Page 49

I scoffed at that; I couldn’t help it.

Digital video wasn’t a VHS tape. Whatever they had, it likely lived in the cloud, not just on whatever local disk where they stored it.

Rania Gorren glared at me.

Again, I might have thought she was a seer, but I suspect she just understood my skepticism. She continued to glare as she spoke.

“You can seeexactlywhere the recordings route within our system. You can also destroy anything saved to the cloud.” Her eyes swiveled off me and back to Black. “I suggest you work with the information you’re cleared to have, Mr. Black. Not waste your time and mine asking about things that are irrelevant to the job we hired you to perform.”

“Irrelevant,” Nick muttered.

Gorren walked out from behind the desk, as if, for the first time, she felt safe leaving Wicker alone. I definitely sensed a handoff between her and that creepy Morgan guy.

“We’ll send over the autopsy report as soon as it’s complete,” she said, sparing Nick only a brief look. “In the meantime, I hope you have enough to work with looking at theactualmurder, rather than obsessing on details that do not concern you.”

I glanced at Black.

He looked angry on the surface, but I knew him.

I knew his real anger, and this wasn’t it.

This was an act; it was spectacle.

Did that mean Black had answered his own question? Or simply that he’d never expected Gorren to tell him anything in the first place? Clearly, he wasn’t bothered by getting the brush-off. Which meant he either never expected her to talk to him, and their “argument” was all a big diversion… or he’d used the argument to learn things she hadn’t intended to tell him at all,possibly from Wicker, or even from the security guy, Morgan, who still hadn’t moved from his vulture-like stance by the door.

I couldn’t ask him which thing it was, not now.

But suddenly, looking at my husband’s guarded face, I had to fight not to smile.

I’d forgotten this part of working for him.

He was maddeningly secretive, infuriatingly chaotic in style, and difficult to pin down when it came to the intricacies of his plans. Like now, with him apparently testing the accuracy of his own sight, even as he tried to shield me and Nick from legal liability, and figure out how to get Rucker’s people to divulge information they didn’t want to divulge.

Black was also crazy like a fox.

He might be doubting his sight right now, but he had a plan. He likely also had more than just me, Jem, and Nick working on this.

Something about the realization made me relax.

It also caused most of my doubts to fade.

No, I’d made the right choice in coming back to this.

Honestly, I may have been a little bored for the past few months.

Next to me, Black grunted a laugh. He covered it with a hand and a cough, and he didn’t look at me, but I felt it.

I felt the warmth pooling around my gut.

I bit my lip, but very deliberately did not smile.

12

THE CAMERAS

“We’ve got two different stations that had views on the incident…” Morgan touched his ear, and the image flickered on the desk monitor, the one embedded in the brushed-steel desk. He gave me another surreptitious stare, then his eyes focused past me.

“That one,” he nodded.