10

How did Anissa and Ryan wind up at Lisa Palmer’s house?” Adam asked as Leigh drove them back to Sabrina’s lab.

“They had been at the lake all morning, but they were headed back to the sheriff’s office when they heard about the explosion. They drove straight to the house,” Leigh said from the front seat of her car.

Sabrina had slid into the back beside Adam, and she’d not objected when he’d reached for her hand. Her fingers had laced through his almost before she’d realized what was happening. His thumb made tiny circles across hers.

Somehow, after everything that had happened today, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

“Did Ryan happen to say if they found anything in the lake?” Adam asked.

“A whole lot of nothing.” Leigh drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “They’re with Gabe at Lisa Palmer’s house now.”

Sabrina studied her friend. There was something about Leigh’s tone, her stiff shoulders, her busy hands that didn’t feel right.

“How much burned?” Adam asked.

“My understanding is it’s a total loss. What didn’t burn was soaked by the time the fire department finished putting out the blaze.”

The odds of them recovering anything from the house would be infinitesimally small.

“How’s Gabe handling it?” Adam squeezed Sabrina’s hand as he spoke, and when she looked up she found his eyes roving over her face. She must have looked rough.

Not that she cared.

Or she didn’t usually care.

Why should she care now?

“He’s . . .” Leigh’s voice trailed off.

“Yeah,” Adam said.

“She didn’t say anything,” Sabrina whispered to Adam.

Leigh chuckled. “Sorry, Sabrina,” she said. “Adam was reading between the lines. Same as Ryan and Anissa have. That’s why they’re with him. Gabe’s a wreck. He’s worried about the case. He’s worried about you and Adam. He’s worried about finding who fired that RPG. He’s worried about who is behind this and what they’re capable of. And most of all, he’s worried they—whoever they are—will find whatever it is they’re looking for before he does.”

“He told you all that?” She’d never imagined Gabe would be that forthcoming about his insecurities.

“No.”

Then how did she—oh. “You got all that from his body language?”

“Pretty much. That and because the more time I spend with Ryan, the more I learn about how cops are and how they think. And Gabe is a very good cop. He’s also a friend.”

She made eye contact with Sabrina in the rearview mirror. “And he’s dealing with a lot of rage right now. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see steam coming from his ears. Anissa was the only one who could get him calmed down enough to stay still for the X-rays at the hospital.”

“Anissa? Wow.” Adam continued to speak to Leigh, but his eyes never left Sabrina’s face.

“Yeah. Go figure,” Leigh said. “They’ve come a long way. I’m not sure what happened, but there’s been a noticeable thaw between them since y’all helped that friend of Gabe’s with that boat that was sunk in Lake Porter.”

“Miracles never cease,” Adam said.

Was he still talking about Gabe? She wasn’t sure anymore. He reached toward Sabrina’s face with his free hand and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. His thumb traced her cheek as it passed by and the heat of that gentle caress startled her. She almost leaned into his palm but caught herself.

What was she doing?

This was a bad idea. A terrible idea. She’d had this conversation with herself before. Adam Campbell needed a certain type of woman.

She wasn’t that type. She couldn’t be that type. And if she cared about him, she needed to remove herself from consideration.

She straightened in the seat but couldn’t bring herself to pull her hand away from his. She could enjoy this. For now. Right?

“Dr. Sloan got him out of there as fast as he could. I told Ryan to be sure he gets him back to the house tonight. I’ll set up a mini-clinic and check out all three of you again. How long do you think you’ll be at the lab?”

“I’m not sure. A couple of hours at least.” Sabrina turned to Adam. “Do you need to go to your office?”

His hand tightened around hers. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“But—”

“No.”

If Gabe had been steaming earlier, Adam was practically vibrating. Probably the same causes. Rage. Frustration. Worry. Stress.

Regardless, there was no point in fighting it. Sabrina closed her eyes and tried to settle her own nerves.

The next thing she was aware of, Adam was rubbing her arm. “Bri?” He spoke her name with gentle reverence.

