“Doesn’t matter what you found. The only thing writing an article about it does is put you out there more than you already are.”
“I found the money trail,” she retorted. “I know—”
“You don’t know shit. What I know is there’s one way to deal with terrorists and rebels and that’s with bullets. Words will roll off them and put a bigger target on your back. No article. What’s in your hand?”
Her eyes narrowed, her spine straightened, and her shoulders snapped back.
“I don’t think I want to give it to you.”
“Do you wanna get dead?”
“Zane,” I interjected.
“What? I speak the truth. It’s not like she doesn’t know someone’s trying to kill her. She’s here for a reason and I can’t protect her if I don’t know what she’s found.”
Evette set a thumb drive on the table and skewered Zane with a stare.
“I don’t want to die.”
The statement wasn’t a confirmation—no, it was a stubborn acquiesce followed by assent when she tossed the thumb drive on the table.
“Who tried to kill you?” Kevin asked and my fingers curled into fists at the reminder.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t recognize the…I’m assuming it was a man?” Kevin pushed.
“Yes, a man. And no I didn’t recognize him. He ambushed me when I unlocked my front door and pushed me into the house. He wanted my computer.”
“That was it? He wanted your computer, you gave it to him, then he let you go?”
I had to hand it to Evette, she didn’t even flinch at Kevin’s question. There she was sitting in a room full of people she didn’t know discussing someone breaking into her apartment and holding her at gunpoint and she was calm, cool, and collected. No outward signs she was going to freak out or break down.
“No. He also wanted my hard drive. I lied and said it was in my bedroom. He told me to go get it and I climbed out my bedroom window and ran.”
“He let you go into your bedroom by yourself?” Myles asked.
“Yeah, he already had my laptop open on my kitchen table and was basically ignoring me so I took advantage.”
“Smart,” I mumbled.
“Can you describe the man?” Cooper asked.
“Sure. Normal-looking.”
Cooper narrowed his eyes and shook his head unimpressed.
“A little more detail?”
“Light brown hair. Not ugly but not good-looking. Average build, not fat but not muscular. I guess his eyes were hazel-ish—kinda brown, kinda green. A few inches taller than me. The only thing about him that stuck out was he has a crooked nose and it was kinda big. Tan skin, like he spent time in the sun.”
“No mask,” Cooper muttered.
Thankfully Coop didn’t finish his thought. No mask oftentimes meant the assailant didn’t care if his victim saw his face because he wasn’t going to leave them alive.
Cooper Cain might be new to Z Corps but he wasn’t new to the game. He was former LAPD SWAT and from the file Zane had provided, he’d been damn stellar at his job. We all knew that already seeing as Cooper was the brother of a Red Team operator, Jaxon Cain. Jax was a friend and a highly respected colleague. We welcomed having his brother Cooper on our team. But the guy had much to learn about the assholes we tracked.
The scumbag drug runners, human traffickers, and terrorists were easy. It was the spiderweb of greed and unscrupulous dealings of big corporations that often times jammed you up and left you shoveling a long deep trench to find connections and clues.
Or in this case, figure out who wanted to silence the reporter who’d stumbled onto something she shouldn’t’ve.
“So you left your computer. What’s on the drive?” I asked.
With a flick of her finger, the drive skidded over the wooden surface. I quickly caught it and wasted no time moving to the secure laptop that connected to the big screen mounted on the wall.
“When I started researching, I didn’t know where to look first so I concentrated on the area surrounding the village where Kalee and Anaya were working and then moved to the orphanage. Then I found information about Abrams Technology. They’d approached the East Timor government about leasing a large area of land. The village, the orphanage, a good portion of the jungle, and a neighboring settlement were part of the plot of the proposed lease. This application was met with mixed reactions. The president denied the petition almost immediately. The prime minister wanted to work with Abrams and approved the lease.