Ree glanced over at Quint. From his profile, she could see that he’d found something he didn’t like on Lola’s computer.
“Who needs a refill?” Ree asked, draining her glass of wine. It gave her a good reason to get up.
“Yes, please,” Angie said, hoisting her glass.
“I’ll take one as well,” Lola stated with a smile. She had a warmth to her that made it so difficult to believe she would be involved with criminals. It was a real shock to think she was in a relationship with someone like Constantin.
“I’ll be right back.” Ree set her glass down on the coffee table, figuring it would be best to bring the bottle to the conversation. Angie was a good conversationalist and kept Lola engaged while Ree retrieved the bottle from the kitchen. There was enough inside to cover three of them. Ree had only half filled the glasses earlier since it was before dinnertime and most people objected to a heavy first-round pour. Get one glass in them, and they usually lightened up on the refill.
Ree palmed the bottle, wishing she could ask Quint what was going on. He turned toward her when his back was to the others and shot a look that confirmed she saw what she thought she did. There’d been a discovery.
Heading back into the living room, she also saw the intensity in his eyes. She’d seen it for the first time in Cricket Creek during much of the investigation there. He’d finally started letting his guard down by the end of the investigation. Bringing another agency into the case caused a few more walls to come up between them.
“So, Lola, who was the hottie at the elevator today?” Angie finally asked. The younger woman’s cheeks were a darker shade of pink, indicating she was probably a little tipsy.
“No one important.” Lola shook off the comment. “Plus, where is your fireman today?”
“We have yet to meet him,” Ree added. Lola shot a look that said she appreciated the distraction.
“At work,” Angie said. “Y’all, the man is always at work.” This was the most Southern Angie had been since they’d met. Ree cracked a smile at the slip. Apparently, a little afternoon wine brought out the South in Angie.
“Probably makes it easier to hide him from your parents,” Ree pointed out.
“They would kill me if they knew,” Angie said before taking another sip and smiling like a kid who’d just gotten away with eating the last cookie from the jar and no one knew who did it.
“Why not just sit them down and have a talk? You’re...” Ree drew her eyebrows together. “How old did you say?”
“Twenty-two,” Angie announced. “The problem is that they’re paying for my apartment.”
“What about Mr. Fireman?” Lola asked.
“He moved in with me because I refused to live with him. He was in a house with four other guys and the place smelled like stale beer and pizza,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with a slob?” Lola asked with a look of sheer disgust.
It made Ree laugh.
“Sorry,” she said to Lola, “but your face just cracked me up.”
“Y’all, my guy is clean. It’s half the reason he was ready to move out, but he’s still in a lease until the end of October, so he pays for the other place and we live here,” Angie said. “It bothers him to no end that my family doesn’t know he lives here. He’s been threatening to tell them the next time he sees them. Says we’re living a lie.”
“He sounds like a really stand-up guy to me,” Ree said with compassion and a whole new respect for the fireman.
“If you don’t hurry up and marry that guy, I will,” Lola teased. A ringtone sounded and she immediately reached into her handbag. “Excuse me.” She practically jumped up as she pulled out her cell. After checking the screen, she immediately moved toward the door.
“Hello,” she answered as she headed into the hallway. The rest of the conversation was out of earshot.
Angie locked gazes with Ree and made a face. Ree shrugged.
“She sure hightailed it out of here quick,” Angie said.
“I hope everything’s okay,” Ree commented. She checked the clock before polishing off her glass of wine. “I have to be at work in an hour and a half.”
“At your new job?” Angie’s lips compressed like she was struggling to hold back a laugh.
“I know. It’s probably bad form, but I’ll just eat some more of this amazing trail mix to soak up the alcohol and I’ll be fine.” Ree shifted the lighthearted conversation with Angie.
A minute later, Lola came back inside. Her shoulders were rounded, and it looked like someone had deflated the air in her chest. All confidence was gone.
“Everything okay?” Ree asked as she and Angie turned their attention to Lola.
She held up her phone and apologized. “I forgot about a meeting that I have with a friend. It’s stupid of me.”
“I’ll have your laptop ready in a few seconds,” Quint said. He turned to look at her when she didn’t immediately respond. “Is that okay? Because I can stop the scanning process right now and hand it over if you need to go.”
“Five minutes is probably enough time, right?” she asked.
“I can make that work,” he said. “It’s just doing its thing right now, searching for any additional problems.” He hesitated like he was engaged in an internal debate. Then he leaned toward Lola and quietly said, “There is something I should probably show you on here.”
“Oh?” Her voice rose a couple of octaves, and she seemed to realize this wasn’t going to be good news.
“See this.” He pointed to the screen, but Ree couldn’t see what he was referring to from her spot on the living room floor.
She tucked her feet underneath her bottom and grabbed another handful of the snack. “This is so amazing. What all is in here?”
Angie had been staring at Lola. The younger woman cleared her throat and started listing off the ingredients. While she did, she stared at the bowl.
“This is called spyware,” Quint explained so low Ree had to strain to hear him.
“What’s that exactly?” Lola asked, sounding a little put off.
“It’s probably what you think it is. It’s a way for someone to access your computer remotely,” he explained quietly.
