Damn damn damn.
Her fingers hovered over the laptop monitor, reluctant to close the lid. Even now the cops could be on their way. What if they caught her as she ran away and no one knew what she’d found? Would they bother to look at the files?
She couldn’t risk it.
Working as fast as possible while keeping her ears tuned into the world around her, she modified her email message. She deleted all of the recipients except the reporters and systems administrators—no need to have Duncan’s own people alert him that she was in his home network, and given the holiday the others would likely take too long to view her message—then she swapped out the web page link for a direct link to her public folder on the cloud.
Once she had the folder set to View Only mode to prevent someone from deleting the documents, she attached the three most incriminating files she’d found directly to the email message.
Tires crunched the frozen asphalt and several smooth engines rumbled up the street, stopping just beyond her hiding space.
Mouth dry, she leaned down again. “Dammit.” Two navy and white Fairfax County Police cruisers were parked at the curb.
Valerie clicked SEND.Come on.Blood rushed her ears. She rocked anxiously in her seat as the message lingered in the Outbox.
Come on, you lazy-ass mail server.
Car doors shut quietly. A heavy shoe scuffed the concrete.
The message sent.
Valerie disconnected from Duncan’s router, slammed her computer shut, and stuffed the laptop into her bag. Rising to stand, she left the tote next to her feet.
A woman in a gray and black police uniform with her blond hair pulled into a sleek ponytail approached Valerie with her hand on the gun at her hip. “Ma’am. Do you live here?”
Better to be taken by the cops than by Duncan. “No. I’m Valerie Sanchez.”
Within minutes, she sat shackled in the back of a police cruiser while the officers stood around talking.
All around her, people had come out of their homes and huddled in small, animated groups in front yards and on sidewalks. Duncan strode onto his porch dressed in tan slacks and a white sweater, his wife at his side wearing a similar outfit.
His gaze met Valerie’s and bounced away, as if loath to make any contact with a criminal. He leaned close to Cathy and opened his mouth as if to speak, and then did a double take. His eyes widened almost comically.
That’s right, asshole.
The color drained from his face.
A woman in uniform approached his house and Duncan stepped back, bumping into his wife. Cathy rubbed her arm and narrowed her eyes at her husband. Her lips moved, but her words were inaudible from behind the bulletproof glass of the squad car.
It didn’t matter. The high color in the woman’s cheeks and her pinched lips said it all.
Duncan shook his head and pushed past his wife, his face a dangerous shade of red. She clutched at his sweater, but he shoved her away and fled into the house.
It was his turn to run.
Valerie let her head fall onto the hard seat behind her, closed her eyes, and smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Fairfax, VA
Monday, 7:00 p.m.
THREE DAYS LATER, DUNCAN HOLLOWELL was still at large. After finding a stash of foreign passports under a variety of names in his home, law enforcement and the press speculated that he had fled the country. His wife appeared appropriately baffled and betrayed.
The sniper who’d killed the two agents to force Valerie’s escape and make her look guilty had been found dead in a D.C. hotel three days after the shooting, supposedly of an accidental heroin overdose. Jay’s murderer—a mercenary whom Scott had mistaken for one of the feds—and whoever had shot at them at the airstrip, were in the wind.
Scott wanted Hollowell to pay for fucking up his and Valerie’s lives—even if he’d also brought them together—but he’d settle for never seeing the asswipe again. And for freedom.
