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Logan tried not to freak. He knew what Chad was thinking. Maybe Sam was avoiding Logan for some reason. Maybe he’d done or said something to piss her off. Some part of him knew he hadn’t, though.
He recognized the feeling churning in his gut right now. It was one he’d often felt out on deployments. He had learned to heed it. The one time he hadn’t, too many people had died.
Jennie tried both texting and calling, but got no answer, either. They all looked at each other and Logan’s heart hit the pit of his stomach. They had been wrong somehow. When they’d thought this was all over, when they’d thought Sam was safe. They were wrong.
He pulled up the Find My Friends app and checked for Sam’s location on his phone.
“Says she’s at home,” he said as they all walked out. There wasn’t any discussion about what they needed to do or who was staying and working. They would all go find Sam.
Jack gave instructions to Amanda as they all left the office. They wouldn’t be back until they found Sam. All meetings and appointments needed to be cancelled for the next few days.
Chapter 31
Sam’s first stop was the bank for cash. She’d left her phone at her town house on purpose, knowing that would bring Logan there. She went to the bank and took out cash, then went to a nearby hotel and holed up in a suite.
She logged on and got to work.
First step, find out who had done the legwork for Diya. No way was she able to do all of that herself. Planting all of that evidence had taken skills your everyday person simply didn’t have.
Sam began to troll hacker chat rooms and look for telltale little brags. Anyone talking about something big they had done or anything remotely looking like the kind of hack this would require. She also pulled up all of the info they’d tracked down that had pointed toward Lazarus Alonzo earlier. With any luck, if that info was fake, she’d find a footprint somewhere.
She dumped the stash of candy she picked up on the way over onto the bed, crossing her legs crisscross-applesauce-style on the bed. Using her teeth to open a Kit Kat wrapper, quickly followed by a Twix wrapper, she began to scan.
It might take her hours, but she’d find out who helped Diya and then she’d fix it so none of them could touch her or Logan or the people she loved, again.
Thankfully, Sam was quite used to spending hours in front of a computer screen, trawling for one small piece of information, one tiny clue to lead her in the right direction. She knew how to battle the eye fatigue and grogginess. She cranked her music up in the background, chugged a soda, and kept on going.
And that’s when she saw the first telltale signs. Damn it. She should have seen it before. She should have realized the trail leading to Alonzo was too clean. When she looked closely, she saw tiny traces that something was wrong.
The money that supposedly went from Alonzo’s account through a number of cover companies, eventually landing in the account of one of the men who attacked her? The trail actually had one other stop, but it hadn’t been a stop along the way. It was the originating account. Alonzo hadn’t sent that money. Diya Bogolomov had.
Sam cursed under her breath and kept digging. She knew whoever was doing this would have left a clue somewhere. That was the thing about most hackers. They wanted credit. They craved it.
Even if this guy had been paid to keep his mouth shut, somewhere there would be some little slipup. She’d bet on it.
* * *
Logan cursed as he picked up Sam’s phone and scrolled through the alerts. No sign of her in the town house, no sign she’d been around to receive any of the alerts.
“Is her computer here?” Chad asked as they made their way through the town house.
Kelly had just arrived, over Jack’s objections. Jennie was filling her in on all they knew—which was, basically, nothing. A whole lot of nothing.
“No.” Logan knew Sam kept her laptop locked in her desk drawer when it wasn’t in use. The drawer stood open and empty at the moment.
Chad shook his head. “I wonder if that means she took off voluntarily or—”
He didn’t finish the thought.
Logan looked around the living room. He didn’t know what to think and he honestly didn’t know where to start.
“Logan?” Jennie’s voice was soft and laced with … pity? She came down the small set of stairs that led from the kitchen to the living room and glanced at Chad. Kelly and Jack hung behind her.
“What is it?” He had a feeling he sounded a hell of a lot harsher than he wanted to.
She handed him a slip of paper. Christ, he didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to know what it said. Because suddenly he had doubts. He was wondering if maybe, just maybe, Sam had simply left.
He looked down and read the lines, read her saying she needed space and time to think. He felt the kick in his gut all the way down to his balls. Chad came and quietly took the note from his hands and read it.
