Dani didn’t bother taking her Jeep to Lauren’s apartment. It was easier to park at home and walk the few blocks. The park across the street tempted her to find a sunny patch of grass and sit with a book.
Quinn had told her five days ago that his computer was on the fritz again, so the news hadn’t surprised her. The main reason she agreed to Ethan’s request to look at the computer was because sooner or later she would end up doing it. She might as well do it while Quinn wasn’t hovering over her shoulder trying to understand everything she did. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the smarts to learn. Dani just didn’t have the patience to teach him—or anyone. There were classes at the community college in Birch Bend, but the most motivated people would figure it out the way she did. Just start doing it. If you’re good at it and manage to solve a practical problem, keep doing it. If you’re not good at it, then find something else to do. Dani had learned to fix most anything around a house by the same reasoned approach of testing a theory and learning from the experience, whether in failure or triumph.
Dani had never been up to the apartments above the shops on Main Street. On the street level, shops with varying signage and entry styles broke up the monotony of red brick. On the second story in this block, four sets of windows were evenly spaced across the front. Quinn once told Dani that almost certainly the original shop owners had lived above their enterprises because they rarely had time off, and of course the Main Street structures were built before the advent of automobiles. Only the wealthiest Hidden Falls families operated businesses in town but lived on outlying acreage. Where Quinn came up with that tidbit, Dani didn’t know, but it was the sort of thing a history teacher would tuck away in his brain. Maybe he read it in the files of the Hidden Falls Historical Society.
Or maybe he made it up to see how many legs he could pull.
Dani ignored the elevator and took the stairs up to the apartments and found the one marked D. She only knocked once and the door opened. Dani looked down at Nicole sitting in a chair with a boot cast on one foot.
“Thank you for coming.” Nicole rolled away from the door.
“What happened to you?” Dani stepped into the apartment.
“Clumsy.”
Dani scanned the apartment, which was a cozy mixture of historical ambiance and modern convenience, from the original fireplace to the mismatched built-in cabinets to the unskillfully cut baseboards. The house Dani rented was a 1950s prefab down the block from the one her parents had occupied before they finally admitted that, though they had grown up in Hidden Falls, they detested small-town life. Her landlord gave her a steep break on the rent in exchange for handling all the upkeep for the three houses he owned and rented out.
“The computer is over here,” Nicole said.
Dani could see it just fine. She didn’t need a guided tour.
“Ethan said he explained to you what we’re trying to do.” Nicole used her good foot to steer from the door to the table. “The first question is whether or not you can get it running. I sure hope so.”
“Sometimes I think Quinn holds it together with chewing gum.” Dani pulled out a chair, sat in front of the computer, and pressed the power button. Ethan and Nicole flanked her. “Um, can I have some room to work, please?”
Ethan rolled Nicole around to the other side of the table, where he sat down directly across from Dani. She would have preferred they go wait in the other room but supposed it would be rude to say so. Necessity had developed in her some tolerance of hovering customers desperate either not to lose data or not to have to shell out for a new computer—or both. Quinn’s laptop whirred and then shut off, just as she had expected it would. In response, Dani simultaneously pressed an arrangement of several keys, a strategy that worked often enough that she defaulted to it when she was troubleshooting PCs. If the computer stayed on, she could run diagnostics and narrow down where the glitch was happening.
Across the table, Nicole responded to the encouraging sounds by wiggling and leaning forward.
Dani clicked for a list of Wi-Fi networks. She could guess from the name, Faithworks, which one was Lauren’s. She allowed herself a half-inch shake of the head when she saw the network was unsecure. Why did people leave themselves so vulnerable and then complain about being hacked?
It took another twenty minutes before Dani was reasonably certain that the computer was not in danger of imminent death. Quinn was going to need a new one soon. Dani would steer him toward a Mac if for no other reason than she preferred fiddling with them, and Quinn was sure to keep coming to her with his questions.
“Okay, I think my work here is finished,” Dani said.
“Wait!” Nicole’s urgent tone made Dani look up. “Didn’t Ethan tell you we’re looking for some information?”
“He mentioned it.”
