Page 52 of Dichotomy

Marcus frowned, rubbing his forehead as he thought. He froze for a moment. “Last legal conference, Clarence was talking about having family in a federal agency.” He turned to face us, eyes wide. “What if that agency is the FIA?”

“On it,” Liam and I said at the same time.

“I’ll race you,” Liam challenged, and our fingers flew across the keyboard.

There were thirteen Jeffersons in the FIA, but none of them were related to Donald.

“Try the wife,” Evelyn whispered to me.

I kissed her temple again as I found the wife’s maiden name. Nothing there either.

“Does the wife have any family?” Maya asked. “Maybe a sister or brother or an in-law?”

“Maya, you’re a genius,” I praised.

The wife had two sisters. One was single, and the other was married to…

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

Evelyn stiffened as I pulled up a picture of the sister’s wedding day.

“The judge’s brother-in-law is the FIA director,” she said softly. “What are the odds?”

“Too slim to make this a coincidence,” Alexander said grimly.

“Are we saying that the FIA director shot Grace? Or arranged it?” Liam asked, his eyes wide.

“Agent Hayes implied that there was something fishy going on,” Adrian pointed out. “And then he gave us the key for his office.”

“Can we really trust him, though?” Marcus argued. “What if that was all a setup to get to Evelyn?”

“But why shoot Grace?” Adrian asked.

“To draw Evelyn out?” Alexander mused.

“It’s not like she was hiding, though,” Maya pointed out. “And it’s not difficult to connect the five of us. What’s difficult is to connect any of us to the Archers. We just look like a group of friends to the world.”

“An eclectic group of friends who have former military and police ties,” Marcus countered.

Evelyn bit her lip, and I rubbed her back. I knew Marcus didn’t mean it like it was her fault, but Evelyn wouldn’t see it that way. I glared at Marcus, and his face softened.

“I didn’t mean it was your fault that Grace got shot. Just that it wouldn’t be hard to connect you all. So why go after her, and why now?”

“What do you think?” Alexander asked Evelyn, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table.

“I don’t know.” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, a rare moment of uncertainty for my usually brave and confident Evie. “I agree it’s suspicious, though. We need to dig deeper into the judge. We won’t know any more about the shooting until Grace wakes up. Unless we’ve found anything on the traffic cameras?” She looked at Liam, who shook his head.

“We can definitely dig deeper into the judge,” I said, rubbing soft circles on her back.

“How do we want to do that?” Maya said. “We can dig into him digitally, but I can’t imagine he would keep anything incriminating online.”

“He may,” Liam countered. “But it wouldn’t be anything I could access remotely.”

“He likely keeps a hard drive in his office,” Marcus said, scrolling through his phone.

Evelyn frowned. “Breaking into a federal building would be complicated.”

“He likely wouldn’t keep it in his work office but his home office,” Adrian said.