“Me too. You ready to eat?”
She was setting the table while I pulled the food from the oven and served it on the plate she handed me. We were halfway through eating before either of us spoke again.
“Are you going to show me that envelope?” she asked.
I’d been thinking about it for hours and hadn’t come to a conclusion.
Fuck it.I didn’t need to tell Sylvie everything, but she might be able to help with the cryptic code.
Before I could question it further, I found myself getting up from the table, grabbing my jacket where I’d tossed it over the back of an armchair, pulling out the envelope, and sliding it across the table.
“Nice stationery,” she said as she pulled the sheet out.
“Yeah, it was,” I agreed. I’d always liked the navy and gold of the Creed Global logo.
Her eyes fixed on the line on the page. “You know what this means?” she asked.
Internal > MP > 102398.delsh.active
“Not exactly sure,” I said. “I think it’s the code to a file—internal, so one of ours. Missing persons.” I tapped the next section of the code. “And the rest of this could be a birthdate, letters from a name. I don’t know. I figured I’d take it down to the office tomorrow, start going through files.”
She didn’t ask any further questions, just nodded. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was something.
I slid the paper back in the envelope.
“I got a message from Emmett and Maddox,” I said. “They cracked some files we’ve been trying to get into. Communication logs with Emily Shaw.”
I left out that the drive had belonged to Silas, not Emily. We’d get to that later. Maybe.
“What does that mean?” Sylvie shoveled another forkful of casserole into her mouth and chewed slowly, her hazel eyes shrewd as they watched me, waiting for my answer.
She hadn’t missed that I was being cagey.
“It means,” I said, “that you and I are going to spend most of tomorrow pounding energy drinks while we go through those files to see if we can find anything that tells us what Emily Shaw was up to before she died, and who may have killed her.”
“Exciting,” Sylvie said, one russet eyebrow raised. “Typical dangerous day in the life of a high-end security consultant?”
Her tone conveyed her sarcasm, and I grinned at her. She had no idea how much of what I did was digging through files. “That’s what most of the job is these days, unless we’re playing bodyguard. Which also gets more boring than you’d think. We spend a lot of time going through data and tracking down clues—whether it’s surveillance footage, files, electronic, paper. Less talking to people in my business than you have in yours, I’d say.”
“Sounds like it,” Sylvie said. “Overall, I think I like my way better.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said, remembering how easily she’d connected with the curmudgeonly neighbor and Miss Carmody. “You’re good with people.”
She shrugged, took another sip of beer. “I like people. I think that helps. Everybody has bad days now and then, but most people are pretty decent, you know what I mean?”
“That’s a surprisingly optimistic standpoint for somebody who deals in unsolved violent crime,” I said.
“Maybe. There’s a lot of ugly out there. I’m sure you’ve seen more of it than me,” she said.
I nodded, knowing she was right.
“But still,” she went on, “I’ve seen a lot of good. Some of these women—the tragedy of their deaths, the lack of answers, the families who just want to know—that’s tough, and it’s dark, and it hurts. But then there are the people—mostly cops, sometimes social workers, sometimes family members or people like me—who keep looking, who never give up, who fight for the truth, for answers, for justice. With little reward, but they keep going because they know it’s right. And that—” She lifted her hands like they were the scales of Lady Justice and moved them up and down. “It balances everything out. We can’t stop bad things from happening. Doesn’t mean we can’t do good.”
I wanted to make a crack about her optimism, but I didn’t. Because this wasn’t some shallow mantra or slogan to brighten her day—this was Sylvie walking into the darkness, carrying a light, looking for others with their own light. A flash of rage at whoever had blown up her van hit me. There were shadows under her eyes that he’d pay for, once we found him. But that wouldn’t be tonight.
“It’s not that late,” I said, changing the subject, “but I’m half dead.”
“I know,” she said, picking up on my thought. “The clock says it’s too early, but I could still go to bed. Feels like I need to store up my sleep.”
