18
Randall Lenz was staring at the sign on the back of his hotel room door, the one that stated checkout was at 11 a.m., and wondering whether to stay another night or get the hell out of California, when his phone rang. He’d left it sitting on the nightstand, and so he had to hurry over to pick it up before it went to voicemail.
Agent Dawson.
“I think I might have something, sir,” she said.
“What is it?” he asked, his ennui of a moment before disappearing as if it had never existed in the first place.
“Well, as you requested, I had the name ‘Adara’ flagged because it’s unusual. There are fewer than fifteen hundred women in the U.S. with that given name.”
“Yes, I know that,” he said, not bothering to keep the testiness out of his tone. He didn’t need a lecture on “Adara” and its stat
