“I know,” I said. “But it’s ending now.”

The laptop speaker beeped.

A new notification appeared on Reed’s monitoring dashboard.

*Security Alert: Foreign IP discrepancy detected.*

“Here we go,” Reed said, his fingers flying across the keys. “The bank’s automated fraud unit is engaging.”

“Is it freezing the account?” Arthur asked.

“It’s preparing the protocol,” Reed said. “It will flag the transaction as unauthorized within the next sixty seconds.”

“What happens to Lucas’s screen then?” I asked.

“The page will refresh,” Reed said. “It will show an access denied error. Then his connection to the bank’s secure server will terminate.”

“He’ll be locked out of everything,” Arthur said.

“Completely,” Reed said. “Every account associated with his name, his social security number, and his aliases.”

I looked back at my phone.

There was no new photo.

“Detective Harris,” I said. “What are the officers seeing?”

Harris was listening to his earpiece, his face pale.

He raised a hand to silence me.

“Say again, Unit Three?” Harris said into his collar mic.

He listened for several seconds.

The tension in the room was thick enough to feel.