“It would explain why he turned off his phone,” Carter said. “So I couldn’t track him.”
My pulse thudded. “If he went to meet Knox, Knox could have kidnapped him. Or worse.” I felt sick. “We have to get a location for Knox. What haven’t we thought of? There has to be a way to get it.”
“Now hold on,” he said in a rush. “We don’t know what Skeeter was doing, Harper,” he said in frustration. “For all we know, he took the hard drive to someone else.”
I’d thought of that too, but who?
Then it hit me. “He promised to get the exotic dancer’s charges dropped.”
Carter went quiet for a half beat. “Yeah?”
“The Feds have influence,” I said, thinking fast. “But they might not be able to make that happen. And James gave his word, so he’d want to make sure they got dropped. Right?”
“If he gave his word, then yeah. He’d make sure it happened.”
“Okay.” The pieces started snapping together. “What if he met with the handler, and they didn’t agree or wouldn’t make any promises? Or… he didn’t trust the handler to follow through.” I took a breath. “He’d go to someone who could make that happen. Right? Would he go to the Pulaski County prosecutor?”
Carter sucked in a breath. “Oh… fuck.”
My panic spiked. “What? Would going to the prosector be bad?”
“No.” His voice tightened. “He wouldn’t go to the Pulaski prosecutor.”
“But you know who he would go to,” I said, then forced my voice down. “Who, Carter?”
He hesitated long enough that my stomach twisted. Finally, he exhaled. “Mason Deveraux.”
“Mason Deveraux?” I asked in disbelief. “James said Deveraux hates him.”
“He does.”
“Then why would he go to him?”
“They have history,” Carter sounded like he hated admitting it. “It’s contentious, but Deveraux is fair—except for when it comes to Skeeter. He’s his blind spot.”
“And if Deveraux’s generally fair,” I reasoned. “Then James would expect him to drop Dani’s charges in exchange for the information?”
“Charges and more.” Carter’s tone softened. “Deveraux’s ambitious. It sounds like half of what’s on that drive could make his career.”
“But wouldn’t James’s handler lose his mind if he shared the information with someone else?”
“As big of a jackass as this person sounds?” Carter let out a humorous breath. “Yeah, probably. But this is all speculation, Harper. All of it. We don’t know that he met anyone besides his handler. For all we know, the handler took him somewhere after they met at the diner and made him power down his phone.”
“So why the two hard drives?” I demanded. “And why hide it from me?”
“I don’t know.”
I gripped the phone harder. “What are the odds he met with Deveraux? Your best guess?”
He paused a beat. “If he met with someone other than his handler—and that’s a real possibility because of the dancer—then I’d put it at eighty to eighty-five percent.”
“So, now we need to track down Mason Deveraux.”
Carter burst out laughing.
“This isn’t funny, Carter.”
“I’ll say.” His laughter died. “What’s your plan? Call him like a mom asking if her kid can get his late ass home for dinner?”
