Page 132 of One Last Rainy Day
Tobias grips her hip and looks up at her from where he sits. “Remember when we met, I told you Dom and I were having a lot of problems seeing eye to eye on his extremes?”
Cecelia nods as Tobias looks back at the screen, his gaze somewhere in the past. “He was in the midst of building files of incriminating evidence against a lot of the corrupt. Somehow, he’s tapped into what no one should be able to. I sent him this laptop to help put his list together.”
She palms his shoulder in encouragement as he searches his memory. “I was searching for Abijah, so it was not long after you arrived in Triple Falls.”
She nods again, sadness etching her features, concern in her eyes for him. I see it the minute he recognizes it, and his eyes soften with devotion.
Her focus darts back to the screen. “So, Santa means a list, right?”
“Right,” Tobias nods.
She reads the little square box inside the flag. “And the hint is N-enemy?”
“Yes, we’ve exacerbated everything we can think of in that respect. We’ve even called in experts to calculate a list of possibilities, butmy fingershave to be the ones to type theanswer. There’s no way around it, and I haven’t exactly had the time to devote—”
“Tobias,” she interjects, “the N stands for natural.”
“Yes, Trésor, we’ve considered that, but—”
“That’s what it is,” she presses. “Natural Enemy.”
“Jesus Christ,” I utter as I look between them, the inkling growing stronger.
They both turn to me, alarmed as the image of Dom scanning his room the night he died, his back to me, shutters in. He wasn’tlooking—he wasthinking.
Tobias speaks up first, hope sparking in his eyes. “What?”
“I’m such a goddamned idiot.” I turn to Cecelia. “Have you ever typed into Dom’s computer?”
She nods.
“Do you remember what?” I prompt.
She shakes her head. “No, it was just a bunch of his codes, letters, and numbers.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I say.
“Tyler,” Tobias snaps out of patience.
Gripping Cecelia’s finger, I press it to the newly darkened keyboard, and it lights up like Christmas. Tobias’s eyes widen in shock as I exhale. “He was encrypting your fingerprints and programmed them to this keyboard.”
“When?” Tobias asks.
“It’s all about timing, isn’t it?” I sigh, shaking my head.
Tobias nods, knowing exactly when he encrypted them.
“What am I missing?” Cecelia asks.
“The night he died,” Tobias answers for me. “He told Tyler that if anything happened to him, to get the laptop into the right set of hands.”
“The right set of hands,” I whisper. “As intwo sets ofgoddamnhands.”
Tobias had the first passcode, she had the other, and even if he figured it out,Ceceliahad to be the one to type it in.
“Do you know the answer, Trésor?”
“I do,” she replies as we both tense up. She positions herself behind his chair before running her palms up his back along the expanse of his raven tattoo. “He and I had the conversation in passing one day. I’m sure you’ve guessed a thousand government-based terms, right?”
