“I won’t.”
He shut the door.
I pressed the small of my back against the counter and tried to rein in my mess of emotions. James would be fine. And if his handler wouldn’t release him … we’d figure out a way. I’d make sure of it.
I stripped off the wig and cap, yanked out the pins, and stepped into the shower. The warm water washed over my skin, and I shut my eyes, letting it soak in. James was right. I’d needed this.
My mind fixated on how to pin down Knox. If we could discover the location of the shipment, confirm he was there, and follow him back to where he disappeared to?—
Wait, the question was how to find the location without tipping our hand.
Who would even know ahead of time?
Then it hit me…
Razor.
If Bobby’s cousins had been hired to help with the shipment, then maybe Razor was part of it too. James had said he was a lush, and most lushes talked. If he was pre-gaming at his usual bar before the exchange, maybe I could get something useful out of him. And if the exchange was happening early tomorrow morning, we could find him tonight.
There were a lot of moving parts to my plan. A lot of ways it could fail. But once the Feds started issuing warrants, Knox and his people would scatter like cockroaches. This might be our only chance to get access to him.
I got out, dried off, and went into the room for a fresh pair of clothes—then my gaze snagged on the coffee table and I froze.
Only one hard drive sat plugged into my laptop.
The other two we’d bought less than two hours ago were both gone.
Had someone been in our room while I’d been in the shower? But why take one of the drives and leave the laptop and the original drive behind?
The answer hit me like a nail-studded two-by-four.
James had taken the two hard drives. He’d pushed me to take a shower so I wouldn’t notice.
My pulse hammered as I stared at the empty space on the table.
Why did he need two … and what the hell was he doing with them?
Chapter 30
Two hours later, and a good thirty color-coded sticky notes pasted on the wall, James still hadn’t returned.
Had he ditched me? Had his handler arrested him on the spot? Or had he gone somewhere he hadn’t wanted me to know about? Why had he taken two hard drives?
I called Carter.
“Have you heard from James?” I asked the moment he answered, pacing the room.
“Isn’t he with you?” he asked with an edge in his voice.
“I take that as a no.” My throat tightened. “Did he tell you he was meeting his handler?”
“No.” The word was clipped.
I stopped pacing and pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. “He left two hours ago.”
“Why the fuck did he go meet his handler?” Carter barked.
“Because of what we got from Natalie.” I forced myself to breathe. “What matters is this: we copied everything tied to Knox onto an external hard drive. We made several copies, and James called his handler, then set up a meeting to hand it over.”
