“But?” Joe asked.
Mac flashed a grin in the rearview mirror as his eyes flickered to Joe in the back seat. “You got yourself a smart one back there, Cyn,” he said with a chuckle.
Cyn wagged her head. “We’ll see.”
Joe snorted at her response.
“But he might have had access to other technology,” Mac answered Joe’s question. “There are four computers he and his team are assigned to use, but there are computers available around the base that are assigned to other teams. Each team is only supposed to use the ones assigned to them, but we don’t check regularly. Generally speaking, the fact that wecancheck tends to keep them in line. That said, we segregate the computer blocks to reduce the chance of a breach or the impact of a cyber attack, and we only checked the computer block he was assigned to.”
“Can you check the others?” Cyn asked.
Mac nodded. “We monitor the traffic and the network access. Assuming he used his own credentials, it should be easy to tell if he used a different computer. If he used someone else’s, we might not find anything if there’s even anything to find.”
“What’s the likelihood that he would have gotten access to someone else’s credentials who isn’t on his team?” Joe asked.
Mac sighed. “Fuck, son. You raise another good point. If he used the credentials of someone on his team—something that would be much more likely to happen than obtaining them from a member of another team—then we wouldn’t have caught it, even within his assigned block of computers.”
“You didn’t know what you were looking for, though,” Joe said. “Whywouldyou look at the access of the entire team when you were investigating McElroy’s death?”
“Because it would have been a good thing to do,” Mac countered.
He was right, but Joe said nothing as the base came into view. If he’d learned one thing in his three years as a police officer and detective, it was that sometimes the missing link was right in front of you, but sometimes someone else needed to point it out. What might seem obvious now might not have been earlier, and there was no shame in that.
“What about his friends?” Cyn asked.
“He didn’t have too many close ones,” Mac answered. “He was a good private, did everything we asked of him and generally did it well. But there was always a little bit of a reserve about him. He performed but didn’t excel. He was friendly but didn’t form any deep bonds. He was one of those tourist soldiers, I call them. You know the kind that put in their four years for some reason or another and then disappear into the wind as if they were only experimenting with the lifestyle.”
Joe had encountered a few of those in his time, too, but that didn’t really add up with McElroy’s background. A young man who joins ROTC then drops out of college to enlist didn’t seem like the kind of person who was just experimenting with the life.
They pulled up to the checkpoint and everyone handed their IDs over. Once cleared, Mac pulled onto the base, then continued answering Cyn’s question. “He did have a few friends, though. Kelvin Crammer will be your driver tomorrow. He was probably McElroy’s closest friend. Or at least they seemed to spend a lot of time together. Crammer is a good kid. He may not last more than four years, but he’s giving us all he can while he’s here. You good tonight? Want to meet for a drink later?” Mac asked as they pulled up to the hotel. They all climbed out, and Joe looked to Cyn to answer. She gave him a questioning look, but he shrugged. He was along for the ride. He’d offer his brain and brawn when needed, but this was her territory.
“How about tomorrow night?” she suggested. “I have a few things I want to look into tonight, and we’ll want to get an early start tomorrow.”
Mac gave a sharp nod. “Sounds good. Sleep tight, and I’ll see you at 0700 hours tomorrow.”
“Thanks for the ride, and good to see you again,” Cyn replied. “Hungry?” she asked as they entered the sparse lobby.
“Not yet,” Joe answered. “Let’s get settled then grab something.”
After traveling in the luxury of the Steele family jet, the hotel looked a little on the shabby side. It wasn’t bad, and it was a hell of a lot better than some places he’d stayed. Not to mention that seeing how easily Cyn moved from one world to the next was more fascinating than it should have been. Especially when she greeted the man behind the counter by name.
Less than ten minutes later, he was dumping his bag in a single room across the hall from Cyn’s and toeing off his shoes and socks. He’d argued on the way over for a shared room—not because he wanted to sleep beside her, although that wouldn’t have been a bad perk, but because he wanted to stay close. She hadn’t quite laughed him off, but it had been an effort on her part not to.
He could have persuaded her, and it would have been no hardship to try. Between the kiss they’d shared the first night and a scorching session on the flight, it was very clear to Joe that, if asked, Cyn wouldn’t give two thoughts about throwing caution to the wind and hopping into bed with him. As unusual as it was for him, though, he wasn’t interested in that. What he wanted was for them to actually want the same things from each other before they crossed that line.
She’d given every indication she was open to exploring a real relationship, but seeing how she moved through life over the past few days, he had to wonder if she even knew what that meant. Not that she didn’t have real relationships—her friendships with the women of the club were deep and tight, and she talked a lot about her family on the flight over, as well. She wasn’t stunted or wary when it came to relationships in general, but, by her own admission, her experience with romantic relationships was limited. And he had no interest in entering into one that flared bright then flamed out quickly, which was, he surmised from their talks, the only kind of relationships she’d had with men.
So, despite the protest from his body—extreme protest—he’d kept their mile-high session to a slow burn. And he intended to keep it that way until he and Cyn were on the same path—at the same pace—to wherever their relationship would take them.
He glanced at the single bed and its thin bedspread and knew he’d made the right decision. It looked little better than a cot, and while he’d stayed in worse places, he was glad his first night with Cyn wasn’t going to be here.
He was washing his face when a knock came at his door. “It’s me,” Cyn called.
“Just a sec,” he responded, then quickly dried his face with a threadbare towel and headed to the door to let her in.
“I see your room is as homey as mine. They did give me one with a view, though. A perk of being a quasi-regular, I suppose,” she said, stepping inside. The door swung shut behind her, and, in silence, they stood in the middle of his room.
Cyn’s eyes darted to his bed, not two feet away, and lingered before returning to meet his. “Want to give it a whirl?” she asked. She was grinning, but if he said yes, she’d jump right in.