He handed her the envelope. Kat opened the top and upended it, spilling out a black square of plastic.
She stared at the blocky Iomega logo, confusion warring with abject disbelief. “A zip disk? Are you kidding me?”
Andrew eyed it with raised eyebrows. “It
Somewhere around a decade, which she supposed explained the outdated method of data storage.
“Yeah, well, my netbook isn’t going to read this. And I doubt Staples is selling external zip drives these days.”
“There’s always eBay, or maybe your friend Ben has one lying around.”
“Maybe.” Kat tugged off the scarf Sera had knit for her and wrapped it around the disk for extra padding, then tucked it into her bag. “Figures none of this could be easy.”
“Finding the place was pretty damn painless.” He cast his gaze around the tiny room, with its bare desk and one-way mirror. “Is that all that’s in there? Clean it out and let’s go.”
The box looked empty, but Kat ran her fingers along the inside, as if she might find a hidden catch or secret compartment. Instead she felt the smooth metal of the box and not a damn thing else. “That’s it.”
His hand grazed the back of her shoulder. “Then where to now?”
Warmth followed the path of his touch, streaking through her to settle low in her belly. Kat closed her eyes and thought of ice, of the vast snowy expanses of Antarctica, Alaska, or—hell, a walk-in freezer.
Cold. Safe. She used the brutal training Callum had given her and wrapped herself in chilly quiet.
It was enough. Barely. God help them both if he touched more than her shoulder. “If we get to the car, I can use my phone. I was thinking of checking Craigslist. Maybe I can find someone who wants to unload some old computer parts. I’m better with hardware than Ben is, anyway.”
“Local’s quicker than an online auction,” he allowed as he guided her through the door.
Outside the sunlight seemed too bright compared to the chill in the air. Not so cold—the red LED display on the bank’s sign put the temperature at a reasonable fifty-two, but a decade in the South had thinned her Boston- born blood. Kat let Andrew herd her toward the SUV, forcing her brain to stay on the puzzle of the zip disk and how she’d retrieve its contents.
If she concentrated on that, she could pretend the previous night had never happened.
“What are you thinking?”
“Zip drives.” Only a little lie. “And what might be on the disk. I mean, I don’t know what file types they might be, or what sort of software I’d need to read them. It’s got to be important though, right? If people are killing over it?”
“Important to someone.” He unlocked the SUV and pulled open her door. “I don’t know if it’ll give you your answers, but it was important to your mom.”
Inside the vehicle, Kat tucked her bag between her feet and fiddled with her phone as Andrew climbed in. “This is all crazy, isn’t it? Us, acting like we’re in the supernatural version of
Safety deposit boxes and snipers… This is crazy. Nuts.”
He buckled his seatbelt and shook his head. “The crazy part is that I’m getting used to it.”
It was hard to get out the words, but she needed to ask one question. “You still want to see this through?”
“Hell yeah. I’m not going anywhere.”
Relief. Confusion. Andrew had her twisted in knots so complex she couldn’t begin to see how to unravel them. Talking to him about anything serious felt like the first time she’d tried to understand recursion. Maybe
Back and back until they hit the base case. The night she’d lost control and nearly destroyed them both.
She had to say something. To find some rapport, casual small talk to fill the time between awkward moments that were too real. “I’m glad you’ve got all that new training then. If we’re about to embark on a caper adventure, I’ll need an action hero.”
His brows drew together. “That isn’t who I am, Kat. Why I train.”
So much for light hearted. “I know. I’m just… It’s a joke. Laugh.”
His mood didn’t change. “I’m not a hero.”
“Who gets to decide that? Is there a guild? A committee?”
Finally, a hint of a smile appeared. “You can’t take my word for it?”
“Don’t see why I should,” she retorted, then smiled. “You’re not taking mine.”
“Fine, you got me. I’m a hero, and this is a big damn grand adventure full of thrills and spills.”
It was exactly the way they’d always talked to each other, but the ease was gone. She might as well be writing her own dialog in script format. Smile here. Laugh there. Insert pithy pop-culture reference. She was a walking, talking parody of the girl who’d died the night she’d killed.
So she broke script. “You’re here. You’re helping. Right now, that seems pretty heroic to me.”
He stared straight ahead, even as he reached out and grasped her hand. “I always will, no matter what happens between us.”
Callused fingers against her skin triggered a rush of need totally out of proportion with the gentle touch.
She knew the pleasure of his touch now, and her body wasn’t going to let her forget it. Her cheeks heated, and she squeezed his fingers once before easing her hand away. “Maybe we shouldn’t touch while you’re driving.”
“Good plan.” He started the engine, backed out of the parking space and angled the vehicle toward the main road. “Back to the hotel, then, and we’ll figure out the next step.”
A solid enough plan, but even she could tell that Andrew was headed in the opposite direction from their hotel.
Carmen had taught him first aid. Zola and Walker had taught him how to fight. Alec… The Devil himself might prefer not to ponder Alec’s skill set, which had always seemed geared more toward covert ops than private investigation. They were surrounded by dozens of supernaturals with unique skills, and Andrew had been collecting them like a kid with Cracker Jack toys.
Not to be a hero. She couldn’t imagine any other reason.
“Andrew—”
“Check your seatbelt and stay low in your seat.”
The words were calm. Composed. The faint buzz of background nervousness that she’d barely noticed faded until the SUV was a quiet pool of emotional silence. Not the terrifying blankness from before, but a studied focus that reminded her of Alec at his most calculating.
It scared her enough to obey without question. She tugged her seatbelt until it pulled tight across her chest, and hunched down for good measure. “What’s going on?”
“Someone’s following us.” He’d realigned the rearview mirror earlier, but she’d thought nothing of it.
Now, he seemed to be watching the road and the mirror simultaneously. “Tried to shake them, but they’re persistent.”
Fear made her skin prickle. Kat curled her hand around the door handle and fought not to twist and look behind them. “This is why you made me pack everything up and bring it with us, isn’t it? Because you knew we might not be able to go back.”
“Looks like Andy and Kate Normanson had to leave town on the spur of the moment.” He tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Do you need to go anyplace in particular?”
There was only one thing she could say for sure. “Not back to Birmingham. We can’t lead them to Ben and Lia.”
“Someplace no one else knows, then.”
Her brain wouldn’t settle long enough to think. “How do you think they found us? Ben’s IDs are always flawless.”
