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“Don’t look at me.” He threw up his hands. “Believe it or not, Prospero doesn’t have a line on every suspected terrorist in the US.”
“Hamid is not a suspected terrorist.” Her eyes glittered at him like jewels through the slits of her eyes.
“He is now.” He tapped the display of his phone, where she’d read the news about Hamid on the bus.
“In the beginning of our association, Hamid and I communicated via a blog, more like an online discussion group.”
“The FBI already tracked your communication with Hamid. That’s why they dropped in on you in DC.”
She shook her head and her blond locks caught the low light from the lamp on the table next to her, giving a glow to her face, already animated with this new idea. “Once Hamid got to London, we stopped that form of communication. There was no more need for it. He was no terrorist and I was helping him gain entry to the US on a student visa. The kid is seriously a genius.”
“Your communications with him from that point on were out in the open?”
“For all the world, and the FBI, to see. There’s no way the Feds know about our back-and-forth on this website prior to Hamid’s arrival in London.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I communicated with others in this discussion group, as well. They picked out, or my stepfather led them to, Hamid because he’s the only one they knew about. That’s the stuff they traced.”
He rubbed his chin. Prospero would want to talk to Hamid, anyway. Claire could do the work for them to bring him in. “So, you’d try to make contact with Hamid through this blog? How do you know he’ll check it?”
“I don’t, but there’s a good chance.” She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “If Hamid is in trouble, he’s going to try to reach me. He knows I’ll try to reach him, too. He knows I have connections, political connections. What he doesn’t know at this point is that it’s those connections that got us both into trouble.”
“Give it a try.” He twisted to the side, grabbing his laptop. He logged in, entered a few passwords and launched a web browser. Holding the computer in front of him, he rose from his seat and positioned the laptop on Claire’s thighs. “Do you remember the URL?”
“Absolutely.” She tapped his keyboard while he circled around behind her on the love seat.
He hunched over the back, peering over her shoulder as the page filled the window, populated with pop-up ads for clothing and instruments and music lessons. “What kind of discussion group is this?”
“On the surface?” She clicked several links on the page in rapid succession. “It’s a blog and discussion for people looking for musical hookups, but in reality it’s a message board for people who want to hide their communications.”
“Really?” He squinted at a variety of messages on the page. “Whatever happened to using the drafts folder of a shared email account?”
“I haven’t heard about that method. Have you ever had to use it?”
She jerked her head around so suddenly, her nose almost collided with his chin. He reared back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get into your personal space. My damned eyes are getting worse and worse since I hit forty.”
She snorted. “Yeah, you’re a pathetic physical specimen.”
Her gaze swept across his shoulders and down his arms, still wedged against the back of the love seat. His nearness gave her butterflies in her belly—just like a high school crush. He could get into her personal space as much as he wanted.
She patted the cushion next to hers. “Sit here. You can see better, even though all I’m going to do is post a message. Right now I don’t see anything that could be from him.”
Her side of the cushion sank when he sat next to her, causing her shoulder to bump against his. She left it there.
“Would he use his real name?” He ran one finger down the list of posts on the screen.
“He’s Einstein—for obvious reasons.”
“And you’re...?”
She wrinkled her nose as her cheeks warmed. “Paris.”
