Page 22 of Cyn
Holding up her own phone, her stomach dropped when she read the sender's email address.
“Who’scinderellaman?” he asked.
“Eminem is Meleak’s favorite artist. Meleak sent this to me.”
“Why would he send this to you?” Joe asked, his voice low in warning. Not to her, but as if he were trying to stop something he knew he couldn’t, and he wasn’t happy about it.
Cyn shook her head. “I don’t know. Not yet.”
“Can you trace the email?”
“I can and I will, but it won’t do any good. I can all but promise it was sent from some internet café. Probably in East Africa.”
Joe let out a long breath. “You think he’s back in Africa?”
Meaning, he wasn’t a nearby threat. It was sweet that Joe was concerned about her safety, but Meleak had never been, and would never be, a threat to her. At least not since the first ten minutes of their meeting three years ago.
“I think he was on a flight within two hours of leaving McElroy’s body. I know it’s hard to believe, but he doesn’t want to hurt me.”
“Then what does he want?”
Cyn rose from his—very comfortable—lap and returned to her own chair. Reaching for her glass of wine, she gave the only answer she could come up with. “McElroy and the article are tied together somehow, and however they are tied together is what he wants me to know.”
“And why can’t he just pop into an internet café and send a message?” Joe asked.
At his wry tone, Cyn swung her gaze to him. Then she grinned. At least Joe was keeping a sense of humor. In her line of work, it was about the only thing that could keep a person sane, and she appreciated it more than he knew. There was nothing worse than working with a grumbly downer. “Not his style. I’m not exactly the enemy, but he still wouldn’t want to be caught helping me too much. Not that I think anyone is going to…” A thought teased at the edges of her mind, and she fell silent as she chased it.
“What?” Joe asked, sitting forward.
“I think Meleak wants me to go back to Africa,” she said slowly. The minute she said it, though, she knew she was right. Meleak was leaving her a trail of crumbs, and if she wanted to know what was at the end, she’d need to follow it.
“How did you get to that conclusion from a dead body and a news article?” Joe asked, his tone curious rather than questioning.
“There is a connection between McElroy and Al-Shabaab, I’d bet my life on it. But since Al-Shabaab only operates in Africa, I need to go to Africa to find the connection.”
She expected Joe to protest, she really did. No doubt Franklin would when she told him what she planned. To Joe’s credit, though, he simply took a sip of his beer and seemed to consider her words. After a beat, he spoke.
“The investigation into McElroy’s death was substandard. I wonder if that’s because Al-Shabaab was involved and the Army didn’t want to call attention to it,” he pondered. “If that’s the case, though, why would it be important for you to find that out?” He looked at her, then shook his head and added, “I think there has to be something else.”
“Only one way to find out. I can probably catch a flight to Djibouti tomorrow night,” Cyn said, picking up her phone to make the arrangements.
“You’re not going to Djibouti by yourself,” Joe said.
Cyn laughed. Hard.
“Sorry,” she said when she caught her breath and could talk again. Wiping her eyes, she looked up to see him scowling at her. Over the past forty-eight hours, she’d learned that Joe’s display of emotions were generally pretty subtle—a tilt of his lips here, a lowering of a brow there—and easy to miss if one wasn’t paying attention. But not this reaction. No, he wore an honest-to-goodness scowl. It sat so uncomfortably on him that she had to fight not to start laughing, or at least chuckling, again.
“I was sent by my uncle to help you all out. To be your backup,” he said. “Having you waltz off to East Africa at the prompting of a Somali pirate—and yes, I know you say he won’t hurt you, but that doesn’t mean the people he deals with won’t—seems to me to be an epic failure of the duty my uncle bestowed on me.”
“I travel to Africa at least four times a year. Always by myself,” Cyn pointed out.
“That’s nice. Now you don’t.”
“You can’t come with me every time. Not only is that not practical, it may not be legal given the work I do.” That last part was true in some instances when the State Secrets Act was in play. This didn’t happen to be one of those times, though. Maybe Joe wouldn’t know the difference.
“This isn’t a sanctioned intelligence mission. Nice try, Steele,” he said.
Crud.“You just started a new job. I’ll be gone a minimum of five days. You can’t take that much time off.”
