“If they worked for people like Pohl, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Double agents, spies in general . . . that made sense.
“And if they didn’t?”
Brigitte set her fork down. “How many are we talking?”
“Three that I’ve found so far.”
Brigitte shook her head. “Linette has a great way of closing off if she feels her security is threatened. Anything that happens outside the walls of Richter is not something she’s interested in. An investigation would lead to all kinds of trouble.”
“If people are dying—”
“I’m not saying it’s right. Just that it is. This is why you’re poring over the yearbooks.”
Sasha pressed her fork into her salad, brought it up to her mouth. “It started out searching for memories. Trying to recapture some of the fire you have when you’re young and stupid enough to believe anything is possible.”
“And you stumbled upon something else entirely.”
“I did. I’m not a big believer in coincidence. Although these deaths may be unrelated.”
“Your gut says otherwise.”
Sasha nodded. “It does.”
“I don’t know anyone more qualified to find a connection than you.”
Sasha took a bite, swallowed it down with the wine. “Wouldn’t Linette be telling you to stop me from looking?”
“Maybe. I’m not her.”
Which was a big reason why Sasha trusted Brigitte with the basic facts she’d found out.
An hour later she was astride her motorcycle and buzzing back to Richter. A few miles away, she stopped at a fuel station and called AJ.
“About damn time you called.”
It wasn’t often she was cussed at over the phone. “How do you like the Harrison estate?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m in the Hilton in Berlin.”
Sasha topped off the gas and returned the nozzle to its holding space. “Didn’t Reed contact you?”
“I don’t take orders, Sasha.”
She glanced around the deserted gas station. “I’m working on intel. I need you to keep low. London is perfect—”
“When you leave, I’ll go with you to London. Otherwise I’m here.”
“Why are you being difficult?” He wasn’t safe in Germany. She didn’t know what bugged the shit out of her more . . . the fact he wasn’t taking orders or the fact that she cared for his safety.
“I’m not leaving now that I know I’m right. I’m not walking away.” His defiance wasn’t expected.
“We don’t know you’re—”
“Listen, sweetheart—”
Sweetheart? “I bust noses for that comment.”
“Do you like Sex on a Stick better?”
She glanced down at her black pants, her leather jacket. A slight smile helped ease the tension in her neck.
Yeah, she did.
“Fine. Stay in Berlin, but don’t go around asking questions. Use secure networks. I have names for you. Do you have a pen?”
“Go for it.”
She told him half a dozen more names she’d found in the yearbooks and encouraged him to notify Reed.
“I don’t like the idea of you being at that school, poking around,” he told her.
“There isn’t a safer school in a first world country.”
“Richter alumni are turning up dead,” he said, as if he cared for her well-being.
“Do I give you the impression I can’t take care of myself?”
“You give me the impression that you trust too easily behind those walls. When I confronted Lodovica, I had the distinct feeling she was hiding something.”
“She’s protecting the school,” Sasha defended the woman, half-heartedly.
“A little too passionately, if you ask me. What’s in it for her? Wouldn’t a normal dean of a school want to know if their students were being targeted even after they left?” His logic pissed her off.
“Richter is different. You know that. Now spend your energy looking up those names. Let me handle the school.” Sasha straddled her bike.
“Fine. Wait. Reed wanted me to tell you that the other name you gave him came up unremarkable. Businessman.”
Great, now what?
“You there?”
“Yeah. I gotta go.”
“Who was Reed talking about?”
“No one.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’re smart, sweetheart.” The last thing she was going to do was tell AJ Geoff’s name. “It’s unrelated to your sister.”
AJ sighed, his voice softened. “Watch your back.”
She hesitated. “I always do.”
She hung up and kicked over the bike.
Chapter Eleven
Instead of using her all-access bracelet to wander around the school after everyone else had gone to bed, Sasha went about it the old-fashioned way.
The security system had been given a few more cameras since she graduated, but working around it proved just as easy for her now as it had then.
The college dorms would be the first place the faculty would have looked when it came to finding contraband.
Which was why the high school seniors and college age students preferred to use the primary students’ building. The younger kids could sleep through anything