“Everything you see that’s not on my desk is something I inherited from my coworker who died. Osman Elahi, in case you see his name on things.” She’d managed to erase half the boxes from her memory. Seeing them now was disheartening.
“How’d he die?”
“Some sort of allergic reaction. I didn’t know him well.”
“Okay. Do we have any idea what we’re looking for?” Riley asked.
“Not a clue. I can say that papers outside boxes are things I’ve had to work on.”
“Then here’s what I say we do. Let’s take a box, stack everything on the desk, then put anything remotely suspicious in the box to take with us, okay? We can sort through it on a deeper level later.”
“But how do we figure out what to take with us? Riley, it could take weeks to go through it all.” What had she been thinking? It wasn’t like she had a file folder or a laptop to grab. This was practically a bleached forest in here.
“Okay, uh...” Riley stared at her. “What projects was Allied Security working on? What else was happening at the facility where they kidnapped you from?”
“They were fired two years ago. How should I know who they work for now?” She’d thought the answer would be obvious if she was here, and now they were no closer to figuring out why than they were before.
“Let’s start going through some things and see what we find, okay?”
Riley grabbed a box off the credenza and set it in the guest chair. She pulled the top off and stared at a random assortment of loose papers, a couple of file folders, thumb drives and CDs.
“This is just desk junk,” she said. It could probably be thrown away, but what if there were valuable family keepsakes or pictures on those drives? If her family member was dead, she’d want those.
“Okay, trade me boxes then.”
“Hold on.” Erin frowned at the file at the bottom of the box. It had a red, IMPORTANT sticky note on it.
She pulled the file out. Inside was just another CD with no label on it.
“There might be something on these drives that tells us what we’re dealing with. I should go through them.” Especially whatever was on that disc.
“Okay, then that’s the box we’re taking with us.” Riley flipped through a box of things, but his frown grew more pronounced. “None of this is English.”
“Let me.”
Erin took over a file box, flipping through it, but it was all geology reports. Boring, dry material that would put most to sleep. Nothing worth dying over unless it was boredom.
They worked through the other six boxes but pulled very little. Osman hadn’t exactly been working on sensitive projects. He’d had a lot more to do with the company infrastructure, moving resources around and liaising with locals. Everyone had good things to say about him.
There was a reason someone had kidnapped her, she just wasn’t seeing it.
Two hours later, Riley’s phone went off.
“Time’s up,” he said.
Erin stared around her disaster area of an office.
She wasn’t coming back here, and it wasn’t just because NexGen was more than likely going to fire her to cover up an international incident. Ever since she’d been kidnapped, she’d been slowly coming to this conclusion. She didn’t want to die far from her family, without anyone she loved. The reason she’d taken this job was to make a difference, and now the company was choosing to cover up the problem instead of addressing it. How many other people had been hurt or even killed because of similar decisions?
Everyone liked to say that Kurdistan was safe, that they lived in an idealistic bubble, but at what cost? How many others had died that no one knew about?
It wasn’t worth missing out on life to be here.
“Ready?” Riley asked.
Erin’s heart wanted him. Or someone like him. She wouldn’t find that here.
She pitied whatever poor soul inherited her office and this mess, but it wasn’t her problem anymore.
RILEY WAS USELESS. The remainder of the files weren’t in English. All he was good for was shuffling stacks, manning the overflowing box and keeping an eye on the time.
He wished there was something else he could do. The more Erin pored over the backlog of things in her office, the deeper the lines across her brow and around her mouth became. He was powerless to lift the fog of sadness settling around her. He didn’t know what conclusions she was coming to, but they were breaking her world.
His phone vibrated, signaling their time was up.
With any luck Grant and the others had Thomas by the balls and they’d get more answers that way. If not, they’d complete their mission and get Erin home.
“Erin? Hey, we need to go.” Riley reached across the desk and grabbed her hand.
“I’m missing something. It has to be here, but all I’m seeing is...” She slumped in her chair and sighed.
“We have to go.”
“I know.” She placed the stack in her lap on the desk and glanced around the office.
“You want to take anything personal with you?” he asked.
“Oh. Yeah.”
She bent and opened a desk drawer. One by one she placed photo albums on her desk. A mug. A few odds and ends that didn’t make sense to Riley, but they didn’t have to.
“I’ve been volunteering at a few camps. I do English workshops for the kids, and every year I take too many pictures.” She thumbed through one book.
“I wouldn’t want to leave those behind either.”
Riley took the stack and set it into their half-full box of potential evidence. He wished they were leaving with more of a sense of accomplishment, but at least they were leaving.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“No. No, that’s it.” She pushed to her feet and took one last look around the office.
“Let me tell Grant we’re on our way out. They should be ready to meet us by now.”
“What happened with Thomas? Any word?”
“Nothing, but Grant wouldn’t sidetrack us by telling us what went down there.”
“You never said how things