“Did I fall asleep?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sorry to wake you.”

“It’s okay.”

Leigh was looking at her phone. “Ryan says he’s going to have a couple of deputies on the scene bring you your car. He said it was undamaged.”

“Great.” Adam released Sabrina’s hand and climbed from the car. She waited. Seconds later, he opened her door. “Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For letting me be a gentleman.”

She took the hand he extended. Wow. She was stiff. Between this morning’s attack and this afternoon’s explosion, her entire body ached. Her legs didn’t want to work, and rather than stepping away from the car the way she’d intended, she tripped and stumbled. Right into Adam. He caught her with her face mere inches from his.

The air between them hummed.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For being a gentleman.”

He cleared his throat and steadied her, making sure she wasn’t going to fall over before he released her. “I try.”

“Are you two sure you’re okay?” Leigh asked from behind the wheel. “I don’t know about this.”

“We’re good,” Adam said. “When we finish here, I’ll take Sabrina to her place to pack a bag and we’ll come stay with you.”

“Okay. I expect you to work quickly,” Leigh said. “You both have been through a lot of trauma today. At some point, your bodies are going to crash. You can only keep them going by sheer force of will for so long. You need to be in a place where you can let down your guard and get some rest when that happens.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Adam tried to keep a straight face but failed.

“I’m not kidding, Adam Campbell. I’m speaking as both a medical professional and someone with firsthand experience. You may be willing to test my theory, but I know you don’t want Sabrina to.”

Adam bit down on his lip. “You’re right. We’ll work as fast as we can.”

“Excellent. Be careful.”

“We will.”

Adam closed the door and Leigh drove away. He slid an arm around Sabrina as they walked to the lab.

“Did Leigh seem a bit tense to you?” she asked.

“A bit?”

“That’s a yes?”

Adam held the door for her. “Sorry for the sarcasm. She’s more than a bit stressed.”

“What’s wrong?” Sabrina pushed the up arrow for the elevator.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No . . .”

He pointed to her bandaged wrist and the stitches in her forehead, then pointed to his own head.

“She’s worried about us?” Sabrina stepped into the elevator and Adam followed.

“Very.”

“What aren’t you telling me? Or what am I missing that should be obvious?” There must be something.

Adam looked at the sides of the elevator. “Are you going to make me spell it out for you?”

“If you don’t, I’m going to be wondering what’s going on.”

He didn’t speak as they walked to the lab entrance, or as she leaned forward for the iris scan, or as they walked into the dark room. The motion-activated lights flickered on one by one, and she waited as he made a silent inspection of the lab and her office.

“Everything clear?” she asked.

“As far as I can tell.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m still trying to figure out how to do it.”

“I’m not sure what’s so difficult about this.” Sabrina unlocked the evidence closet. “You open your mouth. Words come out.”

“Fine,” he said. “We almost died at Lisa Palmer’s house a few hours ago. We don’t know who fired the RPG or where they might be hiding. While we may want to assume the attack was intended not to kill us but to destroy evidence, the reality is that the person who fired knew where we were and knew there was a good chance we would not be able to get away in time.”

“I understand all of that,” she said. None of this was new information.

“Ryan, Anissa, and Gabe are all there. Now.”

The weight of Adam’s observation settled over her and the walls suddenly seemed to close in. She reached for a chair and sat down. Hard.

“I’m sorry.” Adam knelt in front of her. “I was trying not to scare you.”

“What if he comes back? What if he kills them?”

Adam didn’t shrug off her worries. He didn’t even try to ease them. She wasn’t imagining the risk.

“That’s why she’s stressed.” Now it made sense.

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you’re stressed.”

“Yes.”

“And why you’ve agreed to stay at Leigh’s tonight.”

“Yes.” Adam rested his hands on her knees. “Let’s get this taken care of so we can get over there.”

He stood. It took him a lot longer than it should have. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He gave her a tight smile. “It’s nothing that won’t heal. Are you okay?”

Was she?

