Cover Shot (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 5) (18 page)

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5.

Clouds

I froze, my eyes on the door. Casey was coming this way, and she wasn’t alone.

Her companion was definitely male.

Damn.

No one could see me leaving this room, especially not given that Shannon might notice his drive was missing.

I flattened myself against the wall behind the door and closed my eyes, trying not to breathe too loudly.

“Really, such a tragedy about poor Stephanie,” Mr. Mystery said. “I know you two were close.”

“I miss her,” Casey said softly.

They passed the door, and I strained to listen.

“It’s horrible when an accident like this takes someone we love,” he said. “Makes no sense. Why was she even there that day?”

It took everything in me to stay against the wall. The guy was fishing. Hopefully Casey was too smart to bite.

“Sales call,” Casey said. “We had lunch that day and she told me she had to run by St. Vince’s on the way home and check the fifth floor ICU supply of Zanthrin.”

My fingers folded into a fist at my side.

Someone sent her there. Not just to the hospital. Not just to that floor. To that room.

When they were out of earshot, I slid my shoes back on (ouch) and slipped out, pushing the door lock—and wiping the knob—as I went.

I hovered at the end of the next cube row and watched until Casey’s companion walked away, ducking when he got close to me.

He kept moving, giving no indication he’d spotted me.

I swallowed a wave of nausea and counted to fifteen before I stood.

Captain Tell Me About Your Friend knew something about Stephanie’s unwanted email—I’d bet my new Prada boots on it, watching him disappear around a corner.

Just like I’d watched him disappear out the door when he finished arguing with Goetze over the big envelope at the diner.

Casey had no trouble buying that I’d gotten lost on the way to the restroom, smiling apologetically when I told her I didn’t think there was anything useful in Stephanie’s desk. I thanked her and left it at that, unable to come up with a single reason why I should know she’d been talking to anyone.

We were halfway back to the restaurant before she mentioned him.

“Even Mr. Crenshaw asked me about her tonight,” she said, staring out the window and fiddling with her hair. “It’s like no one can believe she’s gone.”

“Who’s that?”

“The head of our accounting department,” she said. “I ran into him when I went to the restroom. It’s funny how the company is so big, but everyone kind of knows everyone. He seemed really sad.”

Sure he was.

I dropped her at her car and thanked her again, scribbling the guy’s name on a napkin I pulled from the console before I pointed the car toward Jenna’s.

If I couldn’t run down Stephanie’s ominous email, maybe I knew someone who could.

Chad listened to the short version of why I thought there was a killer on the loose without comment, throwing in a couple of nods I suspected were for effect. I finished talking and he stared at me, flipping a paperclip through his fingers, for a solid two minutes before he sighed.

“Jenna’s told me about your crazy investigations before, but to be honest, I kinda thought she was exaggerating.” He dropped the paperclip to the wooden tabletop in their dining room. “She wasn’t, was she? You have one hell of a mess on your hands here, and my considered advice would be to give it to the cops and let them handle it.”

“Which would be great if one of them wasn’t already convinced they have their murderer locked down, or if I knew who was giving their marching orders.”

The second Evaris became a large piece of my puzzle, I started questioning the motives of the hush-hush stuff my cops were dishing out. Not that I thought the guys were in league with big pharma. But who might be keeping them quiet and why—I couldn’t say for sure.

Add all that to my everyday drive to beat Charlie, my obsession with protecting Bob, and the idea that there might be a freaking cure for cancer lurking somewhere in this mess, and I couldn’t make myself back off if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t.

“But your job is to tell the story. Not to create it. Right? I get the rushing to beat all the other reporters, but there have to be limits. And whatever you’re into, people who go to this much trouble to hide something don’t play around.”

I saw the worried lines around his eyes and smiled. Chad was a good guy. “Getting the story first is the big thing. I work for that every day. The ‘crazy investigations’ you’re talking about only happen when I think the story I’m being given might not be right. My job is to give my readers the truth, or as close to it as I can find. When I think there’s something missing from a story, I hunt for it. That’s what makes me good.”

