Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
For my part, I was happy to leave that one in more qualified hands. I had enough to deal with getting my life back on track.
Eli had been right. No one minded my moving into his room at the barracks. The building was plenty big enough for everyone, and despite the fact that there were now seven people living there, we weren’t bumping into each other all the time. For one thing, Eli’s team were all workaholics. And though there was an office set up in the barracks, most of them preferred doing their work at Sinclair Security’s main building.
Though Miranda seemed to handle more administrative tasks and was sticking close to home, the rest of them were out of town as often as not on different assignments. Eli had opted out for the time being, saying even with me living in the barracks, he wasn’t comfortable leaving until we determined with absolute certainty that I was off the radar of whoever had hired the bomber.
I told him I was okay if he had to go, but he’d kissed me and said he wasn’t interested. Not yet. And I hadn’t argued because, while I was okay with it—this was life, and it was part of his job—I still hadn’t shaken the creepy feeling of being targeted by an assassin.
When Cooper Sinclair asked me to come on staff part-time doing research, I’d accepted happily. We’d agreed my hours would be flexible. If I needed to be on the road working on my podcast, no problem. And Eli had made Cooper and me promise that my involvement would start and end at research. Strictly a desk job. I’d agreed. Neither of us could forget how close fieldwork had brought us to dying. I wasn’t looking to get blown up again any time soon.
Cooper had only smiled and said, “A desk job works. For now.”
Eli had scowled. I’d let Cooper’s comment go, but every once in a while, I wondered exactly what for now meant. I hadn’t asked. I was happy with the projects the Sinclairs handed me. I wasn’t a hacker, but you didn’t have to be to find ninety percent of the information that was useful. You just had to know how to dig, where to look, what threads to follow, and when not to give up. Sinclair didn’t just research the cases they took on for clients; they also researched the clients themselves. They’d learned the hard way that you had to know who was hiring you before you took the job.
It was a good deal all around. They got access to my excellent research skills, and I got a taste of interesting cases along with coworkers I liked, a plush office space, and Alice to chat with at the front desk. The extra cash in the bank was welcome, since my next season would be inevitably delayed.
Cooper and I had agreed that there would be no podcast season about Emily Shaw. There were too many unanswered questions. I hated to give up a season I’d spent so much time on, but even I didn’t feel comfortable putting any of this information out in public. Whatever was going on, it was dangerous enough to remotely take out their own assassin. Not knowing who’d killed him, or why, or what the hell this was about, the wisest move was to walk away.
I could live with that. We’d gotten justice, in a sense. The bomber was dead. I’d rather have seen him arrested, in the hopes that law enforcement would have been able to get more information out of him than we had. But in the bigger picture, he’d taken more lives than we’d ever know—over twenty that the team had tracked down. Emily Shaw would be the last. His death wouldn’t bring back those he’d killed, but it felt like justice.
My insurance company had declined to pay anything on the destruction of my van, citing some bullshit clause about vandalism not being covered. And, according to the police report, the explosion had clearly not been an accident.
That was a setback, but now that I had access to my accounts again—and a steady income from both the podcast and the work I was doing for Sinclair Security—I’d been shopping for a new van. Mostly when curled up in bed with Eli, scrolling on my tablet, him looking over my shoulder as we debated the relative merits of Rams versus Sprinters, how many feet long, and what I’d do differently on the inside. Especially considering that for the first time since I’d started this gig, it looked like I’d have a copilot on my research trips.
“Are you sure?” I’d asked him as we scrolled through another listing, this one promising. Rebuilt engine. Stripped interior. No rust. “I know your job’s demanding. You’ve been sticking close to home for now, but that won’t last forever.”