Page 119 of Jonas

Penny’s boss sounded like a dick.

“I need to get in touch with Garrett,” Derrika told me.

She sounded eager to make the call and I understood why. Not only did she want something to do but she wanted to check on a woman who she’d befriended while working at Delcon.

But there was something stirring in my gut. However, with all the missing pieces to the puzzle, I couldn’t put my finger on the unease.

I just knew another shoe was going to drop, and soon.

CHAPTER THIRTY

We were back in an Escalade, and for once, I wasn’t concentrating on Jonas. I was replaying my short conversation with Natalie. She sounded freaked the fuck out. So much so her voice was trembling when she begged me to meet her at a pub in College Park, a few blocks away from the University of Maryland. She was clear she wanted to meet outside of the Beltway, away from what she called prying eyes.

The only hiccup during the call was I had to come up with an excuse for needing more time to get to the pub. From Tysons, Virginia, the drive would’ve been forty-five minutes. But I needed more than an hour and a half coming from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Thankfully, in her panic, she gave in, which meant I had two hours before she was expecting me.

“I think you should wait in the car,” I told Jonas.

“No, fucking⁠—”

“Please hear me out. She knows I don’t have a boyfriend. She’s going to question who you are. If she thinks I lied to her or hid a secret affair, she’s going to clam up. We need her to trust me. We need her to think we’re just two work friends who are freaked out about what’s happening at work. If she knows something important, I’ll call you in. If she doesn’t, I’ll listen, and then she’ll go on her way and we go back to the farm.”

“Keep the phone in your pocket. Not in your purse,” he commanded.

I took that as he was giving in.

“I will.”

“If you feel uncomfortable for any reason, you text me, and I’m coming in.”

“I will.”

Jonas blew out a deep exhale and took his right hand off the steering wheel. He reached across the center console and placed his hand, palm up, on my thigh. I set my hand over his. He immediately curled his fingers in and held tight.

“I don’t like you being out of my sight, Dee Dee. But you’re right; it needs to be you alone.”

Damn, but I loved he wasn’t going to go all overprotective ape on me.

“I promise, I’ll be cautious.”

“I know you will. But there are too many variables. Too many unknowns. The deeper we get, all we find is more questions. It’s beginning to feel like there are more traitors than good guys. And the fuck of it is, we’re missing something important. We’re missing the one thread that will unravel it all and it’s right fucking in front of us. I feel it. The answer is right there, but we’re not seeing it.”

“Could it be Rutte behind everything?”

“I think Rutte is up to his eyeballs in this shit. I think he’s behind the colossal fuck-up at the Pentagon. No fucking way should they have outsourced to Delcon for information storage.”

“Unless that outsource was supposed to be for declassified files only. I imagine the server rooms that store each agency’s documents are huge. The space and power needed to keep those computers running would be insane. It would make sense that less sensitive intel could be stored offsite.”

Jonas was silent for a few minutes.

“If that’s the case. And you make a valid point that someone in the DOD or the Secretary of Defense’s office transferred top secret documents to Delcon that were never meant to leave the secure servers at the Pentagon. Penny said only the Secretary of Defense had the NSA algorithms and encryption backups.”

“Do you think the Secretary personally queued those files for transfer?” I asked.

“I would hope the fuck not. But right now, everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Call Kira and run this down with her. Penny might have insight into Hannah Baldwin and if she doesn’t, Kira will punt the name to Shep.”

I hoped this Shep guy charged an arm and a leg for his services because the guy had to be running on fumes and coffee at this point.

I pulled the burner phone Zane had given me out of my purse, found one of the six numbers that were already programmed in, and hit the call icon.