Zy brought his own to the table, his coffee steaming and black, and sat beside her with a sigh before he dug in. “Let’s start at the top. When Trees returns, he can help fill in any holes we may have missed. Maybe we’ll have a working theory by then.”
She nodded, reaching for her phone, too terrified to let her only link with her child go. “It started last January, you said?”
“The Friday before you left on maternity leave. What were you doing?”
It had been a year ago. She didn’t remember exact details, but she recalled highlights. “The colonel and the guys got me a cake and tried to throw me a shower. Carlotta probably had a hand in it. Maybe Kimber, too. But neither was there. Um…Aspen was with us again that day. She’d been there off and on for almost a week. She wasn’t very good at anything she did, but she tried.”
“We noticed that, too.” Zy frowned. “Who chose her to temporarily replace you and why?”
“The local temp agency didn’t have anyone who fit the colonel’s checklist and wasn’t looking for a temp-to-perm arrangement. And he didn’t want to mislead anyone. I was talking to Cash about it one night after work, not long before he walked out. He suggested Aspen. He said he’d met her at his last job, waiting tables at some steakhouse along Highway Ninety. She was their bookkeeper. But the steakhouse was closing down, and he said Aspen only needed temporary work because she had another job lined up come April. It seemed perfect.”
“My initial impression of Aspen had me thinking she wasn’t smart enough to plant any sort of spyware or remote-connect software on your computer, but maybe that was an act? Anyway, let’s say she installed it. That was exactly a year ago. It remained there until she left. Trees removed it just before your return. That would explain how the details of the March mission—”
“The one where you were injured?”
“Yeah. That may be how that info leaked and the op went south.”
“But how would Aspen know anyone from a cartel?”
Zy shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s keep following this path and see if it leads us anywhere. She might be a mastermind, but she might also be just another pawn.”
Tessa studied him, trying to focus purely on their discussion and the evidence, not the warmth of his body so close, not the way his stare lingered, not the memories of his hands on her…
As heat climbed her face, she looked away. “What happened next?”
“You came back, and every mission we undertook that wasn’t related to Tierra Caliente went off perfectly—until August twentieth. By then, Aspen was long gone. So was the tracking software. No one new had joined the crew. There should have been no way for that information to leak out.” Zy frowned and reached for her computer, the Gmail popping up immediately. “Who else had access to your laptop then, when Walker was first captured?”
Tessa tried to think it through. “Everyone in the office, like usual.”
He scanned the emails. “At three forty-six a.m.? You take your computer home most of the time…”
Suddenly, the awful truth snapped into place. “Cash.”
Zy sat up straighter. “He was living with you.”
Tessa nodded. “And he had some weird job supposedly testing video games, of all things. He’d be up all night with his team or squad or whatever he called them. If he forgot to put his headphones on, I’d hear the gunfire whenever they stormed the bunker or took back the headquarters.”
He frowned. “Testing video games?”
“That’s what he said. It’s the perfect job for him. He likes to keep vampire hours. He likes to pretend to be all big and bad. He likes to expend as little effort as possible for his paycheck. But I couldn’t complain. He apparently got paid well and on time because he never missed making a payment to me.”
“Tell me more about the video games.”
“War-type games. Battlefields and soldiers and missions…”
“No, I mean, did you ever see the names of these games? Did he talk about when they’d be released?”
Why did it matter? “No. They all seemed the same to me, but they weren’t new games from what he said. And I never understood why any game manufacturer would pay someone like Cash to test a product they had already released to the public.”
“They wouldn’t.”
Of course not. It had been a lie. And now Tessa wished she’d questioned Cash more. “He was taking money from the cartel—to spy on EM with my computer?—and using his games to confuse me.”
“That’s my theory. And if he and Aspen knew each other…”
“Then…you’re thinking it was a coordinated effort?”
“It’s logical.”
It was. It was also conjecture—not the proof Hallie’s abductor wanted—but this was more theory than Zy’d had previously. They were getting somewhere. That gave her hope.