And then there was Riley.
She’d seen him as here today, gone tomorrow. He still might be. She couldn’t trust her head or heart where he was concerned. She’d allowed herself to fall into bed with him, trust him, and let him in. That spelled danger for her. She was the kind of person who fell hard and quick. Dad liked to say it was her Cuban side coming out.
What if she let herself believe that Riley was coming back for her and he didn’t? It would break her heart, she’d cry, she’d probably gain five pounds in ice cream and pulled pork, but she’d get over it. She was starting a new chapter in life, doing what she still didn’t know, but maybe this was the right way to begin things.
Erin was coming home because she wanted to be near family. People she cared about. Didn’t it make sense that she should take a chance on love, too? Riley might not be the man of her future, but he was here now, and that was what mattered. She’d see what happened between them in the weeks to come, and if he broke her heart, at least she knew she could still feel. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“Hey.” Riley nudged her.
“Hm?” She blinked at him and the attendant standing at the end of their row.
“You’re really in the zone, aren’t you?” He grinned and nodded at the woman. “What do you want to drink?”
“Water, please?” Yesterday had taught her a lesson. Stay hydrated at any cost.
“You want a break?” Riley asked
“No. I just started going through the email archive. I want to be done with as much of this as I can by the time we touch down.”
“Okay. Need anything, just say the word.” He fitted an ear bud back in his right ear.
Headphones. She should have thought about that.
“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra set of ear buds, would you?” Maybe some music would perk her up, get her thinking about something other than Riley.
“Bought some earlier and slid them in your bag.” He reached down and pulled out a brand new set of blue ear buds.
“They’re even my color.”
Riley smiled, clearly proud of himself. He closed his eyes and stretched his legs under the seat in front of him.
Her heart did a summersault. One thoughtful act and she wanted to throw herself at him.
Erin resisted the urge and turned her attention back to her laptop. Music. That’s what she needed to stay focused. Her selection was small, but it was better than the general nothing of the plane.
Focus.
She had work to do.
Osman’s email archive was exactly what she’d suspected it to be. Boring. Full of random, unnecessary work correspondence, a few newsletters, some personal mail, but nothing too out of the ordinary.
It was too normal.
Erin sat back in her chair and stared at the file structure.
The oil business was a tricky world. It wasn’t as simple as just buying the rights to some land, pumping the crude and shipping out for refining. The governments and military were involved. So were the locals and the people who’d lived off that land for generations. Nothing was as simple and clean as this email archive.
What was she missing?
Erin expanded the files. With thousands of messages, she couldn’t go through them all. So where did she start?
Everyone started their email account with a basic file structure in English. Inbox, Corporate Communications, General Announcements, Department Memos and Personal.
She eliminated both Corporate and General Announcements. She knew all of those emails because she’d received the same ones.
Department Memos she scrolled through slower, looking for anything she hadn’t received searching for the breadcrumbs.
Maybe she was expecting too much. The projects she’d inherited were more along the lines of improving existing facilities and managing equipment. Osman worked with maintaining projects, not establishing new ones.
Erin expanded the Personal file structure and groaned.
Though the inbox had few personal messages that was because the rest were filed and sorted. There was everything from a file about a fifth birthday to someone’s MRI.
This was going to suck.
Erin turned up her music and started clicking into the sub-files, scrolling through messages.
God, this was going to take forever.
The top couple of folders contained mostly correspondences with direct family. She skimmed the first few lines and moved on, and on, and on. It wasn’t until she reached a file called Apron Mitt that she found reason to pause. The first email had nothing to do with aprons or cooking.
Erin sat up.
Osman was not a native English speaker. She’d taken the goofy file names to be an error in translation. What if they weren’t incorrect translations at all?
“Riley?” Erin tabbed to a new message and then another.
“What?”
“I need your phone.”
“What’s going on?”
She plugged Apron Mitt into an internet search.
Nothing.
Okay, she’d thought it might be a more obvious code.
What if she was looking at it all mixed up?
She plugged in anagram behind the words.
The fourth search result down was Anagrams of IMPORTANT.
She clicked on the link and scrolled, matching up five folders of strange words that could be rearranged to say the same thing.
Important.
What was so important it had to be hidden even on a work computer?
“What’s going on?” Riley leaned on the arm rest.
She pulled on ear bud out and didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
“I think I found something.” She clicked into another file called Patton MRI.
There was only one email.
Erin opened it, but all the body contained was a link.
She clicked it.
A browser popped up. The loading bar crawled.
“What’d you find?” Riley asked.
“Anagrams. Five folders all titled with an anagram for important. I looked at an email I thought was about cooking. He was reporting someone cooking meth at one of the facilities.”
A black square filled the screen with an arrow. She clicked the play button and held her breath.
The video showed a dirt floor. She could barely make out voices in the ear bud.
“What is that?” Riley asked.
“Sh.” She thought one of the
