“You must see something I don’t.”
“We now know our enemies are worried about something Dad has in his records, worried enough to kill to make sure it stays buried.”
“So?”
“All we’ve got to do is go through those records with a fine-tooth comb.”
“We don’t have them to go through, and from what you remember, there’s nothing suspicious in them anyway.”
“I wasn’t looking for it when I computerized the files. And we do have a copy of the records.”
“You have a backup?”
“Yes.”
“But they took all your storage media.”
“Not my jump drive. I keep it with me all the time.”
“Everyone should. It’s the most efficient form of backup,” Claire said, sounding like a female version of Hotwire.
“What’s a jump drive?”
“Hold on a sec, and I’ll show you.” Josie grabbed her hot pink backpack-style purse from the hardwood floor beside the door and dug in the outside pocket.
She pulled out a small silver object about the size of his finger. “This is my jump drive. It holds 256 megabytes. I keep my whole document directory on it all the time.”
“And you’ve got the school’s records on it?” He knew about bombs the size of pens that could blow up buildings, but the idea that a tiny thing like that held all the records stored in several filing cabinets made his head hurt.
“We don’t have a computer to pull the drive up on,” Claire said dejectedly from her chair.
“No problem.” This was a logistics problem he could handle. “Hotwire should be here soon, and he always travels with his laptop, but is there any reason we can’t just buy you two new computers?”
“Hotwire is coming?” Claire and Josie chorused at the same time, ignoring his suggestion to buy new laptops.
Claire looked dismayed by the prospect, but Josie looked overjoyed, and that did nothing for Daniel’s temper. “Yes, he wants to help with the investigation,” he bit out.
Josie smiled. “That’s so sweet of him.”
She hadn’t thought Daniel was sweet when he’d offered to help. In fact, she’d tried to talk him out of it. His temper slipped one more notch.
Josie put the vegetarian lasagna in the oven and turned back to the counter to grate carrots for the salad she would serve with it.
“I didn’t know you could bake the lasagna without boiling the noodles first,” Claire said from the table, where she was spreading garlic butter on a loaf of French bread.
“It’s a trick Wolf taught me.” She sprinkled the grated carrots over the salad and then smiled at Claire, knowing anything she told the other woman had almost no chance of being used in practical application. “You increase the sauce a little bit and cover it for the first forty-five minutes of baking.”
“So, Wolf is giving you cooking lessons while Hotwire teaches you how to be a computer geek?” Daniel leaned against the counter, so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body luring her.
Only he’d been acting as if he’d never had an obsession with her body, as though they hadn’t spent the night before making love. He’d said he wished he’d been there when the thieves came, implying he regretted the night they’d spent together. She couldn’t regret it, and knowing he did, even if his reasoning was more than justified, hurt.
“Wolf gave me a few tips, but labeling Hotwire as a mere computer geek is like calling an Olympic triathlete a Sunday jogger. Did you have a question about that?” she asked, nodding toward the list of missing items he was holding.
He’d come into the kitchen when she started making dinner and had been holding the list then, but so far, he hadn’t said anything about it. He hadn’t said anything at all until just now. He’d been standing there all broody and masculine, putting off male pheromones her body was reacting to despite his lack of overt encouragement.
Increased tension emanated off of him in indecipherable waves. What had him so uptight?
“Did you leave the journals off on purpose, or did you forget about them?” he asked.
Josie was puzzled by the question. She’d never said the journals had been taken. “They aren’t missing.”
Chapter 10
“What?” Daniel asked as if she’d said his fly was undone.
She frowned, thinking the answer should be obvious. “I hid them in the top of my closet before we left yesterday.”
“Why?” Claire asked, and Josie realized her roommate might assume she’d been worried about Claire looking through her things.
“No particular reason. My dad drilled into me to always put important stuff out of sight when I’m going to be away.” Hence his secret underground room.
It wasn’t anything different than Daniel would probably have done himself, so why hadn’t he expected her to do it?
“I wish I’d been that cautious with my grandmother’s locket, but I always left it hanging from my mirror as sort of a talisman.” Claire bit her lip and went back to buttering the bread, leaving some rather large clumps in one section while barely touching another.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Daniel said. “It’s not your fault you weren’t raised by a slightly paranoid vet with a penchant for soldiering. Josette has a lot of her dad in her.”
“I am not paranoid.”
Daniel shrugged, and she wanted to slug him. “There’s nothing wrong with being careful,” she told him.
“It’s more than that, and if you’re honest, you’ll admit it. You refuse to have a decent security system, but you practice defensive operative tactics at home.”
“Are you trying to say you can take the soldier out of the battlefield, but you can’t take the training out of the soldier?”
He didn’t smile at her subtle joke like she’d hoped he would. “I’m just saying you’ve got a lot of your dad in you.”
“I’ve never denied that, but I’m not a carbon copy of him.”
His jaw set grimly. “We can’t always control how much of our parents we have in us.”
“Here.” Claire laid a tinfoil-wrapped loaf of garlic bread on the counter, breaking Josie’s eye contact with Daniel. “I’ve spread the butter, but I won’t take responsibility for baking it.”
Josie forced the expected laugh, moving so Claire could get by and put the butter back in the fridge. Her movement put her body into contact with Daniel, and he quickly stepped away, going into the living room without another word. She watched him go, feeling rejected.
Unwilling to focus on Daniel’s confusing behavior when it just led her thoughts into a useless circle, Josie turned to Claire. “Even you can’t get sidetracked and let the bread burn by a computer that isn’t here.”
Claire’s smile faltered, and she sighed. “And isn’t likely to be for a while either.”
“Of course it will. My homeowners’ insurance covers theft. I’ll lend you the money to buy your new laptop until the claim is settled.”
“You really don’t think we’ll get our things back?”
Josie sighed. “No. I don’t. Even when we find the culprits, unless they’re idiots or incredibly cocky, they’ll have destroyed the evidence of the break-in rather than be caught with it.”
Claire didn’t reply, but closed the fridge and scooted around Josie to get out plates for the table.
“Set a place for Hotwire. I’m sure he’ll be here in time for dinner.”
“All right.”
The front door slammed, and Josie’s and Claire’s eyes met.
“What’s the matter with Nitro?” Claire asked.
“I wish I knew.” She hoped it wasn’t that he was preparing to end their newfound intimacy.
She didn’t know what she would do if he expected her to go back to noncontact friendship. Act like the succubus he’d once called her and climb into his bed in the middle of the night with the intent to seduce probably. Wanting him and believing he did not want her but not really knowing what it would mean to have him had been almost bearable.