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"Likewise," Cami lied, feeling like a fraud and a criminal as the woman gave her a friendly smile.
At least, now, nobody else was speaking to her. She was on her own in this row at the back of the bus and could hunker down and lay low until she got back to her room at MIT, where she could hide the machine away.
Or maybe not, Cami thought with a lurch of her heart as her phone started ringing. She pulled it out and stared at it in consternation. Of all the calls she didn't want to get now, this was highest on the list—and also, the one she could not avoid.
It was Special Agent Connor on the line, and Cami knew what that meant. At the worst possible time, another FBI job had landed, and now, she might not have time to hide her stolen machine at all.
CHAPTER THREE
"Cami Lark?" Cami heard Agent Connor's crisp, sharp tones and the note of urgency in his voice. "Where are you?"
Why was he asking that?she thought, trying to subdue the sense of guilt she immediately felt. Surely, it couldn't be that he knew about this, that somehow the chain of communication from Liam had already activated, and he was aware that she was on a bus with a stolen laptop in her bag?
"I'm—I'm about forty-five minutes away from central Boston."
"In a car?"
"No, on public transport," she said. Now, her heart was drumming fast and hard. She had never expected to feel so wretchedly guilty. But that was exactly how she felt.
"What are you doing?" he asked, surprised, and Cami felt her stomach twist again.
"Just picking up a piece of computer equipment," she said. It was as close to the truth as she could get without actually lying outright.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and Cami shifted uneasily in her seat. Connor was a determined man. If he was curious about what she'd been doing, he wouldn't let it go. She was reminded all over again that their relationship had started with them being paired together, unwillingly, to solve a crime after she’d made the deal with the FBI.
Although they had come a long way since then, she vividly remembered the mutual dislike between them at the start. Her impatient defiance of Connor and his distrust and resentment of her—which she had to acknowledge was valid, since she’d committed a serious crime in hacking the FBI website.
Things had been rocky between them for a long time, and Cami worried that their dynamic could easily veer back into that territory again. Especially now that Connor was calling her, which she knew could only be for important reasons, at such a bad time.
"Why are you so far out of town?"
Her fears were correct. Clearly, Connor wasn't buying the story. If he questioned her further about this, then she was going to be in big trouble.
She began stammering out an excuse, but he interrupted her. "Never mind. Give me a point where I can pick you up," he said. "A new case has been called in. We need you to come and work on it, now."
Cami gulped. In Connor's world, “now” meantright this very moment.She was already late. At least he didn't seem to know what she'd been doing, even though he was suspicious about the excuse she'd given. That was definitely not helped by her own conscience prickling her.
Quickly, she calculated where the bus would get to in another fifteen minutes, knowing Connor would be coming from central Boston and wanting to get as far as she could from Liam’s house so he couldn’t possibly make any connection with it. Then she gave him the street names.
"I'll wait on the corner for you," she said, knowing that would be easiest.
"See you then." Without any further conversation, he disconnected.
Cami knew by now that this was just Connor's way. He was never one for small talk. When she visualized the agent, with his square, tough face, and his fit, athletic frame, and his neat, short hair—brown, threaded with gray—she'd thought at first, resentfully, that he was just like her father.
But recently, Cami had gotten to understand Connor better. He wasn't domineering and controlling like her dad. He was just firmly focused on his goal and didn't let any side issues get in the way. He shut distractions out. He didn't give his personal life any mental energy while on a case.And maybe that was a coping mechanism she needed to learn from him,she thought. Connor had a hard, tough, brutal, and often dangerous job chasing down criminals. So, keeping a distance between his work life and the person he really was seemed sensible, even if it didn't make him the easiest work partner.
One thing she knew, though, was that he had his partner’s back. Connor was a cool, focused professional, and in a dangerous situation, that made all the difference.
Since she was now on call to the FBI for a year on a case-by-case basis, after being caught hacking their website, Cami had quickly learned that having a good case partner could mean the difference between life and death.
She'd been given the lifeline—and the FBI had agreed to drop charges against her—thanks to her IT skills that were currently in very short supply in the Bureau, especially at Cami's level of expertise and talent. IT savvy agents were being enticed away in their droves by startups. Lured by the higher salaries and the easier life, they were abandoning the tough world of law enforcement.
Connor was not IT savvy, but he had exceptional insight into people, and he was a dedicated career agent. Nothing and nobody would lure Connor away from his job, Cami knew.
He was also sharp and perceptive, and right now, that could be a problem. Thinking again of the item in her bag, she felt sick. She had done something wrong, she knew that. But she'd had to do it, hadn't she? She'd had no choice.
Now, she was going to have to keep this stolen machine on her person. That was not what she'd wanted.
