Chapter 6 - THE LAWYER AT THE AIRFIELD
Lucas hired former federal investigator Naomi Reed to locate Anna and Mia. Naomi found no biological relationship to the woman despite the shared surname.
The red sneaker carried soil from a private airfield owned by a Moreno subsidiary. Security logs showed Carter’s car entering twice during the previous month.
Carter said he met an aviation client. The tenant list included no client connected to his firm.
An abandoned hangar contained children’s food, a blanket, and adhesive residue where a camera had been removed. It did not prove Mia had been held there. A janitor remembered a girl sleeping in a parked sedan while an adult woman argued with Carter.
The woman called herself Anna.
Traffic records identified her as Grace Hart, a former paralegal from Carter’s firm. Grace disappeared nine years earlier after copying the M.M. guardianship file.
She was not Mia’s mother. She had protected Mia after Isabel’s death.
Carter accused Grace of kidnapping. He produced a custody order granting his firm authority to transfer Mia into institutional care after the guardianship closed.
Priya found the order’s judge had retired before its stated date.
The seal was genuine but misused.
Grace contacted Naomi through an encrypted message. She refused to reveal Mia’s location but offered a video call with the child’s court-appointed advocate present.
Before the call occurred, someone accessed the advocate’s sealed calendar from a Moreno Health server.
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Lucas’s own company had become part of the search network.
The access account belonged to Valeria’s executive assistant.
