Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
O live squeezed her phone, unable to get Tom’s words out of her mind.
Her father a con artist? All the fake identities he’d made his family take on weren’t because he worked for the government? Instead, it was because he wanted to scam people out of their money?
It didn’t make any sense. Yet in another way it made perfect sense.
A slight pounding started at Olive’s temples.
“Ollie?” Tom asked. “Are you still there?”
She pulled herself from her thoughts and cleared her throat. “Do you have any proof?”
“I’ve been gathering it, and I’d be happy to share what I have with you. But the truth is one of his aliases was that he worked for the FBI. That’s what has made all this even more complicated.”
Olive wanted to ask more questions. Before she could, someone pounded at her door.
Who was here? She hadn’t had anyone over since she moved into the apartment. Her address, however, was on file with Conglomerate.
“Unfortunately, I need to go,” she told Tom. “But I want to talk to you more about this later.”
“Of course.”
“Just one more thing. My father’s secrets . . . they’re why my father was killed, aren’t they? It wasn’t an enemy he made through the FBI who murdered my family.”
Her family’s killer had never been found.
The police had thrown out a lot of theories. They’d had three main suspects. A grifter named Bobby Lewis who just happened to be in town that night. A career criminal and town troublemaker Richard Tyson who had a long list of violent offenses. And Larry Leblanc, a man her father had accused of doing a shoddy job on some electrical work at the church.
But no arrests had been made, and the case had gone cold.
Now, it felt as if her family’s murder was all but forgotten.
But not by Olive. Never by Olive.
“Initially, I did take you in to protect you,” Tom said. “I was operating based on what I knew at the time, which wasn’t all accurate.”
The pounding sounded again.
Impatience rippled through her. She wanted to ignore whoever was here and finish this conversation. But she needed to see who was at the door.
“I have to go,” she told him.
“Good night, Ollie.” He paused. “And please don’t do anything rash. Let what I told you sink in, and then we’ll talk again.”
She ended the call and tucked her phone into the pocket of her sweatpants. Then she grabbed the gun from her kitchen counter. She held it behind her as she approached the door.
Whoever was here was clearly anxious to talk to her. The knocks sounded urgent.
But she had no idea who it might be.
When she leaned toward the peephole and peered outside, her lungs froze, and she realized her headache was not even close to being gone.
Olive tucked her gun into the drawer of the hallway table. Then she ran a hand through her dark, curly hair, trying to appear put together.
Finally, she pulled the door open and scrunched her eyebrows together. “Duncan?”
“Olive . . . sorry to stop by uninvited.” Duncan shifted, the bags under his eyes bigger than usual. Not only that, but his shirt was wrinkled and his tie loose. He looked rough.
Very unlike Duncan.
“Come on in.” She extended her hand behind her.
As Duncan stepped inside, Olive glanced in the hallway to see if anyone else was there.
An empty hallway stared back.
She closed the door and turned to her temporary boss, still on edge about his presence here. “Can I get you something to drink?”
He rubbed his chin. “Actually, some water would be nice.”
She grabbed a glass and filled it with filtered water from a pitcher on her counter. Then she handed it to Duncan and watched as he took a long drink.
She directed him to a small table in the kitchen, where they sat across from each other.
Olive waited for him to start. If Duncan had come here, he had a good reason.
“I wanted to check on you.” Weariness etched his voice. “I know it couldn’t have been easy to find Beau the way you did.”
Olive nodded slowly. “It was shocking, to say the least. But I’m okay.”
“I don’t know how someone got a gun past security or why they targeted Beau. Maybe they were after some information, and Beau got in the way.”
This man was on the verge of a breakdown. This had to be about more than just Beau, right? Olive’s best guess was that someone went to get information from the SCI corridor when Beau appeared, making Beau a casualty.
“Did you notice anything missing?” She crossed her legs, carefully choosing her words. “I’m sure the police have asked you that also.”
“Jason and I have been combing through things, trying to figure that out. So far, we haven’t discovered anything missing. But that doesn’t mean that someone didn’t take pictures of some of our documents . . . documents with critical information on them.”
Olive swallowed hard. “That’s unfortunate.”
He ran a hand over his face again. “To say the least.”
“Did you check the log to see who entered the corridor?”
“Something happened to the log. It was erased.”
She blinked. That meant that whoever had killed Beau knew his or her way around the computer network. That meant he or she knew their way around the building, around the company’s operations, around security.
This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill criminal. This person was highly intelligent, driven, and motivated.
She shifted in her seat, trying not to appear overly anxious. “What about security footage?”
“Also tampered with.” He slouched back in his chair as if tired of holding himself upright. “We’ve often been targeted. Many people want to get their hands on the technology we develop.”
“That makes sense,” Olive murmured.
“I’m trying to figure out if there’s a better way to keep this top-secret information secure. The SCI corridor is an industry standard. But now I’m wondering if there are still holes that would allow the area to be breached.”
“Any ideas yet?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
If anyone could come up with a plan, it was Duncan. The man was brilliant.
He’d started this company after developing a new email encryption service that had been sold to the government. Last Olive had heard, they were still using it.
The company had continued to grow and flourish under Duncan’s leadership.
Even though Duncan had hired her, that didn’t mean he was innocent. However, she had no idea what his motive might be. For most, it would be money. But Duncan was already filthy rich.
However, she had to keep an open mind.
Someone stood to gain a lot of money by selling this technology that could destroy so many lives if it got into the wrong hands.
This was the most high-stakes investigation Olive had ever been a part of. She was honored Rex thought she could handle it, especially considering the fact other agents had so much more experience than she did.
She shifted in her seat before leaning forward with her elbows on the table. “Duncan, is there any reason in particular you stopped by?”
His gaze met hers. “I know I hired you to find the mole. But I need you to be careful. You’re poking around, and I fear the person who killed Beau might target you next.”