But it had taken Natalie only a few minutes to realize what she had to do. Even if it blew her cover, she had to try to get the mission called off. She’d sent the e-mail to her boss from her laptop immediately.
“What time was that?” Scott asked.
“I don’t know. Evening. It was before dinner. Maybe five o’clock.”
He nodded. “We were already on our way. When did you leave the text on my sat phone?”
She flushed, thinking he might be mad at her for that. She wasn’t supposed to contact him on that phone. “I knew it was a risk to text you like that—which is why I didn’t do it right away—but when I didn’t hear back from my boss and no one showed up to arrest me, I tried calling him but wasn’t able to get ahold of him. I didn’t know the timing of the mission, but I didn’t want to risk that you didn’t get the message in time. It was probably only a couple hours later.”
“Good thing,” Scott said. “We couldn’t get a signal so I turned on my phone and your text was waiting for me.”
She nodded. “I should have realized that Mick would be monitoring my computer and e-mail. He told me later, when he called to tell me you’d been killed, that he intercepted the message to my boss before it reached him.”
“Where is your laptop now? It will help if we can prove that you sent that message.”
She sighed. “I have no idea. It was in my apartment when I left after Jennifer was killed. I didn’t want to take it with me and draw suspicion.”
Scott nodded. “That was the right thing to do, but it sucks for us. It’s probably a dead end—especially if Mick had a chance to get to the apartment before the police. But I’ll have Kate look into it.”
• • •
Scott took the senator up on his offer, and after he and Natalie finished their coffee, he went into the office to make his call.
It was already hot outside so Natalie said she wasgoing to grab a book and go down by the pool. He told her he’d meet her when he was done. The prospect of seeing Natalie in a bathing suit made him eager to join her.
The call with Kate didn’t take long. He filled her in on what he’d learned about the adoption agency and the two laptops.
Kate couldn’t quite hide her skepticism when he told her about Natalie erasing the program and changing the Wi-Fi password.
“Maybe she thought she erased the program, and the deputy secretary just reentered his password.”
It was hard to argue as he had pretty much said the same thing to Natalie. “I know, but she was pretty adamant.”
Kate paused. “All right. Let me run it by someone and see what they think. Maybe there’s some way to track it without the laptop.”
“I thought you were the computer expert.”
“I am, but this person is better.”
He realized who she meant. “Brittany Blake’s friend?”
The specialist—or, more accurately, hacker—named Mac had helped John Donovan find Brittany Blake when Mick abducted her.
“Yes,” Kate said. “She helped me track down the camera feeds from around the bar where Travis was killed for Colt. It wasn’t easy. They’d been erased. Or more accurately someone tried to erase them.”
Scott swore. “The Russians have reach that widespread?”
“Looks like it.”
Although she was trying to hide it, there was a weary edge to Kate’s voice that told him something was wrong. He suspected the source. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on with Colt?”
The long pause that followed told him he’d hit the nail on the head. “No. Do you want to fill me in on what is going on with Natalie?”
He responded with his own moment of dead air before saying, “No.”
“Are you sure you can trust her, Scott? There’s a lot at stake here.”
Maybe he shouldn’t, but he realized that he did. He wouldn’t have gone to her yesterday otherwise. “Yes, I’m sure. Natalie has made some pretty bad mistakes, but she’s telling the truth about her involvement in leaking the information about the mission. There is more going on here than there seems.”
