I was moved to the garage.

Daniel forwarded the message to Okafor before either of us said a word about it.

She called back in four minutes.

"The number is a prepaid phone," she said.

"We'll try to trace the purchase, but those are often cash transactions.

Do you have any idea who sent it?"

"Trent," Daniel said.

"Has to be."

"Possibly.

Or someone acting on Javier's behalf.

His cousin Tomas is still a person of interest — we haven't fully cleared him." A pause.

"Mr.

Vega, I want you to know that this message, while alarming, is also useful.

It tells us someone in Javier's network is still active and still feels threatened by the investigation.

That's actually a good sign for the case."

"It doesn't feel like a good sign," I said.

"I understand.

But people who are confident they've won don't send messages like this.

They send messages like this when they're afraid."

After she hung up, Daniel and I sat in the living room without turning on the television.

Gabriela came in from the kitchen, saw our faces, and sat down.

"What happened?" she asked.

Daniel showed her the message.

She read it twice.

Her face went through several things in quick succession — fear, then anger, then something that settled into a kind of hard resolve I hadn't seen in her before.

"Tomas," she said.

"You think so?" Daniel asked.

"Javier trusted him more than anyone.

And Tomas always did what Javier asked.

Even when he shouldn't have." She looked at me.

"When Javier told the neighbors you were unstable — Tomas was visiting that week.

He heard the whole plan."

"You never mentioned Tomas before," Daniel said.

"I didn't think he mattered.

I didn't think any of them would be stupid enough to—" She stopped.

"I'll call Okafor."

"She already has his name," Daniel said.

"I have more than his name." Gabriela stood up.

"I have his number.

And I have three voicemails from him that I never deleted, from back in March, when Javier was first setting things up.

Javier used to call him from my phone when his battery was low." She looked at her hands.

"I never thought to listen to them."

"Listen to them now," Daniel said.

She went to her room.

We heard her moving around, the sound of her phone, then silence.

She came back eight minutes later and set her phone on the coffee table.

"Play it," Daniel said.

She pressed play.

Tomas's voice was low and fast, the way people talk when they think no one is listening.

*Javier, the old man's going to be a problem.

You need to move faster.

The Arizona thing took too long.

Get the capacity thing filed before the son figures out what's happening.*

The message was dated March 11th.

Daniel and I looked at each other.

"He knew," I said.

"Tomas knew from the beginning."

"He wasn't just a cousin," Daniel said.

"He was part of it."

Gabriela's hand was shaking slightly as she picked the phone back up.

"I'm calling Okafor."

This time, Okafor didn't just take notes.

She asked Gabriela to come in the following morning with the phone.

She asked her not to delete anything, not to call Tomas back, not to let anyone know what she'd found.

"Is he in danger?" Daniel asked when Gabriela relayed the instructions.

"She said to make sure the doors are locked and to call 911 if anything feels wrong tonight.

She said it as a precaution, not because she thinks something will happen." Gabriela looked at me.

"She said the case just got significantly stronger."

I looked at the front door.

The lock Javier had changed on the garage was still sitting in a paper bag by the back entrance — Daniel had replaced it with the original the first night, but I hadn't thrown the new one away yet.

I wasn't sure why I'd kept it.

I went and picked it up and dropped it in the trash.

"Lock the doors," I said.

We did.

That night I lay in my own bed and listened to the house settle around me — the familiar creak of the hallway floor, the hum of the refrigerator, the distant sound of a train on the tracks three blocks east.

My house.

My sounds.