“I cracked something.” Nimue couldn’t suppress her grin. “Found hidden files—thought they were nothing, but one just unlocked an entire archive. Roomba schematics with Russian text. How’s your Russian?”
“Roomba?” Emberly yawned. “My Russian is enough to ask you a few basic questions and take a cab, but you should ping Coco. She’s Russian, so she’ll be able to sort it out.” A link pinged in Nimue’s email. “Use this.”
Nimue uploaded the files. “Done.”
“Anything else?” Kitchen sounds drifted over the line—Emberly starting her day.
Nimue hesitated. She wanted to spill everything about Liam—the almost-kiss by his Bronco, the way he’d tucked her hairbehind her ear, the imagined words that had haunted her for a week.Do you think it would be okay if…what?Okay if I kiss you? Okay if I borrow your iPad again?Very different questions.
Her phone buzzed with an incoming call. “It’s Coco. I’ll call you later.” She switched over. “Hey, Coco, I was just?—”
“Don’t open anything else,” Coco said, her tone brisk. “Some of those files have trackers. The second you access them, they ping your exact location to whoever’s watching. I can’t tell if these triggered, but you need to be careful. Were these in the files you sent me before? I don’t remember seeing them.”
“I don’t know—maybe. There were a lot of files. I can send?—”
“No. Don’t touch them. Where are they now?”
“I saved everything on a flash drive.”
“I’ll have to get to you to retrieve it, but it may take a few days before I can arrange it. Don’t open any more files. Take out the flash drive, empty your cache, and do not connect it to your computer again. You should keep moving. Can you leave now?”
The words hit like a punch, turned Nimue sick. No, she couldn’t…um…“I’d need a day.” Maybe she was being soft, but she at least had to say goodbye to Liam.
“Then at least hide the flash drive away from where you’re staying until you’re on the move again.” Coco’s desperate words interrupted her thoughts. “Someplace someone won’t find it. But not so far you can’t quickly access it when you’re able to relocate.”
Relocate?Her breath caught.
How had she gone from knowing she had to leave to hating the idea? “I’ll…figure it out.”
She ended the call, scrubbing file traces from her system. The flash drive. She grabbed a small Tupperware container and dropped it inside, then into a metal tin, then stepped out of her trailer.
It was after five now, and dawn provided enough light to navigate without a flashlight. She hurried along the canyon’s edge, maybe a hundred feet, where rocks created natural hiding spots, found a crevice deep enough to conceal the tin but shallow enough to avoid a snake ambush, and shoved it into the crevice. She gathered a handful of apple-sized rocks and stacked them in front as camouflage.
The whole process took way longer than she expected, and the sun was high enough to start a bead of sweat down her back by the time she walked back. She stopped at the makeshift water station she’d set up and rinsed her hands and splashed water on her face. This was their warmest day yet, and it didn’t help that the humidity was up. Could mean a storm was headed their way soon.
She had just stepped into her trailer when the familiar rumble of Liam’s Bronco announced his arrival. She checked the clock on the microwave: 6:03 a.m. She’d lost track of time. She slammed her laptop shut, swapped her hoodie for a running tank, and laced her sneakers, Coco’s warning echoing in her head.
You should keep moving.
Liam waited outside, leaning against the hood of his Bronco. They studied each other for a moment before his mouth quirked in that small smile she’d grown to anticipate. He nodded toward the trail.
Not the time to tell him she had to leave. Or maybe she just didn’t want it to be.
“Let’s go,” she said. They fell into their usual rhythm, feet finding familiar cadence on the dirt path. But instead of their normal banter and sarcastic exchanges, silence stretched between them.
“You okay?” Liam slowed to a walk forty minutes later as her bus came back into view. “You’re quiet today.”
“Lost in thought.”
“About?”
Oh no—anything—anything else?—
“What were you going to ask me by your Bronco last week? After the campfire? You said, ‘Do you think it would be okay if…’”
His eyebrow climbed. She winced. Okay, maybe notthat.
“You sure you want to know?” His eyes held hers, steady and searching. “I got the impression you were relieved we were interrupted. And once I ask, there’s no going back.”
