Page 20 of Night Moves
“Now that you have your coffee”—Drake pointed at a worn plaid couch—“have a seat and tell me what this is all about.” He tried not to sound demanding, but it came out as an order, and she cringed.
Great.Nice way to start.
She glanced up at the loft, likely checking on the kids, making sure they couldn’t hear. Admirable. But he wished she would just come out with whatever had happened.
He also wished he wasn’t distracted by her disheveled state even more than the put-together woman he’d first laid eyes on. Her hair was messed up with curls that had somehow come to life. Her suit was rumpled, her makeup streaked. She looked so different. More approachable. More attractive.
Just what he needed. “Let’s get started.”
She headed to the couch that had been in his parents’ basement rec room for years. The stories it could tell.
She sat near a pile of colorful blankets knitted by his mother and wrapped her fingers around the mug. She took a sip of the coffee and didn’t gag. Most people did with as strong as he made it. More brownie points in her favor.
She rested the mug on the arm of the couch. “Before we start can you tell me if you’ve heard anything about Kirk?”
“All I know is that he didn’t answer the door and nothing from Malone yet. So go ahead and tell me what happened at the house.”
She gave a sharp nod. “While I was babysitting, I discovered some very disturbing things in Kirk’s basement. I’m certain now that he’s The Clipper.”
“The serial killer?” Drake’s words shot out and up an octave.
“Shh.” She spun to look up the steps. “The children will hear you.”
Shh? Seriously.How could he pipe down when she’d just told him Kirk Gentry was The Clipper? The Clipper, for Pete’s sake! Made him one seriously bad dude.
“Erik did a preliminary search on the guy, and he seems like an upstanding citizen, but appearances can be deceiving.” He’d seen it often enough as a deputy. People who seemed on the up-and-up aided and abetted fugitives all the time, often lying right to his face. He’d lived it though, that trusting people came hard to him.
He took a beat to internalize her news. “Why do you think that?”
She started to reach for her purse, then dropped her hand. “I forgot I trashed my phone. I took pictures at Kirk’s house that’ll explain everything. They’re in my iCloud account. Do you have a way to access the internet without giving away our location?”
He gaped at her. “You took pictures?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“There you were thinking Gentry was The Clipper, and you calmly took pictures. Seriously? Takes a lot of courage to stay cool enough to snap photos in a situation like that.”
“Trust me, I was far from calm, but I knew without concrete information the police wouldn’t take action. But I needed proof, so they didn’t laugh at me again.”
“Again?”
“Long story.” She tried to wave off her concern, but a hue of unease darkened eyes that, in the glow of the flames, he could see were ringed in black. “About that internet access.”
Okay, subject change. Not so subtle either. What was she withholding from him? Or was it really nothing and she was just still shaken from the whole night? What person wouldn’t be? Shoot. This discovery was unsettling him. Would unsettle his brothers, too, when they heard.
Ifshe was right. Big if. Huge if.
He grabbed his iPad from the table. “Use this. We have an encrypted VPN, so the connection is secure.”
“VPN?” She took the iPad and blinked up at him.
“Virtual Private Network,” he said. “Our internet connections are routed through a virtually untraceable connection. We’ll use emails via the VPN to communicate with the outside world.”
“Why can’t you make an internet call on that same VPN thing? I mean, I know you can use the internet to make calls,” she added. “And you have the VPN, so I figured a call from here wouldn’t be tracked.”
“What you’re talking about is Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP, and you’re right. These calls are hard to trace, but companies who own the app used to make the calls are allowing law enforcement access to call data. If that’s true, then an officer like Gentry could potentially access the data too.”
“I thought burner phones were safe?”
