Page 76 of Gone Before Goodbye

Porkchop nods. “I know. He flew her someplace.”

“Russia,” Sharon says. “A remote region near Gelendzhik north of the Black Sea.”

“She told you this?”

“No. Look at the printout. It follows her route.”

“Your, uh, app does this?”

“Yes.”

“Sharon, I don’t know much about technology, but wouldn’t you lose the ability to track when it’s in the air or off Wi-Fi or whatever?”

“If you used strictly Wi-Fi or cellular services, yes. But I’ve been able to keep the app active by tying the frequency into governmental satellite LEOs—that’s Low Earth orbit—”

“Sharon.”

“Right, sorry. Here’s the point. Someone tried to delete the app off Maggie’s phone.” Sharon raises her hand as though to stop him. “No, it wasn’t Maggie. She would know that it couldn’t be done this way. The most rational reason is that someone took away her phone, didn’t like that app being on it, and tried to delete it.”

“What’s on the app?”

Sharon hesitates.

“Sharon?”

“You wouldn’t understand. And it’s not really important. What does matter is that someone took possession of Maggie’s phone, undoubtedly against her will.”

“So she’s in trouble,” Porkchop says.

“Yes.”

“Can you use the L-E-whatever to tell us where she is now?”

“Here’s where she was yesterday. I brought the satellite image.”

She reaches over him and turns the page.

Porkchop studies the page. “I assume the red dot is her?”

“Yes.”

“I only see trees.”

“I know. I had to zoom out. There are roads, but whatever building is there, it’s being blocked.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means someone rich and powerful lives there. He doesn’t want his house seen via satellite. He wants to stay hidden.”

Porkchop says nothing.

“So at 2:13 a.m. local time yesterday,” Sharon continues, “someone tech savvy found a way past Maggie’s facial recognition and got into her phone. Forty-eight minutes later, someone tried to delete my proprietary beta app. It’s tricked up so that the person who does it will think they succeeded, but they didn’t. That triggered an alarm that reached me around three in the morning.”

“What else do you know?”

“The app was later reinstalled.”

“How’s that?”