Page 10 of Instinct & New Identity

“The website design company is calledCATServicesInc., which stands forCreativeArtTechnology,C-A-T,”Axelexplained. “DaneandIhad to do some digging.Deepdigging, because she didn’t make it easy to find out who owns the company, which is a good thing.Butit’s registered to aCatherineRomano, and from an even deeper dive,Ifound her family called herCat.”

“Called, as in past tense?”Diego, ever the smart one, picked up on.

“Yeah, so this is where the ghosting part comes in, or at least that’s my theory,”Axelcontinued. “Herparents were murdered in a gas-station robbery gone bad seven years ago.”

I heard mumbled curses all around me, but allIcould think about was what happened to her and her sister after her parents died because her sister would have still been underage.

“Where were she and her sister?Hersister would have been a minor still.Didthey get separated?”Iasked, now suddenly worried for her instead of being my usual mad, bitter, and resentful that she wentAWOLon me.

“No,”Axelsaid and then paused before looking me in the eye. “Theywere at the robbery too, and the bestDaneandIcan find, something happened at the trial that she was a witness for, and both sisters may have been killed.”

My heart dropped, connecting all the dots as to why she had stopped writing.Shedidn’t ghost me.Shedied.

Archer held his hand up to get everyone’s attention. “Howthe hell can she have died but still operate a website business?”

“Let me finish, asshole,”Axelgrunted at him, then turned back to me.

“Best guess, andIgot a call into a friend of mine who’s aFed, butI’mguessing she didn’t die but was placed inWITSEC.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.Allthe puzzle pieces started to come together.Iwas happy she was still alive.Possibly.

“The names of the daughters wereCatalinaandValeriaRivera, but those names disappear after the court shooting,” he said. “Then,CatherineandValentinaRomanomagically appeared out of nowhere seven years ago.”

“Then how did you find her?”Diegoasked. “Nodisrespect, butFedsdon’t exactly make it easy to locate these people.”

“Yeah, so here’s where it gets weird,”Axelcontinued. “CatherineRomanodidn’t exist before seven years ago.Noschool records, no tax history, no medical files.It’slike she was just…created.”

I tensed, feeling that familiar gut punch of realization.

“You know who likes tocreatepeople out of thin air—WITSEC,”Axelrevealed. “So,Iran a backtrace on newly issued identities from that year.Peoplewho suddenlyappearedout of nowhere with clean records.CatherineRomanoandValentinaRomanowere two of them.”

“Jesus,”Wademuttered.

Axel nodded. “ThenIwent back a year and filtered my search to find females of the same age and basic stats.Thatnarrowed it down considerably.Especiallywhen you look at some of the small details like howValentina’sbirthday isApril9th, butValeria’swasSeptember4th.Noticethe dates—they just switched the four and nine.”

“Hot damn,”Diegomuttered.

“Okay, so now what,”Archerspoke up. “Howdo we find her?Thepoint of being inWITSECis so no one finds you.”

“I traced the activity on her account,”Axelsaid nonchalantly as though this was no big deal. “Thesecond people start logging in somewhere, it leaves breadcrumbs.Everytime she accessed the site, the connection routed through differentIPaddresses, which is standard for hiding a location—but theWi-Fitowers showed a pattern.Inoticed a cluster of pings coming from the same general radius, and from there,Itriangulated an approximate location.”

“How the hell did you find that info?”Archermumbled, andIknew the former cop in him realized that most ofAxel’ssearch was likely not done legally.

Axel smirked. “BecauseI’mgood, bitch, which is why you hired me,”

Wade andDiegojust grinned.Iwasn’t sure if they were amused because he was right or because his accent made ‘bitch’ sound like ‘beach.’

Axel’s lips quirked slightly. “Shedidn’t make it easy, andIhad to jump through a lot of firewalls and scrape data from places that aren’t easy to do.Shemasked her tracks with aVPN, rerouted some of her internet traffic through remote servers, and kept her digital footprint practically nonexistent.”

He turned and faced me. “She’sgood, butI’mbetter.Ican pinpoint her down to roughly a one-mile radius.Nowit’s your turn.”

He was looking at me, andIknew what he was thinking.Mybounty-hunting skills could help find her from there.

“It appears she and the sister both survived but let the gang believe they were dead,”Axelsaid. “Theymoved around every year or so.I’mnot sure if that was theMarshalsServicedoing that or if they were doing it on their own, but they’ve only been in this location for about eight months, so my guess is you’ve got time to find them before they move on again.”

“Is there still a threat?”Archerasked.

“Not really,”Danesaid from the doorway he had just appeared in, holding up a paper. “That’swhatIwas checking on.Asfar asIcan tell, the only two surviving people from that shootout are dead.Theywere part of theCrossStreetKingsgang.Theone she testified against died in prison, and the one who likely shot at her outside of court, another gang member—they knew who it was but never arrested him—was killed in some turf war with another gang.So, my guess is if they are moving around, it’s not necessarily theFedswho are moving them.”

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