Chad nodded slowly. “I understand and respect that. But what if you’re in over your head?”

I opened my mouth to reply and stopped, tapping a finger on the table as I studied his face. “Why? What did you find?”

“This is upper level stuff, Nichelle. It’s not a glitch. It’s not a high school kid playing around with his laptop. Someone who knows what the hell they’re doing did this.”

“How?”

“Best I can tell, the easiest way is with a virus. But to write a virus that would find and erase just his name, then manage to successfully upload it to one of the most secure servers in the world? That’s not just for fun. That’s…that’s a lot of fucking money is what that is, Nichelle.”

The kind of money Evaris would have sitting around?

“How much?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess. Hundreds of thousands, at a minimum. Guys who can do this kind of stuff don’t work cheap.”

I nodded. “And they don’t leave tracks?”

He chuckled. “Not that I could find. I’ve run through hundreds of lines of source code for the search engine, but I’m not really sure what kind of variation I’m hunting. I have a buddy who used to work for the government. He’s nosing around. He’s good. But even he was impressed by this.”

“Thanks, Chad.”

“It was the most interesting thing I did this week.”

“Speaking of the doc and computers: I wonder if he might have kept his patient files in a tablet. And if there’s a way to find it if he did.” I offered a hopeful half-smile.

“There’s no locating it remotely if it’s turned off, even if you have his password. You’d have to search the old-fashioned way.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Sorry.”

“S’okay.” I grinned. “Want another assignment?”

Jenna’s head popped around the edge of the doorway. “How come everyone but me gets to help you play Lois Lane?”

I stood up and hugged her. “You’re the moral support section. Your job is the most important.”

She turned for the wine rack and laughed. “In that case, let me get to work.”

“A big bottle,” I said.

“You staying for dinner?”

“If I’m invited,” I said. “Hey—speaking of, are we doing girls’ night Friday?”

Jenna glanced at Chad, who shrugged. She nodded. “Chinese?”

I made a face. “Only if we can go to Fat Dragon.”

“Deal. And don’t get my husband shot at, okay?”

“Never.”

Jenna disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of wine and a beer. “You were saying?”

I reached into my pocket and tapped the thumb drive, but I wanted to see if I could get to the files on it myself before I asked for help. “Is it possible to hack into a cloud-based backup?” I asked Chad.

He nodded. “It’s happening somewhere right now, probably to some unsuspecting starlet who doesn’t know the sexy photos she sent her boyfriend last night are about to be all over the internet.”

I smiled. “How do you feel about trying it?”

“Which one?”

“I don’t exactly know.”

“You want me to get into all of them looking for one account? I—I can’t. I mean, I could, but it would take a year.”

“What if I could find out which one it is?”

“Then I could probably do what you’re asking.”

“How long would it take?”

“No idea. Could be three hours, could be a week. Depends on a lot of things.”

Wow. “I thought those things were supposed to be safe?”

“For the average user? Sure. But it’s not unbreakable. It’s just finding an in.”

I nodded. “I’ll find out which one and let you know.”

“What am I looking for?”

“The woman who was shot at the hospital—I think she knew something someone didn’t want her to know. She got ahold of an email I’d like to have a look at. Her friend said she’d backed it up to a cloud drive.”

Chad nodded, and Jenna picked up her wine glass and twirled it before she took a sip. “You going to tell us the whole story?”

Not yet. “Plausible deniability.” I winked. “What’s for dinner?”

“Ham and cheese!” Gabby’s voice came from the living room and I laughed.

“Maybe we should talk after the tiny tape recorders go to bed.”

Jenna nodded. “I have plenty of wine, and I’ve missed you this week. We got used to you being around more this summer.”

I grinned when Gabby barreled around the corner and flung her seven-year-old self into my lap. “Yeah, Auntie Nicey. When are you bringing Darcy back to play?” Carson trailed his sister into the room and sat down on my foot.

