Page 12 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

“Trust me, everything has been erased.” She wiggled a mouse beside the keyboard in the center of four monitors. The screen flashed to life with a small box around the wordspurge complete.

“Any way to recover the information?” He figured it was a long shot, but it never hurt to ask.

“Given how paranoid he was, I doubt it. But hopefully, he left something for just in case.”

He was about to ask her where to look when she wandered to the back and disappeared. Ramon followed and saw her messing with the lid of the toilet tank in a grungy bathroom. She flipped it over and frowned.

When she crouched and looked behind the toilet, he spotted a reaction.

“Got it.” She pulled her hand out from behind the toilet tank and showed him a tiny flash drive.

“Anything else?” He didn’t want to risk being discovered here any more than she did. Even if he doubted Miguel was still here to see the aftermath of his handiwork, that didn’t mean he hadn’t told someone where to find Milo. Perhaps Milo’s enemies might show up and pick through what was left.

She shook her head, passing by him in the small space. “We need to regroup somewhere else and figure out how to hit back at them.”

Ramon probably wouldn’t have put it like that. At least not when they had no idea who ordered Miguel to kill Milo Hargrove. He figured this complicated things for her on finding this Count of Shadows person that he wasn’t sure even existed.

“I need to go and find my friend Miguel.” Ramon followed her to the entrance, and they stepped outside. “Then, I’ll be finding whoever hired him to kill you and your friend here. Then, I’ll be asking them why.”

“Does it matter?” She shrugged, stepping outside and scanning the area around them. Alert for approaching danger. “Why not just eliminate the threat? Do we always need to know why they do what they do?”

She started walking.

He moved with her, keeping pace and trying to wrestle with her comment. “You have to understand that it makes you soundlike you have something to hide when you’re all gung ho about taking them out rather than finding out why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

Zeyla said, “Or I’ve spent too many years trying to figure out why and never got any answers. I realized they are just going to keep doing what they do, and I’m never going to resolve things. At least not before they manage to kill me.”

Months ago, she’d been captured byDominatusand had several of her organs removed to be used for members of the organization who needed healthy replacements. Zeyla now had one kidney, and her liver would regrow the part that had been cut out. She might have recovered, but he doubted that she would ever be over it.

Ramon scanned the trees as they walked. “Milo was definitely killed before Miguel intended to shoot you on that roof. But he didn’t go after the hand, so either he didn’t know their secrecy had been breached in that way or they aren’t interested in recovering the hand. This isn’t about containment.”

“No,” Zeyla said. “It’s about getting rid of an annoyance.”

Someone had hired Miguel to kill Hargrove for information, and perhaps as a result of that conversation, he came after Zeyla. Which made Ramon wonder what the dead man had told Miguel.

“Who wants you dead, and why?” Ramon asked her as they neared the car.

She shrugged. “That’s not why we’re here.”

“No,” he said across the roof of the car. “We’re here because you want to find this Count of Shadows guy.”

He saw her flinch, but she covered it well. Zeyla asked, “When did I tell you about that?”

“Last night, when you were falling asleep on the couch in my hotel room.” He lifted his chin. “Be careful that you aren’t sofocused on whatever your mission is that you miss the fact you could be shot by a sniper at any moment.”

She tipped her head to the side. “You really think I need to lie awake at night worrying about that?”

“It’s worth losing some sleep over.”

“I disagree. Because it means I’m close enough they consider me a threat to their operation. If I wasn’t getting somewhere with this, they wouldn’t need to kill me.”

What could Ramon say to that? “You want to die like your friend Milo?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Now what did that mean? “You have some kind of plan in the works?”

“Let’s just say I won’t be alive long enough to answer anything. If they catch me—which I’m going to make sure doesn’t happen.”