Ultimate Courage (True Heroes #2)(45)
Cruz was an impressive IT specialist himself. Rojas didn’t doubt Cruz had been able to backtrack through the Internet to see where Elisa had come from and thus also see how her pursuers were finding her.
But Elisa had family, and even if they hadn’t believed her, supported her, she seemed too caring a person to leave them worried about her. “Can we pull her call records?”
“I can’t with the databases I have access to. Hacking those could draw federal attention.” Cruz shook his head. “But the police might be able to with a warrant if we can convince them to be somewhat more open about investigation than they normally are. We’d need to call in a few favors.”
They’d supplied K9s to several of the police departments in the surrounding region and others across the country. Those officers would at least be starting points.
Forte finished his beer. “It’d be good to see who Elisa tends to call.”
“I’ll ask her tomorrow, too.” Rojas preferred to get his intel direct from the source, and he didn’t think Elisa would hide it from them. Or if she did, they’d have to reevaluate the situation.
“We’ll look into it from this end, anyway.” Cruz typed a few notes to himself on his laptop. “She might not realize she’s following a pattern.”
But humans were creatures of habit. Her ex was exploiting Elisa’s patterns. The difference, the break in the pattern, was that Elisa had met Rojas.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll take Souze around the shopping center area and parking lot. I wanted to see what we got out of the video before doing a direct sweep and we won’t stand out as much during the day if he’s keeping an eye on the shopping strip. At the very least, we’ll see if Souze can tell if the same scent by the car is anywhere else in the vicinity.” Rojas paused. “Even better if we can find a piece of fabric or some other souvenir our snooper might’ve left under the car. We’ll see if he actually left something for surveillance and remove it if he did. His scent should be all over it.”
He’d take one of those fake rocks sold to hide house keys just in case he did find something and put the device in there. Then he’d leave it under the car so Elisa’s stalker would think it was still on her car. If they needed to move her car in a hurry, they’d be able to without having to worry about a potential tracking device.
“I’ve redirected the video feed from the school to our network so we can keep real-time watch on the location, both outside and inside the school. Elisa’s fine, by the way. Hasn’t left the room.” Cruz brought up a few video windows showing dark night and dimly lit areas. “I copied some older video streams from last month into the cache directory. If her ex or his employees get nosey enough to hack into Revolution’s system, all they’ll see is normal footage. No sneak peeks of Elisa. I renamed the files so it’d look like the cached feeds from this week. I’ll update them daily. Somebody might hack in, but they won’t know the video feeds are from a prior month.”
“Nice.” Rojas lifted his beer to Cruz.
“So do we leave Elisa there?” Forte studied Rojas. “Our response time is going to be slow if she needs us.”
Rojas frowned. He hadn’t liked leaving her there tonight, even with Souze. Sure, he’d given her reassurances about police response time and the proximity of Gary and Greg, but it wasn’t the same as direct intervention by him, Forte, and Cruz.
Rojas hesitated. But damn, Boom liked Elisa already and it was better than leaving her far away. He wanted her close and they could protect her best with her near. “She could come stay here.”
Both Forte and Cruz stared at him.
True, he’d never welcomed a stranger into his home here at Hope’s Crossing. He never brought a woman on the property, for damned sure. He hadn’t ever wanted to put Boom through added stress after her mother died, especially if he wasn’t ever serious about the occasional woman he did see. Hell, even Sophie rarely came into his house. Mostly Sophie ran riot through the main building and Forte’s place. But what else could he do for Elisa?
“I’m good with that plan if you are,” Forte said slowly. “I want to gather more intel on stalker-ex tonight.”
“Let’s ask her whether she feels safe here, too.” Rojas took his first sip of his now warm beer. “I’m thinking she’s had enough decisions made on her behalf. I think we can give her options but ultimately, she’s got to decide on her own.”
They all nodded in agreement.
“This is a lot of effort for a new administrative assistant.” Forte set his beer on the table with a clink.
“Yeah, well, Cruz set the bar high when he brought in a supplemental training consultant,” Rojas drawled. “Anyone good enough to work at Hope’s Crossing is going to take some investment to make sure they stay.”
Cruz held up his hands. “Hey, Lyn runs her own consulting business. She lends a hand nowadays, but I didn’t request her in the first place.”
Forte grinned. “I’m going to tell her you said so.”
“Do and prepare for serious consequences,” growled Cruz.
Lyn had a fairly formidable personality of her own. The best trainers always did, especially with the types of dogs they worked with. Considering the level of dominance and aggression working dogs had, a trainer had to have the kind of personality to not only dominate but win the dog’s trust.