Chapter 262
Lance
The silence after Diana's words felt like the air had been sucked from the room.
Thomas froze—actually froze—his hand halfway to the door handle. For a split second, something flickered across his face. Fear, maybe. Or recognition. Then it was gone, replaced by that same arrogant smirk he'd been wearing all day.
"Impossible," he said, but his voice came out rougher than usual. He cleared his throat, tried again. "You're bluffing."
Diana didn't move. Didn't blink. Just stood there with that maddeningly calm expression, one hand resting on the folder in front of her.
"Phone records from thirty years ago?" Thomas let out a short, sharp laugh. "Come on, Agent Reeves. You expect us to believe you magically found something that's been buried for three decades? The technology barely existed back then. Those records are gone."
"Not if someone wrote it down."
The words dropped like stones into still water.
Thomas's smile faltered. Just for a second. But I saw it.
"What the hell are you talking about?" His tone shifted—still dismissive, but with an edge now. Like he was trying to convince himself as much as us.
Diana leaned forward slightly, her fingers tapping once against the folder. "You're right that finding phone records from 1995 would be nearly impossible through normal channels. The databases weren't digitized. Most of the physical records have been destroyed or lost. But here's the thing, Mr. Lawson—sometimes people remember."
Thomas scoffed. "Oh, please. You're telling me someone memorized a phone number from thirty years ago? That's your smoking gun?"
"Not memorized." Diana's voice was soft, almost gentle. It made the words hit harder. "Written down. Preserved. Submitted to the police as evidence."
She opened the folder with deliberate slowness, pulling out a single sheet of paper. Even from where I sat, I could see the yellowed edges, the faded handwriting.
"Grace's mother—your nephew's grandmother—went to extraordinary lengths after her daughter's death. She didn't believe it was an accident. She knew something was wrong." Diana's gaze swept across the room, landing on each of us in turn. "So she went to the phone company. Demanded to see the call logs for her daughter's landline. And when they showed her the number that had called Grace that morning, she wrote it down. Kept it. Filed a formal report with the police."
My chest tightened. I could barely breathe.
"She waited," Diana continued, her voice dropping even lower. "Waited for someone to follow up. To investigate. To give her answers. But they never came. Detective Calloway buried her report along with everything else. And Grace's mother died five years later, still believing her daughter had killed herself over a broken heart."
"Oh God." Serena's voice cracked. "Her poor mother."
Eleanor's hands were shaking. "Fuck. Whoever made that call..." She couldn't finish the sentence.
Thomas, though—Thomas had gone completely still. The panic that had flashed across his face moments ago was gone, replaced by something colder. Harder.
"So what?" he said flatly. "You have a number. Congratulations. But you have no idea who it belongs to, do you?"
Diana's jaw tightened.
Thomas saw it. Pounced on it.
"Thirty years," he said, his voice gaining strength. "You really think you can trace a phone number from thirty years ago? Even if that woman wrote it down, even if it's real, there's no way to connect it to anyone now. The phone companies don't keep records that old. Hell, half of them don't even exist anymore."
He was right. I hated it, but he was right. And judging by the way Diana's expression shifted—just slightly, just enough—she knew it too.
"My colleague is working on it," she said, but there was a brittleness to her tone now.
Thomas laughed. Actually laughed. "Working on it. Jesus Christ."
He turned toward the two-way mirror, raising his voice. "You hear that? She's working on it."
Diana knocked twice on the glass, sharp and deliberate. A moment later, the door opened. A younger officer stepped in, his face apologetic.
"Agent Reeves?" He kept his voice low, but not low enough. "We've been searching the databases for the past half hour. There's nothing. If we want to trace that number, we'll need to go directly to the regional telecom offices, dig through their physical archives..." He hesitated. "It could take days. Maybe longer."