Page 38 of Trust No One

“They have to have a way to communicate,” Mel said, and he heard the frustration in her voice.

“Probably the dark web,” Dev said. “That’s where all the juicy stuff’ll be.”

She looked over at him. “You know anything about navigating the dark web?”

“Not a damn thing. Wasn’t in my wheelhouse. I was a field guy. Guns and bombs and action. Desk jockeys like you were responsible for trolling the dark web.”

“Yeah, I crept around in the muck that’s the dark web a lot more than I wanted to. I can find stuff there, but I’m not an expert.” She slammed her laptop closed. “Maybe we both just wasted a perfectly good hour of sleep.”

He slid his hand over hers. Squeezed, then let her go, even though he wanted to let his fingers linger on her smooth skin. “Wasn’t wasted,” he said. “We’ll take some time tomorrow to go through all this material. You never know what we’ll find.”

Mel shook her head. “Kingsley’s too smart to leave anything incriminating on his work computer.”

“He’s not that smart,” Dev retorted. “You figured out he was dirty.”

“I only had suspicions,” she said. “It wasn’t until Bree told me what happened at that conference that I started looking into that bastard.”

“He’s made mistakes. Everyone does. We’ll comb through these emails and find some evidence.” He wanted to slide beneath the covers and wrap his arms around Mel. Hold her all night. Instead, he got off the bed. “Go back to sleep, Mel. Don’t stay awake obsessing about Kingsley.”

Her smile was forced. “You know me well.”

“Yeah, I do. And right now, I know you need to sleep if we’re going to get anything done tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah, Mom. I’ll go to sleep.”

His lips twitched with a smile. He’d always appreciated Mel’s smart mouth. “Okay, see you in the morning. We’ll figure out our next step then.”

The last thing Dev wanted to do was go back to his lonely, too-big bed. But he padded into his room without looking back.

The next morning, after he’d showered and gotten dressed, he knocked lightly on Mel’s door. “Come in,” she called.

When he walked into her room, she was typing furiously on her computer. “Just a sec,” she said. “I want to finish this.”

Dev sat on the end of her bed and watched her. She was completely focused on whatever she was doing. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, typing so fast he was surprised they weren’t cramping. Finally, after ten minutes or so, she leaned against the backboard of the bed and grinned at him.

“I had a thought,” she said.

Mel’s ‘thoughts’ were legendary at Blackhawk Security. Had been when she was CIA, too. “Yeah?” he said, leaning toward her, excitement stirring. “Spill.”

“Gideon Wolf,” she said.

“What about him?” Gideon was one of their operatives. He’d been an FBI agent until he uncovered a Russian mole in the agency. The mole had tried to kill him and Alex Conway, now his wife, but Gideon had stopped the guy and put him in jail for the rest of his life.

“I remembered him talking about visiting the dark web for his job at the FBI. He talked about what a cesspool it was, but he sounded as if he knew his way around it. I just emailed him using our VPN. Gave him the link to sign into it, too. He and Alex are in Evanston where Gideon recently finished a job for us. I asked him if he’d mind digging into the dark web for Kingsley. I’m guessing that Kingsley, like a lot of people, uses the same or similar logins and passwords. Shouldn’t take too long to find him there.”

“Brilliant idea,” Dev said. “Gideon’s the perfect person for that job. You tell him what we’re looking for, send him those names, and if Kingsley’s using the dark web, Gideon will find him.”

Mel closed her computer with a ‘cat who ate the canary’ smile. “My thinking exactly. Now we have to figure out what we’re going to do while Gideon works on the dark web.”

Chapter 14

“Ithink our next step should be watching Kingsley,” Mel said as they ate breakfast that morning. “See if we recognize anyone going into his building.”

Dev reared back. Dropped his fork on his plate. “How’re you gonna do that?” he asked. “Langley is out in the ‘burbs. And without clearance, we couldn’t get near that building.”

Mel smiled with that cat-who-ate-the-canary expression that always drove him wild. “That’s where Kingsley’s arrogance and paranoia will help us. You’d think he’d want his office to be in the CIA building at Langley. Where the action is. Where the big muckety-mucks of the CIA are.” She shook her head. “You’d be wrong.”

Dev frowned at her. “You’ve lost me. Where is his office?”

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