“Where?”
“The main house.”
“I’m serious about this, Decker. I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin.”
I stood and walked over to her, taking her hands in mine. “Remember this morning when I told you that riding out is my therapy? I get it. If you need to pound keys or whatever it was you said, I can make that happen. Let’s go.”
We were partway to the main house when Mila brought up what I’d learned about Adler’s recent travels.
“Why was he traveling to Texas?”
“I don’t know, but as soon as that sweet tush of yours is planted in front of the piano, I intend to figure it out.” I also intended to look into Marshall Livingston’s recent travels. And, I still needed to hack into Sybil’s medical records to see if there was anything unusual about her surgery or hospital stay.
“Do you remember at which hospital Sybil had her surgery?”
“St. David’s Children’s Hospital.”
I nodded. That wasn’t far from the ranch and the only one in the vicinity of Austin, so it made sense that’s where her parents would’ve taken her.
The piano was probably horribly out of tune since no one had played it since Quint’s mother died years and years ago. I knew that neither Quint nor his sister ever learned. Mila didn’t seem to mind, though, when I escorted her to the library that was toward the back of the house.
“You can close the door,” she said when I walked out of the room. I looked over at her before I did, and she was already mesmerized by the instrument.
“If you need me…” I began, but it was pointless; I doubted she heard a word I said. I
was partway down the hall when I heard her start to play.
Rile met me when I came into the kitchen. “Where are Edge and Grinder?” I asked.
“Grinder is looking deeper into Judson Knight’s association with Marshall Livingston. Edge is on his way to Bluebell Creek.”
23
Adler
“I won’t be able to get back in there until later tonight. I’ve already had one neighbor approach me and tell me how sorry she was to hear that Sybil died. She said she knew we were friends, and that she’d pray for me,” I told my father.
“It has to be there,” he murmured, sounding like he was talking to himself and hadn’t heard a word I said.
“I don’t understand, Dad. I thought you’d arranged to meet Sybil.”
“Judd Knight must’ve gotten to her first.”
“Jesus. Do you think he killed her for it?”
“Fucking focus, Adler! Do you fucking understand what’s on the line here? Those documents prove that I was the original applicant on the patents that Knighthawk’s technology is based on. Billions of dollars are at stake.”
I let out a deep breath. Was a woman’s life worth that? I supposed to my father, it might be. And what kind of man would that make him? “What am I looking for specifically?”
“A flash drive.”
24
Decker
“It’s kind of like that social media platform that two college students claim to have invented in their dorm room. Twenty years later, only one of them is a billionaire,” said Grinder, briefing Rile and me on what he’d learned about Judd Knight and Marshall Livingston. “Knighthawk made its money in inductive wireless technology.”
“What is that?” asked Rile.