Chapter 9 - THE TARGET LIST
Laura stopped asking who had called Margaret.
That answer would come later.
Her new objective was to identify the remaining Harbor targets before the scammers reached them.
Owen had seventeen participant IDs.
Melissa could map them to community-center members.
Officer Carter initially objected.
Then another Harbor participant lost $9,000 Sunday morning.
The objection disappeared.
They contacted all seventeen.
Fourteen answered.
Two were traveling.
One had died three months earlier.
Of the fourteen living participants reached, eleven had already received suspicious emergency calls.
Seven callers used cloned family voices.
Four used supposed lawyers or police officers.
Five victims were directed toward cash businesses.
Three were told to withdraw money from specific branches.
One was instructed to photograph jewelry before leaving home.
The degree of personalization varied.
The deeper the profile, the more convincing the call.
Margaret was among the highest-scoring targets.
Not because she was gullible.
Because the system predicted that when a grandchild sounded frightened, she would act before consulting anyone else.
Margaret listened without speaking.
Afterward she said:
“They studied love like it was a weakness.”
Laura had no answer better than that.
The remaining Harbor targets were warned.
Two received scam calls within forty-eight hours and hung up.
For the first time, the investigation prevented a loss instead of explaining one.
That mattered to Margaret.
She began calling other program members herself.
Not to frighten them.
To tell them what had happened to her.
She used the sentence Laura had never expected her mother to say publicly:
“I almost sold my wedding ring because I believed the voice.”
Every time she said it, shame lost a little power.
Meanwhile, Ethan pursued Mason.
Not recklessly.
Through mutual friends.
One finally answered.
Mason had left college after getting into debt from online gambling.
He moved in with Derek.
Then he started working “phone sales.”
Nobody knew for whom.
Ethan found an old message from Mason sent eight months earlier.
You still doing those family safety apps with your grandma?
At the time Ethan had replied:
lol she loves them.
Mason had reacted with a thumbs-up.
Laura read the exchange.
“Why would he ask that?”
“I thought he was making conversation.”
“Did you ever tell him which app?”
Ethan scrolled.
A later message:
FamilyNest. Why?
Mason:
My brother's company works in that space.
Laura felt anger sharpen.
The connection predated the scam.
Ethan looked sick.
“I gave him the name.”
“You answered a friend's question.”
“He wasn't my friend.”
“You didn't know that.”
“Grandma almost lost Dad's ring because I—”
Margaret cut him off.
“No.”
Ethan looked at her.
Margaret pointed to herself.
“I already tried taking all the blame. It gets boring.”
Laura almost laughed.
Margaret continued.
“They want us each staring at the one normal thing we did that made their crime easier.”
She looked at Ethan.
“You answered a friend.”
Then Laura.
“You used family location to find me.”
Then herself.
“I trusted my grandson's voice.”
She placed both palms on the table.
“None of those are crimes.”
It was the most determined Laura had seen her since the pawn shop.
Officer Carter called that evening.
Investigators had subpoenaed records from North Lake.
The company responded through an attorney.
North Lake claimed it bought consumer-research data from SilverBridge but never conducted scam calls.
It said any downstream misuse occurred through an independent contractor.
Name:
Redwood Contact Services.
Another layer.
Laura groaned.
“Another shell?”
“Maybe.”
Redwood had rented a small office thirty miles away.
Its lease terminated two days after Margaret's failed scam.
The office was empty when investigators arrived.
But the landlord still had the application.
The person who signed it used a driver's license belonging to Derek Vale.
Finally, a direct connection.
Then Carter gave them something stranger.
The landlord remembered Derek because he had complained about noise.
“What noise?”
“Voices.”
“What kind of voices?”
“Same people repeating things.”
The office had housed computers running audio.
Lots of audio.
Ethan's cloned voice may have been produced there.
Carter paused.
“And the landlord saw Derek with a younger man.”
Laura already knew.
“Mason.”
“We haven't confirmed that.”
“Was he about twenty-two? Brown hair?”
“Yes.”
Ethan stood and walked out of the room.
Laura followed.
He stopped in the hallway.
“I brought him into our house.”
“When?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“That was two years ago.”
“He met Grandma.”
“Yes.”
“He knew Dad was dead.”
“Yes.”
“He heard the ring story.”
Laura stopped.
“What ring story?”
Ethan looked at her.
At Thanksgiving, Margaret had told the story of how George bought the wedding band with money he saved working night shifts.
She took the ring off.
Passed it around the table.
Mason held it.
He read the engraving.
G + M — 6•16•73.
The scammer knew which ring to sell.
May you like
Not because SilverBridge's database contained the engraving.
Because Mason Vale had once held it in his own hand.
