“A feeling! You want me to put my neck on the line for afeeling?”
“It’s more than a feeling,” Park cuts in. “We’ve both been working this case for a while, and all the evidence points to Todd.”
“And if we don't expose him now,” my eyes dart to Park, “he's going to place the blame on someone else.”
A few seconds of silence pass before Derek speaks again. “Okay, let's say I do this for you. Let's say I hack into Todd's email account. What if you're wrong? What if he's not the double agent? Then what happens?”
Park shrugs. “Then we’ll all be screwed.”
“Totally.” I nod, thinking through the consequences.
“Not just screwed,” Derek coughs out. “We’ll be fired and thrown in jail for accusing a highly decorated government official of treason and espionage.”
“But,” Park lifts his finger in the air, “if we’re right, we’ll be the heroes.”
Derek sighs. “I do like the sound of that.”
“Then look through his emails and see if you find anything.” I lift my shoulders. “If there's nothing there, Park and I will take a step back and examine the evidence again.”
“It’s not like Todd’s going to know you poked around,” Park says, adding another layer to our manipulation.
Derek hesitates like he’s thinking everything through. After a few moments, he says, “All right, fine.”
Park and I smile at each other.
“Give me a second.”
“A second?” Park’s brows raise. “It only takes a second to search an entire email database for encrypted emails?”
“It only takes a second for me.” The keyboard clicks in the background. “I'm very good at my job.”
I drum my fingers on the table while waiting for Derek to search. “By the way, I got your Christmas card. Thanks for thinking of me.”
Park lifts his hands. “You sent Sienna a Christmas card and not me?”
“I told you we’re not friends,” Derek replies to Park.
I bite back my smile.
“Okay. Here we go.” Derek swears under his breath. “It looks like there are fifty-seven messages between a Russian encrypted IP address with the name SP and Todd Allen. The most recent email from SP was sent last week.”
“Fifty-seven?” I look at Park. “I think we found our broker.”
“Can you open them?” Park asks.
“Yes, but they’re encrypted too. Decoding all of them would take me a while.”
“What about the most recent one? Can you decipher that?” I turn to Park. “We need to find out the details of the meeting Nicholas told us about if we’re going to show up too.”
“Unless we stage a meeting first.” Park raises his brows at me like a challenge.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if we fake the meeting—make Todd believe he’s meeting with Sasha Petrov when it’s really just a decoy?”
“Wow.” I kick my head back. “That’s next-level thinking. But it’s just the two of us. I don’t think we can pull off something like that alone.”
“Derek will help us.” Park smiles at the phone.
