Page 144 of Nowhere to Hide

Nyx shook me. “I’m so damn jealous.”

“Why?”

“Because you got love and sex. Ugh. I’ve only found one or the other. Right about now I’ll settle for the sex though. It’s been a long drought.” She pulled me over to a bank of screens with laptop stations.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I work all the time. My brothers keep me busy and I love this place, but it’s hard to date people you work with especially when I’m the boss.”

“Ten out of ten, don’t recommend.”

She laughed. “Exactly.” She held out a chair for me. “I was wondering if you could help me out on a project? Locke told me you’re good with numbers.”

“Of course.” I sat down. “I’m afraid I’m not as exciting as what seems to go on in here, but my background is in accounting and analysis.”

“Perfect. I suck at that part. We have analysts of course and Bastian is our resident brain trust, but this is a little more tedious. The tracker Dante found on the boat actually was our first lead.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it needed longer range since you two were traveling all over. You can’t buy those so easily. First of all, they are rather pricey which tells me he has money, and second, there might be a way to find a money trail. You, my friend, are the money expert.”

“I’m sure there are people better at this than I am.”

“I can write program, but it takes time for a bot to search it all out. It’s not as intuitive as a person is.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “There was another killing this morning.”

“God.”

The guilt of it threatened to suck me under.

“Nope. It’s not your fault. This guy is the asshole, remember that.”

I blew out a breath. “I can help.”

“I knew you could.” She gave me the rundown of the company that sold the tech gear. “I dug into the dark web to find it, but now I just have a ton of data that I have no idea what to do with. I know there has to be a money trail in there somewhere. There’re a ton of dead ends because I was scraping a shitstorm of data in a place known for hiding their shit well.”

“I’ll give it a go.”

“Thanks. We have all the coffee too if you need it. Cold, hot, espresso, or not.”

I fortified myself with caffeine and borrowed a pair of headphones to cut out all the distractions, then got to work.

CHAPTER 29

LOCKE

The police stationwas a dead zone. At least at the front of the building.

Looking a little deeper, I could feel the tension.

Detective Diaz and Stone, fully out of his uniform blues again, were mid-argument.

I checked in at the front desk and got a visitor’s badge.

Stone spotted me with a shake of his head. “I can’t talk to you.”

“I know, but I can talk to you.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Fine, come on back.”