He turned away.
There was work to do.
And not much time left to do it.
Wyatt returned to the table and opened the laptop again. The downloaded file sat in his secure partition, encrypted and hidden. He clicked it open.
Standard information first. Victim identification—James Cooper, FBI. Initial scene reports. Forensic findings. The kind of data any investigator would see.
Then he scrolled deeper.
A section marked [Restricted - Source Id] stopped him cold.
The file was from almost a decade ago. Most of it was blacked out, solid bars of black across entire paragraphs. But fragments remained. Pieces that hadn’t been fully scrubbed.
Female source. Estimated age late teens at time of contact.
Approached agents for cash/food.
Details given regarding disposal procedures and chain-of-command.
Last known seen: outreach shelter intake.
Status: ran off / not located.
Wyatt leaned closer to the screen, squinting at the metadata. His fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling up properties, examining the digital fingerprints left behind.
The scrubbing had been done by FBI. Not local PD. High-level access. Multiple layers of security.
Not because she was protected.
Because she was a loose end.
His phone buzzed again.
Unknown Number: Tick tock.
Wyatt stared at the message. Then back at the screen.
Female source.
Disposal procedures.
If she’d talked once, she could talk again. To Sam. To a reporter. To a grand jury.
Wyatt pushed back from the table, chair legs biting the hardwood with a sharp scrape.
His hands shook.
But this had been ten years ago. This witness could be dead already.
Wyatt stared at the redacted lines. At the crumbs of detail that told him just enough to make him dangerous.
His father didn’t just want information.
He wanted a person.
Someone who ran.