“This guy has no prints. They’ve been burned off.”
Chapter Seven
Undisclosed Location, Colorado
Kenna lifted her coffee cup from the saucer it sat in and leaned back in the wicker chair, shifting her weight against the pillow behind her back. She closed her eyes and inhaled, pretending the drink wasn’t decaf.
A loud sigh from across the all-weather patio drew her attention. She opened her eyes and watched Maizie for a few moments. The young woman sat at a small round table in a wicker chair of her own, working on her laptop. She’d plugged the drive into a port on the side and had the flash drive plugged into that.
“Not making any progress?”
Maizie wore checkered pajama pants and an oversized gray sweater with no writing on it. She had secured her hair in a high bun with plenty of bumps and wisps of hair all over. “Not so far.”
They had to raise their voices a little to hear each other across the expanse of the patio, which was surrounded by a half wall. In summer, there were screens above the wall, but right now,given the winter temperatures outside, fitted clear plastic panels preserved the view but blocked the cold air from outside.
Kenna wouldn’t have minded some cold air. It was pretty warm in here. “Aren’t you worried they’ll be able to trace you when you access the flash drive?” After all, it contained information from the company servers, but it might also access their network somehow. What if those people in the SUVs could trace them as soon as Maizie broke the security features on the flash drive?
Maizie shook her head. “This laptop is air-gapped. It isn’t connected to the internet at all, it doesn’t even have the ability to. So, no one can hack this computer.”
“Maybe that’s why you can’t get into the drive?”
“It isn’t.”
The door behind Kenna opened, and Preston Lightwood stepped out, wearing athletic clothes, with sweat on his forehead. He carried a tall glass filled with a green smoothie.
“Hey.” Kenna figured Maizie wouldn’t mind if she was distracted—so that she quit distracting Maizie.
“Your husband is still going. I tapped out.” Preston blew out a breath. “That kind of workout is not for an old man like me.” He eased into a chair at the table with her.
Kenna chuckled. She wanted to commiserate with the guy that he felt old but was also secretly proud of Jax for pushing them both in a workout. “Any updates from Zeyla?”
Jax would have passed information to Preston for her if there was something she should know.
Preston said, “She hasn’t called in yet this morning.”
“It’s still early. She spent hours following those SUVs after we parted ways, and she didn’t get to sleep until after four this morning.”
Preston sipped from his glass and managed to mostly hide the grimace at the taste of it. “You really hid from bad guys in a car wash?”
Kenna set her cup down and grabbed a hash brown from her plate. “Gotta give it to the car. It found us a decent place to hide.” She took a bite of her potato.
“Of course, it did.” What he didn’t do was remind them all how much it cost him to supply them with that vehicle.
Kenna’s first instinct had been to turn it down when he’d called a month or so back and insisted. But after talking to Jax about it, they both realized it was far safer for them to ride around in a vehicle with armor plating and defensive capabilities.
She wiped her greasy fingers on her napkin. “We stayed put in the car wash for a few minutes. The car told us to ease around the back of a dry cleaners and slip into the drive-thru for a Vietnamese restaurant. It actually seemed like it knew where the pursuing cars were—like it connected to the local traffic cameras to tell us how to avoid those specific vehicles.”
She didn’t really want to know if it did, because that would be illegal. But then again, the boundaries of justice, right living, and getting results often blurred in ways that could be conceived as her being an accessory to a crime. Denial, or avoidance, might not be enough to protect her from the law.
More than likely, one day, it would catch up with her.
Her phone screen flashed, but the cell made no noise and didn’t vibrate. Kenna leaned over and looked at the screen, then rolled her eyes. “Another podcast episode just dropped.” She lifted the phone and unlocked it, scrolling to the email she’d received alerting her to the latest episode ofTrue Crime Northwest.
“Anything good?” Preston’s tone was so neutral.
She wanted to throw her phone across the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, Preston glanced up behind Kenna. She heard the door, and Jax said, “Hey. Everything okay?”