I fluffed his blond curls and smiled at Gabby. “She misses you too, sweet girl. Let’s help Momma with dinner and make plans for Darcy to visit this weekend, okay?” I shot Jenna a look and she nodded approval.

The kids bounced into the kitchen and we followed. Jenna pulled bread and sandwich fixings from the fridge and watched me lift Carson onto my hip. He blew a sticky raspberry on my cheek and I laughed.

“You’re going to be a good mom, you know that?” Jenna smiled.

I rolled my eyes and spun the baby in a circle.

“How’s it going with Captain Mystery?”

“Not in the direction of babies. Or if it is, it’s crawling there.”

“And how’s Kyle?”

“Shut up, Jen.” I put the baby down and opened the bread. “Kyle is dating. Sort of. And I want Kyle to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy.” She passed me a knife.

“I am. For now.”

“And for later?”

I put Carson’s sandwich on a plate and added a few potato chips. “For now is enough. For now.”

Still pondering Jenna’s words when I took Darcy out to play fetch four hours later, I wasn’t closer to a long-term answer. Joey was…Joey. He was sexy and exciting and mysterious.

I leaned against the doorjamb and tossed the squirrel again, watching the dog take off after it.

Was it the mystery that made me want him? No. It made me nervous.

Was it the danger? No. I worried.

Was it, like Emily had said six million times, that I knew deep down it couldn’t really ever work?

Definitely not—the thought of him leaving made my throat close up.

But the way he held me, the way he kissed me, the way I felt when he was there—that made me all tingly and weak-kneed and slightly ridiculous.

I grabbed the toy and turned to go inside, bending to scratch Darcy’s silky ears and sighing. “What am I going to do, girl?”

She didn’t answer.

Staying under the shower until the hot water ran out didn’t get me any further, and my thoughts returned to the story as I toweled my hair off.

I propped up on pillows in my big cherry four-poster and flipped my computer open, popping the little drive into the port on the side.

It wasn’t even password protected. I couldn’t decide if that was awesome or terrible, because surely if there was anything good there it would be locked. Right?

Three folders, all labeled with numbers. I clicked the first one up and found just one file inside: a spreadsheet. Four columns of numbers, none of them labeled, though the decimals in the second set sure made them look like dates. I opened a calendar.

Three week intervals for the past three years. Huh.

I stared at the other two columns ’til the clock ticked from Monday to Tuesday and my eyes wouldn’t stay open. The second set were all within ten of each other, with several numbers repeated. The third were bigger values, and all in a few hundred number gap, save for one. A 750,000 came at the end of a single line with one date (assuming I was right) that was just three months ago.

I scrolled back to the top. No heading. No file name that made any sense. Slamming the laptop shut, I turned off the light. Everything led to more questions.

The fan crept through the dimness, and I flipped over more times than a well-done steak trying to shut off my brain and sleep. Maynard. Stephanie. The Ellingers. Joey. Bob. My mother. So much hanging over my head. So many people I wanted to help.

I wished Joey was there—he made it easy to drift off to sleep and stay that way. But that just brought Jenna’s questions swirling back up. How on Earth did I end up here? Me, the girl who lost her heart on the second date and nearly didn’t survive losing Kyle all those years ago—I’d protected myself from being hurt again (Emily said) by shying away from relationships altogether. And here I was falling for this man. But it could never last.

I turned on my side and punched the pillow into submission.

This was what happened when I let myself think about forever. I should stop.

Who was ever guaranteed forever, anyway? Sophia Kochanski had a husband with a normal job, children—and got her heart broken because he was weak and Elizabeth Herrington was ruthless.

The thought of that kind of pain was enough to send me running for the nearest convent. But Joey…

The best thing about Joey was how safe I felt with him. Kyle could wave caution flags ’til doomsday, but I never felt scared when I was with Joey. Whatever else there might be, whatever else he might have done, it was simple when you cut through all the crap: I could trust Joey with my heart.

Maybe that was more than enough.