I could see he was carrying a bottle of thirty-year Glenfiddich—the Christmas gift from my dad—in one hand. The other held two glasses.
“Must be serious,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “You’re breaking out the good stuff.”
I scooted over on the sofa, making room for Adam, and he sat down next to me. “It is serious,” he said, pouring two fingers of scotch—neat—into each of the glasses. He handed me one and set the bottle on the coffee table with a clunk.
“Adam, what’s this all about?”
He tipped back his drink and swallowed. Then he said, “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about at dinner.”
“Secrets?” I ventured, looking down and toying with the rim of my glass.
“Yes, secrets.” He turned to face me, tilting up my chin. “Madeleine, I want you to answer something for me, and I want you to be truthful.” He paused, and I nodded against his hand. “Tell me you’re not going to go searching around for…I don’t know…clues to things I’m working on.”
“Ohhh…” I said as I realized what he was worried about. “This is about Stowe Hannigan, isn’t it?”
“You tell me,” he queried quietly, dropping his hand and taking another sip of scotch.
“Well…” I tapped the side of the glass, nerves becoming edgy. “I am a little worried, I must admit. But I know you’d tell me if you were in any danger because of him. You do realize I’d want to know. Right, Adam?” I dared a glance in his direction. He appeared calm on the exterior, but inside…
“Madeleine, if I level with you, my words must leave this room. There’s to be no sharing with Helena, no writing them down”—I went to protest that one, but he stilled me with his hand—“even if it’s for your eyes only. There has to be nothing, Maddy, no record.”
I never saw a man look so powerful yet so weary at the same time. I agreed to his terms and braced myself for what he was about to say. Believe it or not, I almost didn’t want to know. Almost.
“Do you remember the text I told you to forget?”
I nodded and spouted off, “Wickingham Way, level one, right?”
Adam rolled his eyes and poured more scotch into his empty glass. “Nice to know you did as I asked,” he said sarcastically.
I ignored that comment and finally took a sip of the scotch he’d poured for me. It was pretty smooth, but I coughed a little nonetheless. Adam chuckled, and the mood lightened a little.
I figured I’d just go ahead and tell Adam my thoughts on the cryptic text. I took another sip of scotch, coughed, and then said, “I already figured out what that text means, anyway. And it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Do tell, Madeleine, what you think that message meant.” Adam looked absolutely amused.
“Well,” I began, “I think, since you were in Boston when you sent it, that the Wickingham Way part must be a reference to some road down there. Maybe a place you hold meetings. Or whatever it is you do when you’re down there. And level one must refer to the floor of a building, probably a building that’s on that road.”
Adam chuckled. His blue eyes danced, like my explanation was downright adorable. Like something a kid might think.
“I’m wrong, aren’t I?” I asked, frowning and looking down at the amber liquid in my glass.
“Yes, you are. But it was a good guess.”
“Well, are you going to tell me what it really means?”
To my surprise, Adam said, “Actually I am. But I’m only going to tell you so you’ll realize how vitally important it is that you leave this one alone.”
I took a sip of scotch. “Okay.”
“Maddy, Wickingham Way is not a road, and it’s not a reference to some clandestine location. True, a lot of my work is conducted down in Boston, but that’s not the name of some secret place where we meet.” Adam chuckled, again. “Wickingham Way is the name of a project. The project I’m working on to cripple Stowe’s organization.”
“Oh,” I murmured. “Cripple in what way?”
“Financially.”
God, I’d been right. Adam was messing with the financial infrastructure of an elaborate criminal organization. That couldn’t be good.
“And what does ‘level one’ mean?” I dared to ask.
Adam downed the last of his scotch and set the glass on the table. “Level one just refers to the first phase of the project. We started around December, remember?”
I didn’t know. Adam had gone down to Boston since before I’d even moved back. Perhaps he’d worked on other projects down there before he’d started this one.
But there was something bothering me. “Adam, you said on the way back from Willow Point that you only just discovered Stowe was a part of that organization. Wouldn’t you have known that from the start?”
Adam slouched down on the sofa and leaned back his head. He looked tired. “It doesn’t usually work that way, Maddy. The government just gives me enough information to get started, and then I start writing the codes to crack through the systems of the organizations. I’m generally not told specifics of what I’m working on. It’s better that way, safer.”
“So you only found out about this one because of Stowe staying in town?”
“Pretty much,” he confirmed.
I braced myself to ask the question that scared me the most. “Adam, Stowe doesn’t know what you’re working on, does he?”
Adam looked over at me. “No, I’m sure he has no idea. Nobody knows what I really do.”
“But you do some legit work, too. Like, for businesses, right?” My tone was tentative. I didn’t want to hear Adam was involved in only this type of work. It sounded entirely too dangerous.
Thankfully, he reassured me that he did a lot of boring—and therefore, safe—stuff as well. “Well, that’s a relief,” I breathed out.
On a more serious note, I asked, “You don’t think Stowe will ever say anything about the whole Ron-Russ
