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He leaned toward her. She began to close her eyes.
The phone on the coffee table started to ring.
They pulled apart with a start. Blake grabbed the device and glanced at the screen.
“Draven.”
“You should probably take it,” Devon encouraged. “It might be important.”
Looking as if he’d rather do anything but, Blake slid his fingertip across the screen and put his cell to his ear.
“Hey. What’s up?” The subtle lines on his forehead disappeared. “When?” A pause. “Where?” His eyes slid to hers. “Send me everything.”
Devon’s stomach filled with dread.
“What happened?” she asked the second Blake ended the call.
A muscle twitched beneath the bruising in his jaw. “Carol Jenkins is dead.”
The words didn’t register at first. A beat later, the woman’s name and the rest of what he’d just said finally sank in.
Carol’s dead?
“She’s your contact, right?” Blake looked to her for confirmation. “The one who alerted you to the issue with the posts in her company’s report?”
Devon’s head moved in a jerky nod. “When?”
“Draven said she died this afternoon.”
This afternoon?
“But I just talked to her the other day.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
“Cops are calling it a hit and run. She was found not far from her car in a parking garage, and cameras caught a dark SUV strike her and take off.”
Devon stared at him, struggling to comprehend the awful news.
Carol was dead. The woman who couldn’t remember her passwords and apologized for asking questions and who once mailed homemade Christmas cookies after Devon recovered months of files Carol had thought she’d lost.
“She has grandchildren,” Devon whispered. “Two. A girl and a boy. She talks about them all the time.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
Blake didn’t speak as he moved closer and pulled her into his arms. Devon went willingly, pressing her face against his chest.
He didn’t say all the usual things. Didn’t tell her everything was going to be okay. He simply held her while another tear fell. Then another.
And then more.
Carol had been her favorite client, despite the fact that she could turn a five-minute tech problem into a forty-five-minute call. She was kind. Funny without even trying. A genuinely good person.
A good person who’d noticed something strange and asked questions. Now she was dead.
Devon pulled herself out of Blake’s warm embrace.
