, "I just got the list of workers from your brother's construction manager. Larry Sordo's name is on it."
"Find the motherfucker," I growl. Taylor makes a move to go but Barney pipes up.
"Sir, if I may?"
"What is it?" I'm not in the mood for interruptions but he knows this so it must be important.
"At this point, we still have the upper hand. Larry Sordo doesn't know we're on to him. If we go after him right now, we might never learn who's really behind this. We should keep an eye on him, especially when he starts working on your house, but confronting him right now would be a mistake."
I look at Taylor; he nods and then adds, "Plus, sir, we're not even sure if this is the guy behind it. I mean, it was just conjecture on my part, given the similarities with the names. And there are plenty of ways of keeping tabs on him without him knowing."
At this point I have to rely on the wisdom and judgment of my staff; after all, that's why I've hired them. I'm too shaken up by the slide show, especially the voice and the last picture; I doubt I can formulate a proper plan on my own. Reacting emotionally is the worst thing I can do right now.
"Fine. But his surveillance starts immediately. I want eyes on him 24/7."
"Yes, sir," Taylor responds, "I'll have Ryan and Reynolds tail him."
"And I want extra detail at the house and with my wife."
Taylor nods, "Yes, sir. Then I'll station Reynolds at the house and put Ryan with Mrs. Grey. I'll find some others to tail Sordo."
"And I want daily reports."
"Yes, sir." With that, he leaves the room.
It's just me and Welch now. I ask him for the usb drive; I don't need the laptop, I still have the one at home from last week. He removes the drive, hands it to me, and leaves my office, taking the laptop with him.
Alone again, I put the drive in my jacket pocket and move over to my desk. An awful sense of déjà vu descends over me as I settle into my chair. Staring out the window at the Seattle skyline, I remember the feeling of dread I had last week; this time it's much, much worse.
And like last week, I resign myself to the only course of action I have right now: calling my wife. For a change she answers the phone herself and I give her the rundown of what happened. She's understandably upset and tells me she'll have Sawyer take her home. I say I'll meet her there and we hang up.
Since I don't have a laptop with me in the car I'm left with only my thoughts during the ride. I'm racking my brains trying to make sense of all this. Whoever the perp is, he plans to target my family, and the fear that that engenders sits like a barbell pressing on my chest. As we drive through the city and the suburbs I stare out the window, trying to envision where this guy might be, but there are too many options. I switch to deep breathing to try to calm myself. It doesn't work, mainly due to a crushing need to hold Ana and Teddy. I'm getting really anxious and tell Taylor to step on it. We speed up as much as traffic will allow but it doesn't seem fast enough.
Taylor gives me a position report on my wife when we arrive at the house; she's about fifteen minutes out. I rush inside to find my son. Taylor must have given Gail a heads-up because she comes walking towards me with Teddy in her arms and hands him over.
I envelop him in my arms and inhale his sweet, baby boy scent while murmuring over and over, "I love you, Teddy." I never want to let go of him. I carry him with me to my office and sit him on my lap while I power up the laptop. Since it's not connected to the internet or the home network, the boot up process is quick. As soon as I insert the usb drive it asks the usual questions and I tell it to play the slideshow.
I hear Ana calling me just as the second picture comes up so I stop it immediately. I shout that I'm in my office and a few seconds later she comes running in. Getting up immediately with Teddy in my arms, we meet each other in a desperate embrace. After a minute or so, we ease up a bit and I kiss her deeply. I'd like to prolong it but my son starts to squirm so we stop.
Keeping my arm around her we move over to my desk. It's really not practical to have both of them on my lap, as much as I would like that, so she pulls over a chair and takes Teddy while I start the slide show. I turn up the volume and watch her reaction as the narration starts. She gets more and more pale as it continues and by the end, she's in tears.
"Why is he doing this, Christian?" she wails. I scoot over and draw her towards me.
"He obviously wants something and I'm sure we'll be finding out pretty soon what it is. I have no doubt it'll be money."
"Is it Jack Hyde? Didn't he call you baby boy?"
"No, Hyde called me Baby Bird. Remember? From the Colliers' book."
"Oh, yeah, that's right. Didn't you say your birth mother called you baby boy?"
I make a face. "She tried to. I wouldn't let her." Ana shakes her head slowly.
"What bothers me," I continue, changing the subject, "is this final shot of you. You're looking right at the camera and the two of you are on the terrace. Do you have any recollection of this being taken?"
"No, not at all. But I don't think I'm looking at the camera, I think Teddy and I are both smiling at something in the distance. Maybe he has a telephoto lens?"
