“What’s that?”
“It’s a good portion of what you’ll need,” he said.
“Not all of it?”
“I had all of it a few months ago. Things have changed, and I don’t have access anymore. If Tracy hadn’t disappeared, she would have had it. Why did she give this to you?”
I did my best to keep my face and voice even. In the email, I’d only said that I’d gotten the story from Tracy, but not how. “Strictly speaking, she didn’t give it to me.”
His head whipped toward mine in my periphery. “What?”
“Tracy died unexpectedly in a car accident a few months ago. I’m sure she would have followed up with you otherwise. I found all her notes about this over the weekend. They were shoved in the back of a filing cabinet.”
A growl that made my hair stand on end rolled out of him. “You should have told me that.”
I shook my head. “Why? It was an accident.”
He scoffed. “As a reporter, you should know better than that. There are no accidents.”
A child in the shallows screamed and drew my gaze. It sounded real, but one look told me it was a happy scream, even if it didn’t sound that way. I pressed a hand to my chest, willing my heart to calm. It was like Element all over again. I took a breath. “The police investigated,” I said. “They didn’t find anything. And I’ve lived through too many coincidences to believe that they don’t exist.”
He said nothing.
“Coincidences. Accidents. Whatever you want to call them.”
Again, nothing. I risked a glance and found no one. Not even walking away. I scanned the beach, turning in a circle to see if I could still spot him, but I couldn’t. People playing sand soccer, a group of people photographing the sunset, families building last minute sandcastles. No one that looked the same height and build, and no one in a ball cap. If he was that careful, he would have ditched the hat and glasses. Maybe taken his shirt off to blend in more with people on the beach.
No matter what, he was gone.
I cursed under my breath. At least he’d given me something.Rummaging around in my bag, my fingers closed around something small and smooth. One glance told me it was a flash drive.
Maybe whatever was on this drive would be enough. And hopefully, whatever was on it meant I could still believe in accidents.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
_____________
TRINITY
“Damn it,” I muttered, pulling the flash drive out of the tower of my work computer and tossing it onto the desk.
The fucking thing was password protected. Probably more than that, if I had to guess. But I hadn’t been able to open it on my laptop, and despite being good with computers and several hours of internet searches, I was no closer to unlocking it than I had been when the man slipped it into my bag.
Plus, now it was past lunch, and I hadn’t gotten to any of the things that wereactuallyon my plate today. My inbox was overfilled with articles to edit, and some of them had deadlines today.
Fuck.
I rubbed my temples, my head aching. My brain was so hooked on the flash drive and Tracy’s files that it was going to be an absolute slog of an afternoon. I didn’t like having to fight my own brain all the time, but life was life, and sometimes you had to get things done even if you didn’t feel like it.
I’d always been this way. One of the reasons I went into journalism in the first place was that I could dive deep into topics that grabbed and held my interest like this. Nobody cared if you went overboard on research if you were using it to write about something.
That wasn’t theonlyreason I’d chosen this field, but it was a big one.
And I’d forgotten to eat. Again. Go figure.
I grabbed a granola bar from the stash in my drawer and braced for hours ofboring. Thankfully and surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad today. There was an article about the way local coffee shops were making a resurgence in Clarity compared to the chain stores. Another was a cute but lengthy list article aimed at people visiting in the off-season. A profile of a local baker who’d found a niche creating wildly realistic cakes.
I really needed to pitch a profile on Ocean to Edgar. The wayEntendremade bouquets was a perfect subject for the magazine. Who didn’t want to send a bouquet of pretty flowers that saidfuck youwithout them having any idea?
