The thought that my fatherhad been right made my head spin. Thiswasabout me.
Or…
No. God, no. The alternativewas so much worse that I didn’t even want to think about it. I was happierbelieving it was about me.
All the same…
Crap. How was I supposed toexplain to the police that I thought maybe someoneelsewas in danger onthe basis of evidence I specifically didn’t have anymore?
I was getting ahead ofmyself. Maybe they’d grabbed the wrong papers the first time and were coming formore sensitive ones this time. It could have been… industrial espionage, orsomething. We’d had problems with that in the past.
But in the past, it’d been peopleshoving secret formulas under their coats and smuggling out prototype drugs.Not breaking into my home.
This was… too much. Toomuch to handle. I’d really thought the two incidents last week were justcoincidental, I’d thought my own paranoid brain was running away from me, Ihadn’t reallybelievedthe warning bells going off in my head.
But this was starting tolook uncomfortably real.
As much as I hated thethought, now Ireallyneeded to text Gray.
No.
Order of operations: Ineeded to put on pants,thentext Gray.
SIX
GRAY
“OOH, SOMEONE'S UP early,” Fox said as he walked into the office, collapsingheavily into his chair and hugging a cup of coffee close to his chest. “Troublesleeping?”
The clock above thedoor—which was a weird place to put it, now that I thought about it, but it’d come with theoffice—read almost seven-thirty. Officially, our business hours were nine tofive.
Unofficially—and in reality—theywere whenever one of us wasn’t out on a job, or couldn’t sleep.
I snorted. “Kinda. Wannahear something nuts?”
“Always excited to hearabout nuts.” Fox beamed.
My automatic eyerollactually hurt a little. I could picture Fox’s ridiculous grin withouteven having to look at him.
In his defense, I had walkedstraight into that one.
“So yesterday I went to meeta new potential client, which is why I wasn’t in,” I began.
“I wasn’t in either, so Ididn’t notice,” Fox said, sipping his coffee. “But go on.”
“So anyway, I headed to thebig Emerson Medical Technology building. You know the place?”
“I do,” Fox agreed. Despitebeing a recent transplant, I felt like he knew Sacramento better than I didhalf the time. He’d made apointof knowing.
Recon was always hisspecialty, so it made sense.
“The receptionist is cute,you’d like him,” I said. Fox and I had always had similar tastes. “Anyway, Iheaded up to the fifth floor in their shiny chrome elevators complete withkeycard access—”
“Were you planning on comingto a point?” Fox asked, taking another sip of coffee and looking at me over therim of the cup, both eyebrows raised as though he was trying to look innocent.
“Shut up and let me tell it,”I grumbled. This was normal teasing between the two of us, and I wouldn’t havehad him any other way.
“So I walk out of theelevator, and guess who’s standing right there in front of me.”
