“Then how did it help?”
“Well, for one, Darin definitely didn’t recognize me when he first saw me. Didn’t know my name.”
Bree nodded. “Yeah, he would have to be one hell of an actor if he did.”
“Also, I don’t think Darin knows Newkirk and Anders are dead. Admittedly, he could be playing us, but I honestly don’t think he wanted anything more but to ask them who could keep him from going to Colorado State Penitentiary.” He scrubbed a hand across his face. “Not that any of this is going to help me get reinstated.”
She hated that Tanner looked even more defeated as he started the car and pulled out of the parking area. She’d really wanted this to make a difference.
He grabbed her hand and pulled it up to his lips. “Thank you for bringing us out here. Even if Darin has nothing to do with what’s going on with me, somebody still needs to look into what’s going on with him, because the situation doesn’t sound right. So good comes out of this no matter what.”
Bree’s heart gave a little tug. That he would be up to his eyeballs in his own problems and was still going to make it a priority to find justice even for a criminal...
How the heck was she supposed to keep herself from falling in love with him?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They got back to the ranch and ate dinner, but Bree wasn’t done looking into this. If there was one thing all her experience with computer coding had taught her, it was that when the coding led to a dead end, you had to step back until you could find a way around whatever had trapped you.
Carrico seemed to be a dead end, but maybe Bree just needed to find a way around him and see if anything else was there. Perhaps the guy was just what he appeared to be: someone who wanted not to be sent to a supermax prison so he could continue to receive visits from his daughter.
But Bree had spent a big chunk of her life within an organization that had fooled the entire world into thinking they were good and altruistic, when really they were emotionless, sadistic bastards.
Tanner was a good man who wanted to believe the best of everyone. He got that from his parents. Bree had heard the story of how his father had been killed in the line of duty because he’d trusted someone who had then shot him.
She didn’t think Tanner was gullible in any way, shape or form. But she was going to look more closely at Carrico before giving him the benefit of the doubt.Research him impartially and dispassionately to make sure he was truly a dead end and not involved in all of this somehow.
And she wasn’t afraid to bend a few laws to do it, regardless of Tanner’s opinion.
Her emotional stuntedness was working to her advantage in this case. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about Carrico’s sob story if it meant clearing Tanner’s name.
A couple of hours later, she was glad she’d stayed the course, despite Tanner’s repeated attempts to get her to put away the computer for the night.
When she found it, she could barely believe her eyes.
“Tanner, I found something.”
He looked up from whatever type of sporting event he was watching. Football, maybe? She wasn’t good with sports.
“I don’t even know what you’ve been looking for the past two hours.”
“I think our friend Carrico may not be as innocent as we thought.”
Tanner flipped off the television and walked over to her. “What makes you say that?”
This was where it got a little bit tricky. “Because Carrico is currently in a lower-security prison, he has access to email. It’s monitored, but he sent a message to two separate guerrilla mail accounts—which are temporary and completely anonymous addresses—one eight nights ago and one four nights ago.”
“The nights before Anders and Newkirk were killed.”
Bree nodded.
“What did the emails say?”
“The first one said,Last fall the beautiful flowers made me smile although they soon withered and flew away. The second,Every laugh makes me think of pudding.”
“Okay, definitely weird. But the messages don’t sound suspicious or dangerous to me.”
Bree had recognized the foursquare cipher as soon as she’d read the email. It had taken her a little while to break it, but not very long. “There’s a code. A cipher.”
