Secure Location - By Beverly Long Page 0,46
pacing around the small room, running his hands through his hair.
“Maybe there was a tracking device on our car?”
He shook his head. “No time to set it up. I rented the car under the name of Milo Martinez and paid for it with a credit card under the same name.”
She recognized the name as one he’d used before, when working undercover. If the rental company had checked his driver’s license, there would have been one on file in Illinois under that name.
“The car got delivered to the hotel,” he continued on. “There was no way for anybody to know it was for us. Even if somebody watched us get into it, they wouldn’t have had a chance to tag the car.”
She tried to think, to reason, but her brain felt as weak as her legs. “None of it makes sense,” she said.
He didn’t say anything for a minute. When he did, he surprised her. “Earlier today when we wanted lunch, you knew right where the food was. And you led the way to the water rides, like you knew the park. But you’d said you’d never been there before.”
It took her a minute to catch up. “They...uh...have a diagram of the park online. I couldn’t sleep last night. I got up sometime around two. I jumped onto the public Wi-Fi here at the hotel.”
Cruz stopped pacing.
“Oh, no,” Meg said. “Do you think somebody hacked into the public network and looked at what I’d searched for?”
“It’s possible. Especially if your site doesn’t have the best encryption. But I think it’s more likely your laptop. It’s pretty easy to install software on somebody’s machine that allows somebody else to see everything they are doing. It could have been installed by somebody who had access to your machine or you may just have opened an email and downloaded something without having a clue.”
When would she stop screwing up and putting other people at risk? “I’m sorry, Cruz. I’m just so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he assured her. “Nothing happened.”
“It could have.”
He didn’t respond. She was right. They’d been less careful today, believing that they were safe. The only way Cruz and Jana would be safe was to be away, far away, from her.
Cruz picked up his phone. “I need to fill Myers in.”
She didn’t want to hear the conversation. Didn’t want to relive it. Instead, she went back to her room and brushed her teeth, hoping to get the horrible taste of despair out of her mouth. When she came back, Cruz had just ended the call. He tossed his phone onto the bed. “Myers is on his way over. He wants to see your laptop and to talk to your computer geeks. He’s agreed to let me sit in on the conversation. Can you page the right person and ask them to meet us?”
“Of course.” She picked up her phone. Minutes later, she’d arranged for their chief information officer to meet Cruz in the lobby.
Cruz had his hand on the door. “Myers offered to bring a female plainclothes officer with him. She’ll be here in the room with you and Jana while I’m gone.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“He’s getting bolder. I’m not sure what the hell he’s going to try next.”
* * *
THE FEMALE OFFICER was tall, blonde and looked as if she could have stepped out of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Her name was Greta. It made Meg’s heart flutter a little when Cruz didn’t give the woman any more than a cursory glance.
It had always amazed her that sexy Cruz Montoya had fallen for her. It had been so unexpected and so wonderful.
She’d had so little experience, having dated a few times before Missy’s death but not after. She’d studied, worked and tried to ignore the whispers behind her back. When her dad had lost his job, everyone knew it was because she’d done a terrible thing.
It stopped feeling safe in Maiter, especially after rocks got thrown through their living room window and their house almost burned down after someone started a fire in their overgrown backyard.
They left Maiter in the middle of the night, like criminals. Her parents found a small house in Houston and she hoped that life would return to normal. But it had taken months for her dad to find work. Every day she saw her mother get angrier and her father more depressed.
She wasn’t surprised when the two of them decided to quit pretending that it was okay. The divorce happened quickly. Her dad moved to Austin