"That's one hell of a lens to get that kind of detail."
She's quiet for a while; I look at her and it's obvious she's going through some kind of inner debate. "You know, Christian, there's someone who might help us with this," she says in a whispery voice, almost like she's afraid of my reaction and then the realization hits as to who she might be thinking of.
"José," I answer drily. She nods.
"I'm sure my tech people can figure this out."
"Christian, he's a photographer. Besides knowing the technology and the equipment, he knows the photographer's mind. These shots aren't just someone's cellphone selfies. Whoever's doing this has some seriously good equipment. He might be able to pick up on things that your tech people miss. Plus we can count on him to keep this on the QT."
"Fine," I mutter, "Call him. Now." She looks askance at me but reaches into her jacket pocket for her cellphone and dials. I try to ignore the fact that he's on her phone as a contact but even after all this time it's difficult. I will never, ever forget the night he tried to shove his tongue down her throat after she told him no. Now, though, if he can help keep my family safe then I can at least try to put my feelings aside for the time being.
I listen to her side of the conversation as she gives a synopsis of the situation to him; then she utters "uh huh" and "okay" several times as a response to what he says. Finally she hangs up, after telling him that we'll see him at seven.
"We're in luck. He's in town and can come by tonight to take a look at this," she informs me. My paranoia makes me wonder why he's so conveniently in the area right now. I don't bring this up to Ana but make a mental note to tell Taylor to have José checked out.
Right now, though, after suggesting we get ready for supper, the three of us make our way to the bedroom. Ana puts Teddy on the bed and I play with him while she changes, then we switch. I'm thinking I want him to sleep in our room tonight.
After a rather subdued dinner, we settle back in my office to await Mr. Rodriguez's arrival. Ana's reading some manuscripts and I'm puzzling over both usb drives. Teddy's babbling happily in his playpen. Taylor interrupts our little domestic scene to announce José.
I notice with more than a little satisfaction that he's put on quite a bit of weight. He sets down his briefcase and we shake hands courteously. Trying very hard to hide my chagrin, I watch Ana give him a warm hug after which she picks up Teddy and presents him. There's a wistfulness on José's face as he babbles at my son and I feel a brief moment of pity for the man.
It disappears quickly when he picks up his briefcase and heads towards my desk. I find a chair for him, making sure he doesn't sit next to my wife.
She only gave him the Cliff's Notes version of what's happened so now we go into greater detail about both usb drives. Once that's done, we run through both slide shows so he gets an idea of what's on them. After that we go back to the first one, this time going slowly and frequently backspacing as he studies the photos more carefully. When we get to the last one I explain about the circumstances, saying only that we were in a private club (he has absolutely no need to know what kind of club it was) in South Africa.
He nods as I talk and then we move on to the second usb drive. He repeats the process, studying each picture. When he's done, the first thing he tells us is that while we thought the pictures were all the same except for the last one, he says that there were subtle differences. He points out the tv along the wall and asks if we could use that to view one of the drives. I tell him yes and we move over to that area of the office, bringing the laptop with us.
As we compare the two shows he points out the slight variations between the two sets of photos. Each one is different in a minute way, like the angle of someone's head or the position of a car in the background. He explains about shooting multiple images when capturing a scene. It's obvious to him that this person is using high quality equipment. The last shot of Ana and Teddy in the second drive was most likely taken from across the water using a very high-powered telephoto lens. The photographer waited for just the right moment.
I'm skeptical about a photo that good taken from so far away until José reminds me about some of the equipment available to intelligence agencies around the world. I remember Ryan telling me that some of the spy satellite photos are so good that an observer can tell a woman's cup size from her cleavage.
He explains about the hidden camera used in the picture at the club. Ana glossed over the reason for her wearing a wig and he graciously didn't press her for details.
After he's done with his explanations he asks to take a closer look at the laptop. We move to a small conference table I have set up here and he starts poking around the file directory on the drive. When he asks if I mind if he installs some software on the laptop, I tell him no. He grabs a cd from his briefcase and runs a program from it. After that he performs some sort of manipulation of one of the files.
"It's just as I suspected," he says after a few seconds.
"What's that?" I ask, somewhat impatiently.
"There are files embedded inside these photos. It's old technology but still around. Child pornographers frequently use it as a technique for delivering their illegal images. Putting it simply, you can take a pixel from a picture and save another file inside that. Here's an image embedded in the first picture on the first drive."
He turns the laptop towards us and when we see the image on the screen Ana lets out a gasp and I feel my blood drain for the second time today. It's a picture of my birth mother.