Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
SYLVIE
“Thank you again, Miss Calloway,” the smoothly professional female voice said. “I appreciate your patience. We should have this fixed in the next forty-eight hours, and your new cards overnighted to the address on file.”
“Great, thank you,” I said.
The address on file was my parents’, states away.
But hey, at least my checking and savings accounts were functional again and intact, thanks to whatever it was Emmett had done in the back end of the accounts.
The fraud departments of my credit card companies and the bank had been apologetic and helpful.
There would be a delay, cards canceled, reissued, and I’d have to ask my parents to overnight them, but that seemed like a small inconvenience compared to being cut off from my money.
I hung up and looked to Emmett. His dark eyes were satisfied.
Mostly. There was something behind that satisfaction, something calculating.
I got the feeling he was always working the angles.
Now was no different. He’d wanted to help.
I believed that. But he had more on his mind than fixing my frozen accounts.
He proved it when he said, “Even once you get your cards, you can’t use them.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. He was right.
“Until whoever did this is neutralized, we have to assume they can follow your movements through those cards.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I understand. Damn it.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re getting there.” Emmett glanced down at the screen of his phone before sticking it in his pocket.
“What if I opened new accounts? Moved my cash over?” I asked, trying to work my way through the problem. “But if he got into my accounts once, what’s to say he couldn’t do it again?”
Emmett nodded his head. “If you open a new account somewhere else, they’ll pull your credit, which is probably an easy enough way for him to track you. For now, just sit tight. Like I said, we’re getting closer.”
I grumbled internally. I knew he was right, but this sucked. And it was scary. Someone was tracking me through my electronic footprint, and it was almost impossible not to leave one. I could only do it now because of Sinclair Security. If I were on my own out there, I’d be totally screwed.
Emmett gathered up a thick file folder he’d been leafing through while I was on the phone.
“I’ve got something to show the team right now,” he said. “But later, remind me to tell you what I uncovered.”
“Why not just tell me now?” I asked, standing.
“Because it’s not solid. It’s progress, but not enough. I need to dig a little bit more. But I think your part of it will be resolved sooner than later.”
My part of it. My part of what? Emily Shaw’s murder? The bomber’s reign of terror?
The journalist in me wanted to push, but I’d been around Emmett enough to know when he was done talking, and the last thing I wanted was to annoy him.
At the moment, he liked me well enough, and he’d gone above and beyond to help me fix the problem with my credit cards and bank.
I wasn’t going to pay him back by irritating him with questions he wasn’t going to answer.
I either had to be patient or get what I needed another way.
We walked back into Hacker Central to see roughly half of the cubicles scattered around the room occupied by Sinclair team members with headsets, their fingers flashing over keyboards when they weren’t gripping a mug of coffee or an energy drink.
On the tables in the center of the room, I saw what looked like the postal bin from South Carolina.
Nearby, Eli sat at a cubicle studying sheets of paper spread across the desk in front of him.
His hair curled at the base of his skull, where it was just a little long.
I wanted to sink my fingers in and rub at the tight muscles there.
Later. Here, I had to keep my distance, no matter how weird it was starting to feel not to touch him whenever I wanted.
“Where’s Mad and Wren?” Emmett asked.
Eli set down his pen and spun in his chair, a smile lighting his face as he spotted us. “Good news?” he asked.
“Very good news,” I said. “I talked to the credit card companies and the bank. All the flags have been removed. They’re issuing new cards. I should be good to go—assuming whoever froze the accounts in the first place doesn’t decide to do it again.”
“Unlikely,” Maddox rumbled, coming around the corner, Wren on his heels, paper cups in both of their hands.
“But possible,” Eli said. “We’ll deal with that if it happens. But hey—forward progress is good, right?”
I tried not to smile back at him, ever conscious of keeping a distance between us in the middle of all of these very observant eyeballs.
“I found something,” Emmett said. He flashed a glance at me. “A few things, actually. But this one is developed enough to move on.” He held up the file he’d carried with him. Setting it down on the table between all of us, he opened it.
Sheet after sheet of letter-sized paper covered in lines of numbers, letters, symbols.
I wished, not for the first time, that I understood something about programming.
Because maybe that was computer code. Or a code, like a cypher.
Or maybe it was just random shit printed on endless pieces of paper.
