Irrevocable (Evan Arden 5)

“You need anything else before I go?”

“Key to the john?” He points to the one I got from the woman inside. I hadn’t returned it when I bought the sandwich. “They won’t let me have it.”

“Sure.” I hand it over to him and then make my way back to the Camaro.

“I thought you got lost,” Nick says as I get in.

“Had to take a shit.” I don’t know why I’m reluctant to mention Donald, but I don’t tell Nick about him.

Nick glances at me out of the corner of his eye. He must not believe me, because there’s something off about his look, and he’s got his hand balled up on his thigh. He’s holding it tight enough for his knuckles to go white. I don’t know what he thinks I was doing, but I decide it doesn’t matter. Let him wonder.

We meet Jonathan at the warehouse and go over some of what he has found. Everything he’s telling me is superficial, and I can tell he’s holding back. Assuming it must be Nick’s presence, I give him the keys to the Camaro and send him out for pizza.

He can’t resist the combination.

Once Nick is out of the way, Jonathan opens up.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Nick.”

“I figured as much. What did you find?”

“Quite a bit.” Jonathan turns his laptop toward me and places his phone beside it. The phone is running his new security system. “I’m actually pretty pissed off. I should have noticed this before.”

“What is it?”

“Someone created a backdoor into the app,” he says. “That wasn’t a false alarm or some electrical trouble the other day. Someone activated the system to get me out of the way.”

“It was a little too coincidental. Who could have created it?”

“There are only a handful of people who ever had enough access to do something like this. Beni is one of them.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Who else?”

“Nick is another. I’m not sure he knows enough about computers to do this, though.”

“But Beni does?”

“Just enough.”

“Anyone else?”

“Becca was on the system early on,” Jonathan tells me. “She had some accounting thing she wanted added to it, but it didn’t work properly and got put on the back burner. Paulie had access as well, but that dude can’t even figure out Candy Crush.”

“Paulie is dumb, but he’s not a rat.” I smirk and shake my head.

“You punched him out.”

“He deserved it. If he was part of some conspiracy, he wouldn’t have risked flipping me off in the first place.”

“Good point.”

“Beni’s at the top of the list. We need eyes on him.”

“Agreed.” Jonathan nods. “Who should watch him?”

“I don’t know who to trust yet,” I say. “Something is going on with him and Lucia, but if I can’t be sure about her, I can’t use her to dig into it.”

“You think Lucia would betray her dad?”