1st Case - James Patterson Page 0,47

fairly tidy, but now it was littered with papers, books, and laundry. I looked over at her, lounging there with the hot coffee, and the crop top, and the sarcastic smile she never knew she was giving.

And that’s the moment I realized Darren had been right. That asshole.

I’d never been one to keep secrets from A.A., and now I had two big ones weighing me down. The one about the app was a nonstarter, but as for this second, much more personal one, I knew I’d have to say something about it eventually. One way or another.

Just not now. Not yet. It was still too fresh. Or maybe more like raw.

So I ran in the opposite direction instead.

“I do have one little piece of news,” I said. “Well, medium-sized to big, actually.”

“Go on.” She leaned back against the wall and sipped her drink. For the first time since I’d gotten to Ashdown House that evening, things felt a little bit like they used to.

“It’s about Billy,” I said.

A.A.’s spine straightened. “Agent Blue Eyes?” she asked.

“In the flesh,” I said. “No pun intended.”

“Ooh,” she said. “I like the sound of that. Keep talking. I want to hear everything.”

CHAPTER 51

GEORGE AND I got to my place in Somerville a little after eleven o’clock. Before we went in, I surprised myself by asking him to set up in the living room, as opposed to staying out in his car. So maybe I was just a little on edge. I appreciated Billy looking out for me, even if I’d been ambivalent when he set up the security detail in the first place. Not that it was up to me, as it turned out.

“I was planning on coming in, anyway,” George said. “It’s one thing to let you have an hour with your friend back at MIT, but make no mistake, Angela. They wouldn’t have set this up if it wasn’t for a good reason.”

I wondered what Keats had said to him about me. Certainly I had a cavalier reputation, but I wouldn’t want George to think I took this for granted, either. I guess it was a fine line.

“Okay, then,” I said, getting out of the car. “Mi casa, su casa, and all that.”

“Don’t know what that means, but I wouldn’t say no to something to eat,” George answered.

“Close enough.”

As soon as we got inside, I pointed him to the fridge, told him to help himself to anything he liked, and went to dump my stuff in the bedroom. I’d barely dropped my case onto the bed when I heard a text dinging into my phone.

A.A., I thought. Has to be.

But in fact, it was from Eve.

Call me. Now if you can.

There was nothing casual about that. Eve never told me to call her, much less ASAP. And considering everything else going on, I knew this was some kind of serious business.

Maybe fifteen seconds later, I had her on the line.

“What’s up?” I asked, sitting down on the bed, still in my jacket.

“I’m sending you a link,” she said. “And FYI, it’s not traceable back to me.”

“What kind of link?” I asked.

“You’ll know what to do,” she said. “Just take the damn credit this time, will you?”

I had no idea why she was being so vague. I was about 70 percent curious and 30 percent concerned.

“Well, hang on, I’ll open it while you’re on the phone,” I told her. I was already pulling out my laptop and flipping it open. “Did you send it to my work account or my Gmail?”

Eve didn’t answer.

“Eve?”

When I looked down at my phone again, I saw that she’d hung up. I guess she was pretty serious about letting me take ownership of whatever this was. And now I was more intrigued than ever, given the cloak-and-dagger routine, which wasn’t really like her.

When I got to the email a second later, the subject line said SALT-AND-PEPPER SHRIMP. That was Eve’s favorite dish from Myers and Chang—presumably to let me know that this was, in fact, from her. More cloak-and-dagger. What the hell?

The body of the email itself was empty, except for a read-only script file sent as a straightforward attachment from an address I didn’t recognize. There was no signature, and no additional text, beyond the attachment itself.

I was tempted to call Eve back before I did anything else. Certainly, if this were anyone other than her, I’d never trust that random attachment. But Eve had clearly sent it this way, without comment, for whatever reasons of her own.