I rubbed the heel of my palm against my chest. I wanted to find out what happened to Emily Shaw. And despite my actions and how close I’d come, I did not want to die for that information. Definitely not. Which meant I was going to have to be smart. I was going to have tolisten to Eli. We were in his world now, not mine. This wasn’t friendly little interviews with people who’d known my victim—this was someone wanting to makemethe victim.
I needed to stop thinking like a podcaster and think like someone on the run for their life. At that, I sat up and looked around the safe house apartment. That’s what I was: someone on the run for their life, probably like a lot of the other clients who’d stayed here. And Eli was trying to keep me from dying.
“Next time,” I said aloud into the empty room, “when he tells me to run, I’ll run.”
An hour later, I got a text:Hungry?
Probably Eli, but just to mess with him a little—since I hadn’t given him my number—I messaged back,I don’t answer text messages from strangers.
It’s Eli, smartass, came the response.Are you hungry? How long have you been awake?
A few hours, I answered.I had some yogurt. I’m good for now.
Nothing for a minute or two. Then:I’ll be back in a few hrs with food.
Did they find anything on the phone?I texted back.
They’re working on it, he responded.Tell you more later.
I put the phone down, trying not to be annoyed. I was lucky they were letting me in on the case at all, but it wasn’t in my nature to sit around inside twiddling my thumbs when I could be out there doing something—anything.
Resigned to behaving myself, I went back to working on the laptop, connecting my cloud storage and downloading the apps I needed. I’d forgotten how long it took to get a computer set up from scratch.
I was just finishing when the door to the apartmentopened, and Eli came in—a big white bag in his hands, the scents of meat and grease filling the room.
My stomach growled. “God, that smells good,” I said.
“It will be. Computer working out okay?” he asked, nodding at the laptop in front of me.
“Yeah, it’s great. Just finished getting all of my stuff on it. How’d your day go, dear?” I asked with a sweet smile designed to poke at him. I liked riling him up.
He raised an eyebrow back at me. “Frustrating.”
The tease fell off my face. “Ugh. Well, that sucks. Nothing from the phone, then?” The disappointment was a weight in my chest.
“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s the encryption on the phone. Not civilian level.”
“Really?” I said, relief flooding in. I’d been right that Emily Shaw was more than she seemed. “Am I the only one who’s thinking Emily Shaw was not a run-of-the-mill data analyst?”
Eli lifted his chin. “You are not the only one,” he said grudgingly.
I wondered if this revelation had anything to do with why Sinclair Security had been investigating her. I wasn’t going to ask. Eli was talking. Too many questions would shut him up. I just raised an eyebrow.
“Maddox, Emmett, and Lucas were all fairly impressed by the amount of security she had on that phone. They were pulling apart the code and oohing and aahing like fanboys, which, just so you know, is not a good sign, because those three are scary good. If they’re admiring the code, whoever wrote it is God-level. And I can’t think of any reason our run-of-the-mill ‘work from home in a suburban neighborhood in Knoxville’ data analyst wouldknow how to write code like that or have it on her phone at all.”
“Much less get blown up in her driveway,” I added.
“Exactly.”
“Plus, the way they buried the case so fast…” I murmured to myself.
“I think you had some bad luck when you chose Emily, because she’s not your average murder victim.”
“No,” I said, “she’s really not. She still deserves answers.”
Eli nodded his agreement and started unpacking our food from the white plastic bag. “She’s a person who died because someone else wanted her out of the picture. And since they’re after you,” he said, “we can’t walk away.”
“Well, you could,” I said.
