~ 38 ~
THEO
The little café smelled like roasted coffee and cinnamon sticks, with a cloying, ever-present draft of steamed milk. I watched over the rim of my laptop as people drifted in and out, peeling off thick coats, stamping the snow from heavy boots that looked like they weighed ten pounds each.
Nobody looked twice at us, though. And that was by design.
“Pass the sugar, again?”
Colson shoved the porcelain container my way, rattling the only two sugar cubes left. He had his back to the wall, his eyes sweeping the room periodically from our small wooden table. To anyone else, his expression was of extreme boredom. But I knew better.
“You’re a dentist’s wet dream, you know that?”
I chuckled as I added the cubes to my latte, stirring gently. I was on my fourth cup of coffee. Colson hadn’t even finished his first. It could be because he was focused solely on the locals, muttering amongst themselves in quiet Icelandic.Even though he was pretending not to notice.
Still, it felt good to be out, to sit down, to relax — even if it justfeltlike we were relaxing. Hell, it felt almost like we were cutting school.
“Think they’re having fun?” he asked offhandedly.
“Who? Ripley and Peyton?”
“Yeah.”
“No. I’m sure they’re hating every moment of being alone.”
I rolled my eyes at him, then winked. We both already knew the answer.
“In fact, if you take into consideration—”
The notification flashed across my screen, startling me out of my own speculative bullshit. The moment I looked at it, my heart sunk.
“Shit.”
Colson’s head tilted immediately my way. I couldn’t hide it.
“Donovan?”
I nodded slowly. The message had arrived via some obscure connection path, through a dozen or more encryption tunnels. Retrieving it had been anonymous, but no less unnerving.
“Show me.”
I swung the laptop around. There was no message, no text, just a decrypted photo. Colson only had to study the weather-beaten boards and broken door for a second, to know what it was.
“Damn.”
The fishing shack, back in Belize.
The one where Ripley and Peyton had holed up for the night.
“He found it,” he muttered.
“Yes.”
Colson cursed and grumbled.
“This is him, showing off. Letting us know how close he was.”
“Totally.”
