Page 65 of Deep Tide

“No.”

She arched her eyebrows. “What are you telling me?”

“He’s working with them in a different capacity.”

And suddenly she got it.

“Technology.”

He nodded.

“What’s his company do again?” She snapped her fingers. “The phone thing?”

“GhostSend. It’s a next-generation encryption app.”

She sat back and blew out a sigh. “He’s providing encryption software to the Saledos?”

“That’s what we’re investigating.”

Investigating. He was being cagey again about whether or not they had it confirmed.

“Gagnon’s company makes a range of different messaging apps, and not all of them are sold on the open market,” Sean told her.

“Sounds like a big business.”

He nodded. “Extremely.”

“For drug dealers, mafia, practically any criminal enterprise.”

Sean nodded. “This stuff is mission-critical. Without secure comms, half these guys would be rotting in prison right now.”

“So...” Her mind was spinning as she tried to digest the implications. “You’re here about Luc Gagnon. Are you trying to arrest him for something? Or get him to inform on his clients?”

“Something like that.”

Frustration welled up inside her. She was losing patience with these half answers.

“What does Amelia Albright have to do with any of this?” she asked, circling back to the whole reason she was here right now.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I have some ideas,” he said, “but nothing confirmed. I believe she was connected to Gagnon.”

“You think she was romantically involved with him?”

“That, or maybe working for him in some capacity. Or both.”

“You know, her phone is still missing, but we collected a tablet from her apartment,” Nicole said. “Maybe she had some communications with him on it. The tablet’s at the state crime lab waiting to be analyzed by their cyber team.”

“Not anymore,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s at Quantico.”

Her anger bubbled up. “Now you’re moving my evidence around? You guys have a lot of nerve, you know that? I should have been informed.”

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