“So we tracked Craig’s movements after the fire. He leaves the parking lot and heads down the street. There’s one camera that gives us a partial view of him walking toward some vehicles, but we can’t see which one is his. Then several minutes later, he comes back to the restaurant and seems to be looking for someone.”
“Me?”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t think so.”
“Then who?” I didn’t see him with anyone else at the cocktail party.
“Don’t know. He never met up with anyone, just walked back down the street again. So we started running the license plates on all of the vehicles we could see and any that drove away around the same time we can’t see him anymore.”
Something big is coming. I can feel it and I’m not sure my nerves can handle it. “What is it, Athena?”
“Just trying to match your dramatics.”
I grip the steering wheel. “I’ve had enough drama tonight to last me a lifetime.”
“Well... we pulled a plate from a van. It took some effort, but we confirmed—it’s the FBI.”
It’s way too late—or is it early?—for my brain to compute what this means. “Right. He’s the one I kidnapped, remember?”
“You really have to stop saying you kidnapped him,” Athena says. “We expected that if an FBI agent is at the cocktail party for Ramirez, he’d be there undercover and would have a team nearby—though a fat lot of good that did. But it’s interesting that Ben is near the van. We don’t know if he’s under surveillance or if he’s... working for them.”
My heart stalls in my chest. “What do you mean?”
“Our team is very good at finding information on people, Cybil. Exceptionally good. We have a cyber expert who trains the government’s cyber experts. So whenhecan’t dig up anything on Ben—or Craig—it sets off alarms.”
“How could you find out that the man I kidnapped was FBI so quickly, but you can’t find out anything about Ben after all this time? Don’t y’all have them on speed dial or something? Can you just call them and ask?”
“We try very hard not to interfere with other agencies’ work.”
“If there’s ever a time to interfere, Athena, I think it might be to find out if my old childhood friend, the man who’s made it very difficult for me to do my job for you”—the man I might’ve imagined a whole Disney moment with hours ago—“is a possible FBI agent.”
“Or under their surveillance,” Athena adds solemnly. “Given who Ben’s working for, the easy answer is that he’s on the FBI’s radar. But here’s the bigger concern—if heisworkingwiththe FBI, they’ve buried it deep. We can trace the Bureau’s involvement, but we don’t know the what or why.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “You found out the guy I kidnapped was FBI, but you can’t find out if Ben is?”
“We did get a name for the man youbriefly detained. His records were partially sealed, but there were remnants in financial crimes task force logs, older training rosters, and a blacked-out case file out of DC.”
I blink. “So the FBI didn’t fully wipe him?”
“They wiped enough to keep him offRamirez’sradar. But our clearance goes deeper. And they didn’t expect us to be looking.”
“But Ben?”
“Nothing. No agency logs. No case mentions. No digital fingerprints. It’s like his name was scrubbed from every channel that could confirm his identity. And that kind of silence doesn’t happen by accident. It’s deliberate. Protective. And very, very good.”
The implication of what Athena just said lands with all the weight of a grenade—blowing up any idea that Ben might have feelings for me. If he’s an FBI agent, he lied. If the FBI is watching him, then he’s not who I thought he was, and I need to stay as far away from him as possible.
I see the exit for Cypress Creek, and like magic, a restfulness settles over me, drawing me like a magnet to the long country road.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Sit tight at your aunt and uncle’s house and let us figure out how the FBI’s involved.”
“And what about Ramirez?”
“We’ll keep an eye on him this weekend, and if I get any indication that you’ve been compromised, we’ll intervene.”
“How?”
