Page 14 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

She…

Claira collapsed on the seat.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

“You can sitwherever you want. Just don’t touch any of my stuff.” Zeyla crossed the room, removing her leather jacket as she went.

Ramon looked around at the small space with one double bed and a worn-looking comforter. The furniture in this motel room had probably been purchased sometime in the nineties and never upgraded. Same with the carpet.

“Unless you don’t want to touch anything at all.” She shot him a look, then drew a laptop from her backpack.

No reason to explain to her the discrepancy between who he had been and who he was now or how he tried to live every day as far from that person as he could. Even though it seemed like he could never shake the cartel guy he used to be, at least he could afford a quality hotel room that put him in a place where business travelers and families stayed. Not the kind of seedy spot where people met for underhanded deals and rented rooms by the hour.

He said, “You left your laptop lying around in this room where anyone could find it?”

“So you can’t see the security measures I put in place?” She glanced at him, a curious look on her face.

Ramon looked around. Behind the door, high at the top of the frame, he spotted a small sticky tab with two short wires descending from it about an inch. “Motion sensor?”

“Among other things.” She took the laptop to the short dresser and sat on the chair beside it, typing on the keys before she inserted the flash drive.

Ramon perched on the edge of the bed, feeling a little awkward about making himself comfortable. Wasn’t like he was tired, even though he hadn’t had much sleep last night. Generally, he slept about four hours, and it was rare for him to get any more than that. Kenna always slept a whole day away every time she finished a tough case, but he never slept longer than a few hours without waking himself up in a cold sweat. It was just the way things were.

He said, “You know Maizie can dig into that thing, right? Probably a whole lot faster than you.”

“I call her when I need her. And that isn’t for every single time I need an answer to a question.” She didn’t look at him, and her tone was inscrutable. It wasn’t exactly combative or resentful. But probably not good either.

Ramon pulled out his phone and read his messages, checking in with Bruce—their former CIA friend who had been burned and cut loose years ago. Kenna’s team had brought him back to the US where he was a whole lot happier than when he had been stuck in the UK. Currently, Bruce was keeping track of Zeyla’s mom and feeding Kenna intel on what the woman knew aboutDominatus.

He replied to a message from Stairns in the thread with Jax. Mostly, the conversation consisted of current world events they thought were relevant to the fight againstDominatus, but this most recent chat was about how Kenna was doing. Jax had reported a couple of days ago that her most recent doctor’sappointment had brought the good news that she and the baby she was carrying were both healthy and doing well.

Jax was attributing that to the health food, exercise, and stretching regimen he had her on. Ramon figured it might be more about the fact that she had spent the first trimester of her pregnancy as the captive of their enemy and a dangerous doctor who had been experimenting on her. But he wasn’t about to explain that the doctor might’ve helped her to the excited father-to-be.

The whole thing was a waiting game as far as they were all concerned. A normal pregnancy came with enough risks, and no one really wanted to speculate what might happen with this one.

Zeyla grunted. “This thing is password protected.” She looked up at him. “Which, for the record, is the point at which I call Maizie. Because I can do a whole lot by myself. But she is better at hacking than me.”

Ramon lifted both his hands, not wanting to get into an argument with her about asking for help. Or about the value of family.

She grabbed her phone and furiously typed on the screen.

A second later, her phone rang, and she put it on speaker. “Yes, Maizie?”

“I’m glad you’re both somewhere you can talk. Because something happened.”

Ramon figured she must have been keeping tabs on the GPS signal of both of their phones in order to know they were back in the motel room. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tackle the flash drive in a second, Zeyla,” Maizie said. “But you guys should know that Pioneer Forensics ID’d the hand that you brought them. It belongs to a local missing young woman, Amanda Burton. As soon as they realized it was hers, they called the police and reported it. That doesn’t mean you guys will get in trouble, right?”

Ramon said, “It means the police are going to have questions for us.”

“They can ask them, if they can find me.” Zeyla smirked.

Ramon shook his head. He’d rather be out in the open and on the level with law enforcement—until the time came that they needed to keep their activity below the radar. “Who is the missing woman?”

“I’m pulling up all the information now. But let me just log into Zeyla’s computer and get the program started trying to hack that flash drive.”