"Ran, did you kick that person yesterday? Where did you hit them?"
"Hey, Conan, you... Forget it. Around the side of the neck, I think."
Hearing Conan speak in such an adult manner, Ran Mouri was startled at first. Only after confirming that no one else was looking their way did she quietly answer his question.
With the situation this complicated, the first thing to worry about really was not those trivial details.
As she spoke, she used her finger to indicate a spot on the side of her neck.
It had all happened so suddenly, and the kidnappers had retreated even faster than expected. She had not had time to react further. In her haste, she only remembered putting on the leather shoes she had specifically brought along.
Judging by the other party's reaction after being kicked, it had been very effective. Even if it had not broken the skin or drawn blood, it must have left a bruise.
"It's also somewhere a scarf could cover..." Conan muttered softly as he gauged the position of Grace's scarf.
When Naomi had vanished yesterday, Grace had actually been his prime suspect.
In the end, regardless of how the attackers had entered the facility, they had needed to solve one problem: how to pinpoint Naomi's location during that brief window.
During yesterday's questioning, Makino Yosuke and several other engineers had clearly confirmed that they normally left only a fifteen-to-twenty-minute window for this stage of testing. It was only because the police had come to negotiate that Makino Yosuke had extended the time slightly that day.
All that information suggested that Naomi's disappearance could not have been accomplished merely by using a backdoor in the facial recognition program.
Even if the entrance and exit had not been located especially deep, it would have