“Then where is it?”
When he got his hands on her, he was going to wring her neck. “Payton has it.”
Chapter 6
Payton drove to the precinct after leaving her dad’s. A check-in with her superior revealed the government was still keeping them out of the investigation and only using them for grunt work. She also had a note to return any evidence she’d found at the crime scene back to them. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. She was sure anything pertaining to his work would be confiscated and never seen again.
They weren’t going to help her find her dad. Neither was Alex or Colin. She was on her own.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were still talking to Alex, Dad?” she said to herself at her desk. It shouldn’t matter. The man hated her. There was a time once when they were younger and she’d started becoming a woman that he’d looked at her with more than brotherly eyes, then he’d begun treating her like a leper.
Colin on the other hand, had always treated her the same, but she’d caught his lustful eyes more than once. Not that anything would come of it. Colin was like the brother she never had.
Payton stared down at the letter in her hands. The flash drive it came with still sat in the bag. It wasn’t what she was expecting when she’d swiped it from Alex, but nothing about her dad’s situation was conventional.
Alex was going to be angry when he discovered her thievery, but he wasn’t willing to listen and let her help. He kept insisting she was weak and blatantly told her that he didn’t want her help. So she decided to do this on her own.
It was a good thing too because there had been a letter inside that had been addressed to her. Why would her dad leave her a letter in Alex’s room with a flash drive most likely meant for him? The only logical thing was that he expected them to work together.
“What were you involved with, Daddy? How did you know Alex would come?” She had so many questions and no answers.
The letter held even less answers, other than her dad apologizing for keeping so many secrets and to trust Alex.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust her. Alex was in for a surprise when he learned what she did for a living. She was hardly the delicate wallflower he insisted on accusing her of being. She made a living taking down hardened criminals.
She set down the letter and pulled the flash drive out of the envelope, staring at it as if it held the answers on the outside instead of inside. This was what the fake cops were after. What was on it? Her father was an analyst. He didn’t do anything worth trying to kill him over.
“I really wish you were here to tell me what’s going on, Daddy,” she murmured to herself, not feeling any closer to finding clues that would help her locate her father than she did earlier. Not that she didn’t love a good mystery. If solving crimes were easy, everyone would do it.
Payton grabbed her tablet that she always kept on her for reports and inserted the flash drive in the side. She clicked on the link in the file folder, but it was blank.
“Seriously, Dad?” she groaned. “You put a blank flash drive in an envelope for Alex?” Either it was a joke, a false trail, or the data didn’t download.
What a waste.
For a moment, she wondered if Alex was right, if she was in over her head. No, she was a detective. She knew how to follow clues, and the flash drive was a major one. She just needed a computer to access it.
Dad’s house was out right now while the fake cops were tearing it apart. She’d use the one at the precinct.
She tried it on her desktop, but it had the same result. “I’ll get to the bottom of this, Daddy, I promise,” she vowed to herself. “And I won’t need bloody Alex to do it.”
Mr. Lone Ranger who didn’t need anyone. Which was funny considering he worked in a team. Well, he used Colin’s help, just not hers.
Payton’s ears perked up when she heard the heavy, quick footfalls coming down the hall. Two of them. There was someone protesting someone else coming down the hall. Her body went instantly on alert.
Payton relaxed when Alex appeared. Though the look on his face should have terrified her, she knew Alex would never harm her. He would yell and complain, but he’d never hurt her physically.
She knew he would come looking for her, just not here or yet. She’d hoped for a bigger head start on him. Though she did still have an ace up her sleeve he didn’t know about. And since he was not the sharing type and anti-her, she wasn’t in the sharing mood either.
“Where is it?” he demanded as he stalked toward her like a lethal predator and she the prey.
“Sorry, Payton, I tried to stop them.”
“It’s alright, Caleb. I was expecting them.” Caleb glanced nervously between her and Alex before he left.
She expected Alex’s anger. She had stolen from him. The fury was rolling off of him in waves. His eyes snapped fire. Then she noted how disheveled he appeared. His shirt was wrinkled where it hadn’t been before. His face also had a red mark and what she thought was blood on the corner of his lip.
Payton sat back in her chair. “So, how did your run-in with Smith and Jones go?”