Emmett ran his finger along a line on one of the pages like it meant something.
Maybe it did to him. “I got into Emily Shaw’s phone and traced communications going from her to a data broker sometimes based in Atlanta.
I don’t know if whatever she was working on was bringing her here or—” He paused and stared at Eli for a weirdly long moment before he said, “Or if there’s another connection that was bringing her this way.
But it’s possible she went to see this data broker when she came to Atlanta to meet with someone at Sinclair Security. ”
“Maybe the data broker is the reason she never made it here,” Wren said.
I looked to the woman standing beside Maddox, curious.
Except for Maddox, I’d only met Eli’s team in passing, but I knew Wren was about my age, maybe a little older.
She appeared completely unassuming—shorter than me, slight of build, her blonde hair pulled back in a stubby ponytail, no jewelry or makeup, wearing a fairly androgynous T-shirt and jeans.
I had the sense she could disappear in any environment she found herself in.
I thought of the wardrobe selection I’d picked up when we went shopping—how, with a couple of changes, I could go from professional to casual.
And I thought that if Wren had that wardrobe, she could be anything.
Because beneath the unassuming exterior, I was pretty sure she was as tough as they came.
There was a stillness in her, a quiet watchfulness that spoke of patience and strength—not the fragility she projected.
“Do you have a name for the data broker?” Wren asked.
“Not really,” Emmett said. “Aliases. Janus Vault and Glass Spire. He uses both. There may be others I haven’t found.”
Wren shook her head slowly. “Don’t know him.”
“Do you have an address?” Eli asked. “Is he close?”
“Close enough,” Emmett said. “Outside the city, but not far. Office park out past Buford.”
“Send me the address,” Eli said. “I’ll go check it out.”
“You mean we’ll go check it out?” I asked, straightening.
“No,” Eli said. “Absolutely not.” He shifted to face me, crossing his arms over his chest, as if his authoritative stance would make me give in without an argument.
“What do you mean, absolutely not?” I crossed my own arms over my chest. Two could play that game.
“We have no idea what we’re walking into.”
“We didn’t the other times I went with you,” I reminded him. “Those worked out.”
Eli’s jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing. “You almost blew up at that storage facility. Did you forget about that?”
I lifted my chin. “I got the phone.”
“Not the point,” Eli grumbled.
“Exactly the point,” I muttered back.
“Take Sylvie with you,” Emmett said. “It’s safe enough. It’s an office park in the suburbs, not midnight down by the docks.”
“They don’t have docks in Atlanta,” Wren said. “You know, because we’re inland.” She rolled her eyes at Emmett.
The side of Maddox’s mouth curled in a grin, but no one responded. Eli and I were still locked in a stare-off.
“You’re not leaving me here,” I said.
“You two are wasting time,” Emmett said. He shoved a piece of paper in my hand. “Here. Now Sylvie has the address. Go.”
“You’re not lead on this,” Eli said from behind me.
“I’m the one who knows where we’re going,” I said, picking up the pace before he could catch up and grab the paper from my hand.
From behind me, I heard Wren laughing. In an exaggeration of an adolescent whine, she added, “You’re not the boss of me.”
She had a point.
Neither of us talked much as Eli followed the GPS directions to a run-down industrial office park north of Buford, well outside the city.
We wound our way through the randomly curving streets of the office park, noting the weeds had grown between the asphalt and the curbs, and the number of offices with AVAILABLE FOR LEASE signs in the windows.
“I think it’s this one,” I said as we pulled around an L-shaped building. “417.”
The numbers were at the top of the transom window above the door to a nondescript office with mini-blinds lowered and angled closed. No company name showed. Nothing but the street number.
I examined the scraggly bushes by the door and a faded advertising circular disintegrating in the mulch. “I don’t think anyone has been here in a while.”
“We’ll check the back,” Eli said, his SUV crawling down the deserted street.
He turned into the side alley that curved behind the building, leading to the loading bays. Each silver garage-style door was lowered and locked shut—except the one numbered 417. Eli parked the SUV by the stairs to the bay.
“Stay behind me,” he said before he got out.
“I know the drill,” I said. I wasn’t an idiot. I could learn from my mistakes.
“And this time you’ll listen?” he pressed.