She’d almost died today. Twice. And she hadn’t had time to think about it. Maybe she could talk to Leigh tonight. Leigh might be able to help her make some sense out of the jumble of emotions flooding through her.

Relief at being alive. Fear for her friends—and herself. Worry about what she was going to find on this hard drive and what implications it might have for her own family.

And then there was the way her heart ricocheted around in her chest whenever Adam touched her. The way chills raced across her skin and her breath caught in her chest.

If she kissed him, would he respond the way she shouldn’t hope he would?

She looked at him, still waiting on her to respond to his question, and she knew.

He would.

“Bri?”

She was looking at him . . . no, she was looking . . . at his mouth? No. But?

No.

She shook her head like she was trying to clear it, then winced. If she felt anything like he did right now, she had to be hurting.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Let me see if I can get anything off this drive.”

He watched as she connected the drive to a write blocker. He’d learned all about them when they were setting up the procedures between her lab and the sheriff’s office. The write blocker kept anything from accidentally being written onto the hard drive and prevented anything currently on the hard drive from being modified. Going through this step kept everything forensically sound and was critical if they ever needed to use anything she recovered from the hard drive as evidence in court.

He breathed a huge sigh of relief when she was able to power up the drive and successfully duplicate it. Once the original drive was safely tucked back into the evidence closet, her forensic software scanned all the recovered files, indexed them, and then marked them if they were damaged or encrypted.

And a lot of them were encrypted.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” She gave him a gleeful smile. “I love cracking encryptions.”

He loved to watch her work, but today he needed to stay focused. And it wasn’t like he could do anything to help her. When she started talking about building custom dictionaries to use as an attack on the encrypted files, whatever that meant, he left her to it.

He returned to the computer he’d claimed and continued his own search into the life of Lisa Palmer. Where she’d come from, what she’d done, how she’d spent her money, where she’d liked to eat, play, shop, vacation.

Nothing was too small to consider.

He owed it to her.

No matter what she’d done, she’d come to him—or tried to come to him—for help. The least he could do was help her now.

But there wasn’t much to work with.

Lisa Palmer had worked alone. She’d been a good neighbor and had a good relationship with her sister.

No romantic liaisons.

Gabe had people interviewing the rest of her neighbors, but Adam didn’t expect much to come from that.

She had bank accounts at Carrington First and at a national bank. She had some retirement and investment accounts with national funds—but no local financial advisor.

No surprise there. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to have access to her financials.

He kept digging. Kept clicking. Until the words and numbers started swimming on the screen. He checked the clock. Almost eight.

“Bri?” He hadn’t heard anything more than the clicking of her keyboard in at least an hour. When she didn’t respond, he stood.

Wow. His back was one solid sheet of agony. No way he’d be able to get comfortable enough to sleep tonight. He twisted, shifted, and rolled his shoulders and neck before stepping away from the desk. “Bri?”

She had earbuds in. Her eyes fixed on the screen in front of her. Hands flying.

Wow. She was beautiful.

Without warning, she tossed her hands in the air—and grimaced as she reached back to massage the base of her neck. A pained and tired—yet satisfied—grin stretched across her face. “Gotcha.”

She caught him watching her and her face flushed. “It will take a while to get through all these files, but I’ve been able to crack 98 percent of them.”

“Awesome.”

“Yeah.” Her grin faded.

“What is it?”

She pulled a flash drive from the computer. “I’m wondering what we’re going to find. I have a bad feeling about this. Like it’s not going to be good.”

“Do you mean about your dad?”

“My dad. Yes. But also whoever she was working for that killed her. That tried to kill us. You don’t go around blowing up people with an RPG over a few years of tax evasion.”

“Well, we would hope not.”

That remark earned him a flicker of a smile. He needed to get her out of there. Somewhere she could decompress.

“Bri?” She looked up. “Can we go home?”

Relief mixed with something he couldn’t quite put a finger on crossed her face. “Yes.”

It took her a while to back everything up, shut everything down, and get to her feet. She moved slowly. He knew she had to be in agony and didn’t try to rush her. She winced as she retrieved her bag from the floor beside her desk. “Ready.”