“Like, they don’t have to be in the room?” she asked.
“They don’t even have to be in the building,” he stated. “This program will allow the person on the other end to read your emails and see what websites you’re on.”
Lola exhaled a slow breath.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said.
“I didn’t touch it. Whoever installed this would know if I blocked access,” he said.
“I see.” Lola’s shoulders straightened and her back was now ramrod straight. Chin up, she said, “I appreciate knowing what is happening.”
“I just thought you should be aware,” he said with a whole lot of compassion and sympathy.
She nodded, and even from the adjacent room it was easy to see she was trying to hold back tears.
“And pretzels,” Angie said proudly.
“Without them, it wouldn’t be this addictive.” Ree rejoined the conversation. Was Lola really so naive that she didn’t think her criminal boyfriend would keep tabs on her? Based on her reaction to the news, the answer was yes. Was it possible Lola had no idea Constantin was a criminal?
More questions joined those when Ree saw the sweet, angelic face fill the screen as Quint closed down the program scanning for more viruses. Turned out, the real cancer was Constantin. In Lola’s life? On Lola’s computer? On society.
Worse yet, was he the father of her child?
“I BETTER GO. Thank you for everything,” Lola said to Quint.
He’d debated keeping the information to himself, but her reaction told him a whole lot about the state of her relationship with Constantin. He closed out the window running the scan when it was finished, and then handed over her laptop. “You have a beautiful kid there.”
“Thank you,” Lola said with a smile that would warm the room in a freeze. “Lili is my life.”
There was something about the way she said those last few words mixed with the wistful look on her face that made him realize she would do anything for that kid. Possibly even stay in a relationship that was no good for her.
Angie said her goodbyes as she followed Lola out the door after Quint handed over the laptop. Lola thanked him more times than necessary for his help. She turned to Ree.
“I’ll see you later tonight,” Lola said.
“See you soon,” Ree stated.
Ree cleaned up the dishes in the living room before setting the half-empty trail mix bowl in front of him. Neither spoke until they heard Angie’s door close and the elevator ding.
“I’m just going to check,” Ree whispered as she walked over to the peephole. Her silence had him curious as to what was going down in the hall. It took a solid minute for the elevator to ding again, and then Ree came around the corner. “She stood in front of our door like she was contemplating knocking.”
“I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to tell her about the spyware or not,” he admitted. “She might have wanted to come back to ask questions.”
“She needed to know,” she said. “But I did see how shocked she was when you told her.”
“It was the last thing she expected to hear,” he agreed.
“Do you think it’s possible she doesn’t know what line of work Constantin is in?” Ree took the seat next to him. She seemed careful to keep her leg to her side, ensuring there was no incidental physical contact.
“It’s hard to say,” he stated.
“Maybe she’ll start questioning her relationships more,” Ree surmised.
He nodded as he inserted the flash drive into his laptop. “We got lucky that she doesn’t have a MacBook.”
“I’m guilty of the same thing,” Ree said. Her expression was all business now when it came to him. It was probably for the best this way. Keep everything professional and not blur the lines, because it was quicksand—easy to step into and impossible to get out.
He pulled up the picture of Lola’s child. “What do you think the chances are Constantin is this kid’s father?”
“How old would you say this kid is?” Ree asked, studying the photo.
“Two and a half to three years,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Lola has only been in the country for two years. A pregnancy lasts nine months, so that means she would have known the guy three to four years ago when she was still in Argentina.”
“Constantin is Romanian, so the odds he would have been in Argentina seem slim,” Quint reasoned. “I’ll send Grappell another email to ask how far back our intel goes to see if there’s a chance he was in South America. He did just send an address for a warehouse not too far from here associated with the company All Transport. Said we might want to check it out.”
“Okay. Duly noted.” Something else caused her stance to shift, soften.
“I know we’re supposed to follow the facts and not let personal beliefs or intuition cloud our judgment, but I really don’t want Lola to be like one of those jerks.”
“There’s a quality to her that makes it feel impossible to me, too,” he said.
“It would be hard to fool both of us,” she reasoned.
“All we can do is keep ourselves open to both possibilities,” he finally said.
“Agreed,” she said before glancing at the time. “Holy hell, I have to get ready for work.”
“While you do that, I’ll see what I can find on the flash drive,” he said.
“You didn’t install spyware on her system, did you?” Ree asked as she stood up and then pushed the chair in.
“No. Whoever installed the spyware in the first place knows enough about computers to make it dangerous for me to take that route. I just copied everything,” he said.
“Right. That’s smart,” she said.
“Thank you,” he responded, figuring he’d take all the compliments he could get at this point. As it was, he felt like a jerk for his reactions earlier. There was no reason to take out his frustration about working with another agency on Ree.
He needed to remind himself of the fact every chance he got, because he’d picked up on the distrust in her eyes since the phone call with Bjorn.
Quint clicked on the mail icon. It was password-protected. He figured Lola would use the same one as before, the one that unlocked her computer and felt like a birthday. He tapped his fingers on the counter as he tried to recall the numbers. They came to him after a few seconds. He entered the numbers 0424.
The mail opened and filled his screen. Could he get the answers they sought there?