Kevin was going to be disgusted with her. Only one person on her list, and she’d already blown it. She couldn’t resent that reaction; she was disgusted with herself, too.

As though he could read her mind, just then Kevin called. She felt the vibration in her pocket, then pulled the phone out and read the number. She hit Answer and put it to her ear, but didn’t say anything. She was still too close to the housekeeper, and she didn’t want the woman to hear her voice and turn, getting another, closer look at the blond woman shadowing her. Perhaps the housekeeper was still the way in. Alex couldn’t afford to be noticed.

Alex waited for Kevin to start in on her, irrationally sure he had somehow sensed that she was failing; Way to drop the ball, Oleander, in the half shout that was his normal volume.

Kevin said nothing. She pulled the phone back to look at the screen. Had they been disconnected? Had he dialed her by accident?

The call was live. The seconds counted upward in the bottom corner of the screen.

Alex almost said, Kevin?

Four years of paranoia stopped her tongue.

She pressed the phone to her ear and listened intently. There was no ambient sound of a car or movement. No wind. No animal sounds, no human sounds.

Goose bumps erupted on the backs of her arms, raised the hair on her neck. She’d walked past her car, and now she had to keep going. Her eyes darted around while she kept her head still; she focused on a dumpster in the back corner of the lot. Her pace quickened. She was too close to the center of her enemy’s power. If they were tracing this call, it would not take them long to get here. She wanted to run, wanted it badly, but she kept herself to a quick, purposeful walk.

Still no sound from the other end of the line. The cold, heavy hollow in the pit of her stomach grew larger.

Kevin wasn’t going to suddenly start speaking to her, she knew that. Still, she hesitated for one more second. Once she did what she knew she had to do now, it was over. Her only connection to Kevin was severed.

She hung up. The numbers at the bottom of the screen told her the call had lasted for only seventeen seconds. It felt like much more time had passed.

She walked around the side of the dumpster, where she wasn’t visible from the parking lot. She couldn’t see anyone, which hopefully meant no one could see her.

She set the groceries on the ground.

In the lining of her purse, she had a small lock-picking kit. She’d never had to use it for its real purpose, but it came in handy now and then when she worked with some of her smaller reflux rings and adapters. She pulled the thinnest probe, then used it to pop the SIM card tray out from her phone. Both card and tray went into her bag.

Using the hem of her T-shirt, she carefully wiped the phone down, handling it only through the fabric. The tether of the shirt’s length made it hard to get the phone through the side hatch on the dumpster; it was too high up. She had to toss the phone when she couldn’t reach far enough, but she got it through in one try.

Alex grabbed the paper bags, spun back around, and walked quickly to her car. The minivan was just exiting the lot. She couldn’t tell if the housekeeper had noticed her side trip. She took the longest strides she was capable of as she hurried back.

The phone was gone, but she could almost see the seconds still ticking away in the corner of the screen. There were two possibilities now, and one of those possibilities gave her a very tight deadline indeed.

CHAPTER 27

“A

lex, he just pocket-dialed you,” Daniel argued.

“Danny’s right,” Val agreed. “You’re overreacting. It’s nothing.”

Alex shook her head, feeling the pull in her jaw as her teeth clenched. “We need to move,” she said flatly.

“Because the bad guys might be torturing Kevin for information as we speak,” Val recapped. She used the patient, humoring voice people used with very young children and the elderly.

Alex’s answer was cold and hard. “It won’t be a joke if they come for you, Val. I can promise you that.”

“Look, Alex, your own plan had just failed,” Val reminded her. “You were already upset. Kevin called you and didn’t say anything. That is all that happened. I think it’s a little bit of a leap to assume it was more than an accident.”

“It’s what they do,” Alex said in a slow, even voice. Even before Barnaby had gotten her the appropriate classified reading material, she’d seen some of this in action. “The subject has a phone with one number on it. You call that number and see what kind of information you can get from it. You track the signal you’ve just created. You find the person on the other end.”

“Well, there’s nothing to find, though, right?” Daniel asked encouragingly. “You tossed the phone. It can’t lead them to anything more than a parking lot that’s not connected to us.”

“The phone is a dead end,” she agreed. “But if they have Kevin…”

Doubt rippled across Daniel’s face. Val still wore a patronizing expression.

“Do you think they would have killed him?” Daniel asked in a voice that was almost a whisper.

“That’s the best-case scenario,” she said bluntly. She didn’t know how to sugarcoat it or say it in a gentler way. “If he’s dead, they can’t hurt him anymore. And we’re safe. If he’s alive…” She took a deep breath and refocused. “Like I said, we need to move.”

Val was unconvinced. “You really think he’d sell Danny out?”