“I can snoop around for half the night,” Nicole said, “but I have a feeling you know Quinn’s computer pretty well. You know how he stores information. Just think how much faster it would be if you helped us.”
Dani looked from Ethan’s brown eyes to Nicole’s green eyes. She was in this far. She might as well find out what they had in mind. “What are you looking for?”
“Try to reconstruct where he has spent his time online in the last thirty days.” Nicole licked her lips. “Credit card activity, bank accounts, deleted e-mails.”
She’s done this before, Dani thought.
“That’s a lot of personal information.”
“In my experience as an investigative reporter, that’s where the clues are.”
“Does Cooper know you’re doing this?”
Nicole huffed her breath out. “Do you really think he’d turn his head if he did?”
Never.
Dani knew the password to Quinn’s Internet browser, and unless he had heeded her recent warnings, his e-mail password wasn’t much different. People would be surprised at how many passwords Dani had in her head—or could figure out—because they’d made no effort to keep them secret when Dani needed access to an account to troubleshoot. Most people seemed to think of a password as a necessary nuisance for getting onto sites they used frequently, rather than considering what would raise a barrier to someone else trying to get on those same sites. If Ethan and Nicole thought long enough, they would come up with Quinn’s password. Dani saved them a couple of days—during which time Quinn probably would come home anyway—and scanned the list of sites Quinn had visited in the last few weeks.
“Nothing here,” she said. “Just the usual stuff.”
“What does that mean?” Nicole said. “What’s his usual stuff?”
“Book orders, the place he likes to buy his shirts from, teacher resources, history sites.”
“Can’t you be more specific? Broad categories won’t give me anything to chase down. And you didn’t mention anything financial.”
“Hacking into his bank account is over the line.”
“You don’t have to look,” Nicole said. “Just get me in. I’ll look.”
Dani wasn’t going to let two people who hadn’t seen Quinn in ten years look at his bank records. “If I get in,” she said, knowing that she would, “I am getting right back out if I don’t see anything suspicious.”
“Who’s to say what’s suspicious?” Nicole started to roll herself around the table.
Dani closed the browser window. “Either you trust me or the deal is off.”
“Why can’t you trust me enough to believe I want to help Quinn?” Nicole parked herself next to Dani and stared at the background on Quinn’s screen.
“Why can’t you keep your nose out of Quinn’s private business?” Dani turned her head and glared at Nicole, who apparently didn’t understand the concept of asking nicely for favors.
“I want to find Quinn.” Nicole spoke through a clenched jaw and gritted teeth. “After five days, during which no one has seen him or heard from him, you can’t possibly be a hundred percent sure that he’s all right.”
“And you can’t be sure anything is wrong.” Dani leaned in near Nicole’s face, daring her not to pull back.
“Ladies!” Ethan was on his feet now. “Let’s all keep our cool.”
“Shut up.” Nicole and Dani spoke in unexpected unison, though neither turned to look at Ethan.
He came around the table and pulled Nicole’s chair back about two feet. “Nobody is going to help Quinn this way.”
Dani leaned back in her chair and eyed Nicole. “Here’s my final offer. I will look at his bank account, which is way out of my comfort zone. In exchange, you have to admit that I know him better than you do right now and trust my judgment about whether anything looks unusual. And I’m not looking back any more than thirty days.”
Nicole pressed her lips together. “Fine. Thank you.”
The arrangement wasn’t anywhere close to what Nicole wanted, but Dani was more interested in protecting Quinn’s privacy than satisfying Nicole’s curiosity.
Dani logged onto the bank’s website and tried slight variations of core password elements she knew Quinn had used in the past on various accounts. She watched the clock at the top of the computer screen, knowing she had limited time before the site would lock her out.
“I’m in,” she said finally.
Nicole started to roll forward.
“You come any closer, I’ll shut this down.” Dani held a finger over the computer’s power button.
“Sorry,” Nicole muttered. “Reflex.”
Dani’s eyes widened at what she saw.
“What?” Nicole said.
Dani turned slowly toward Nicole. “If we can believe these transactions, he’s in St. Louis.”