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Brooklynn looked like she wanted to argue, then shrugged. “If you prefer to pay for something you could get for free, who am I to argue? Alyssa can use the business.”

That settled, Brooklynn took a picture of the notebook page Forbes had filled with names and sent it to her sister, then tapped a text faster than he could type on his laptop.

They had a solid lead, an actual name to go with an actual photo of a person he knew was involved.

Bryce Dawson was too young to have been involved in Forbes’s family’s murders, but if Forbes’s theory was correct, then he worked for The Network.

That reminded him…

“Brooklynn?”

She looked up from her phone.

“Tell your sister we’re looking for a man named Niles, or maybe someone with a name that starts with N.

In your photos, he was the one on the beach, looking like a manager.

” Forbes described what he remembered about the man who’d searched the house with Bernie/Bryce a few days before.

“It’s not a lot to go on, but maybe he’s a son or family member of one of the people the journal referred to. ”

“Gotcha. I’ll send his picture. And text Bryce’s name to Nathan.”

He pulled the pile of files closer and started flipping through them, looking for doodles and feeling like an idiot. Who cared if his father liked to draw birds?

When Brooklynn set her phone down, he slid half the pile to her. They worked in silence. Whenever he found the doodle, he turned the page horizontal and set the file aside.

He was surprised at how often he found them.

After half an hour, he started to believe that this wasn’t as futile an exercise as he’d first thought.

When he finished the last file, he looked up to find Brooklynn watching him.

When he caught her eye, she looked away. Did her cheeks pink?

“You got through the stack?”

“Yup.” She eyed his files with papers sticking out sideways. “Mind if I?—?”

“Go ahead.”

She slid them closer and studied the doodles. “All seagulls.”

“I noticed.”

“See any patterns?”

“All the doodles are on the back sides of printed reports. The front sides are typewritten, of course, but the doodles are with handwritten notes, unlike the other content.”

“Same with my pile.”

“And the content doesn’t match.” He skimmed through the files and pulled one sheet out. “For instance, this file is related to a construction project in Reading, Mass. An office building built back in the mid-eighties. But the dates on the…doodle-note are in the late nineties.”

“I’m seeing the same thing. The dates don’t match, and there are initials, like we saw in the ledger.” She opened one of the files she’d looked at. “Like this one.”

He held his hand out, and she gave it to him.

The first line read,

MM (G. Bazz) CAHAL—SC

This was why he hadn’t focused on the notes when he’d gone through the files. Because they made no sense.

“MM Bazz?” He looked at Brooklynn. “That mean anything to you?”

“Nope.”

He googled it and got nothing helpful. Then he googled the second part. “CAHAL could be a name. It’s a character in some show.” He blew out a breath and added boat to the search, which sent him to boat sales websites.

Brooklynn was looking over his shoulder. “Maybe shipping or maritime?”

He typed CAHAL SHIPPING.

“ Bingo. CAHAL is the maritime code for the port in Halifax, Nova Scotia.”

“That’s gotta be it. And SC is Shadow Cove. So whatever…this referred to was smuggled from Halifax to here.”

Didn’t exactly narrow it down, but it was more than he had known ten minutes before.

He studied the next line. Similar gobbledygook, though it seemed all of the shipments came from Halifax. Maybe G Bazz was the sender? But what kind of name was Bazz?

Frustrated, he pushed the papers away. “Obviously, this made sense to Charles.”

“Maybe…” Brooklynn yawned. “Sorry. Maybe if we put everything together, a pattern will emerge.”

Forbes checked his watch. It was past dinnertime. They’d been holed up in here for hours. “We need to rest.”

She nodded, but the smile he’d expected didn’t come. “There is one more thing.” She tapped one of the doodled seagulls. “I think I recognize it.”

His fatigue vanished as adrenaline flooded his veins. “What do you mean? What are you saying? From where?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure I’ve seen it before. It’s a logo for something. I just… I’ve been racking my brain, and I can’t remember.”

He typed What company uses a seagull logo into his search engine and was rewarded with a clothing company.

He studied the logo. It was a seagull, but it was completely different from the one Dad had doodled.

Could they be smuggling clothes? From Google, he learned that people had been caught smuggling fake designer-brand clothes and purses.

He’d much prefer to think of his father smuggling clothes than drugs, but how could a three-foot cube of dresses and leather goods weigh hundreds of pounds?

Or be worth tens of millions?

Much as he’d like to believe it, he seriously doubted that theory. Besides, the clothing company with the seagull logo didn’t sell designer products.

This was so frustrating.

Couldn’t Dad have just written a note? If I turn up dead, I was killed by these people, and this is why.

Would that have been so hard?

Brooklynn covered a yawn. “I’ll figure it out. I just need to rest and think.”

Answers rarely came during the information-gathering process. Usually, they came later, when he allowed himself to stop asking himself questions and let his brain work things out in the background.

“The information needs to simmer,” he said.

“To slow roast, so to speak. Also, I’m hungry.” She grinned and pushed to her feet. “I’ll go start dinner.”

She’d already done so much for him, he wasn’t about to let her cook. He didn’t know how to thank her. He didn’t know how to express his gratitude. All those words seemed to cling to his tongue, unwilling to be released.

All he managed was, “You like pizza?”