When they stepped into the hall, they were met by two uniformed officers standing on either side of the door. Both of whom looked like they’d just graduated high school and couldn’t possibly be old enough to be on the force. He recognized one of them. Ben something. “Ben? What’s going on?”

“Hey, Adam, Dr. Fleming,” Ben said. “We’re here to escort you wherever you wish to go.”

“Seriously?” Sabrina looked at Adam. “You need a bodyguard?”

“Investigators Chavez, Parker, and Bell insisted, ma’am.” The other officer nodded at Sabrina in a manner that was all too appreciative and not nearly deferential enough. “My name’s Zac,” he said. “I was standing there when they were talking to the captain. I don’t know what you two are doing, but it must be crucial to the investigation.”

“Dr. Fleming is a cybersecurity and computer forensics expert,” Adam said. “At this point, she is the investigation.”

Zac shared a look with Ben. “Yes, sir.”

“They seemed to think you were pretty important as well, sir,” Ben said.

So they sent baby cops to babysit them? Why didn’t he feel safer?

“Fine,” he said. “We’re headed to Dr. Fleming’s place so she can pack a bag. Then we’re going to a friend’s house for the night.”

“Together?” Zac’s implication was clear.

“Oh, no, I mean—” Sabrina started to explain.

“Yes.” Adam placed a hand on Sabrina’s back. They didn’t owe this little punk an explanation, and when Sabrina wasn’t present, he would be sure to point out to him how inappropriate that remark had been.

“Of course, sir. Sorry.”

He would be. They didn’t speak as they took the elevator down to the main floor. When the doors opened, Ben put his arm out. “Sir, if you don’t mind . . .”

Adam leaned against the elevator wall. “Go ahead.” Sabrina followed his lead and waited with him.

The officers stepped out and returned a few moments later. “We’re clear.”

Two minutes later they were in Adam’s car, the young officers following them. “What was that about?” Sabrina asked. “You let that guy get the wrong impression. He thinks we’re . . . well, you know.”

Yeah. He knew. “He was already thinking that,” Adam said. “His job is to do his job. Not to question you about your activities.”

“I don’t know about that.” Sabrina looked out the window. “Seems like he was trying to understand the situation fully so he would know how best to act.”

“He was trying to understand the situation fully so he would know if he could ask you out,” Adam said.

Sabrina scoffed. “Unlikely.”

“Absolute certainty.”

“You’re biased,” she said.

“You got that right. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

She laughed. “He’s not my type anyway.”

She had a type? He wanted to know what her type was, but what if she said she could only see herself with another academic? Like that Mike guy she was talking about earlier. Or maybe she preferred body builders. Or guys who were good with their hands—woodworkers or artists. Or musicians.

But she didn’t elaborate. Maybe he could get her to say more. “Not your type?”

“Definitely not.”

That wasn’t helpful.

She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. “I’m not sure if I have ever been this tired,” she said. “It’s not that I’m sleepy. It’s more like an all-encompassing fatigue. My body hurts. My mind won’t shut down, even though it needs to.”

He reached for her hand and she laced her fingers through his. They rode the rest of the way to her house in silence. The baby cops went inside her house first, gave them the all clear, then returned to their car. Adam followed Sabrina inside and then sat in her tiny living area while she packed. She said she only needed ten minutes.

He scanned the small space, intrigued by what it might tell him about this woman who had completely taken over his mind and heart.

There were a few magazines. Some fun figurines.

But only one picture, and it wasn’t of her family.

A small four-by-six snapshot sat on the tiny corner table. A young Sabrina—she might have been eight or nine—smiled at a stunning Hispanic woman. The woman was probably in her twenties, and she was smiling at Sabrina with a level of adoration that pierced his heart.

This must be Rosita.

And at least in the moment this photograph captured, it was clear she’d adored Sabrina.

He needed to talk to Sabrina about her relationship with her family and what made her think Rosita had been a slave.

But the day had been so crazy that there hadn’t been time.

Tomorrow they would make time.