Page 90 of Blue Moon

“Ron? You know where he is?”

“He’s in Georgia. One of my colleagues is keeping him as a sort of pet.”

“A pet?”

“He cooks and cleans in return for her not tying him to a railway track.”

“This is crazy. And if it is true, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me about it.”

“Because I didn’t want to get your hopes up. If you knew what we were trying to do and then we failed, I figured that would be worse than not knowing at all.” He ran a thumb across my bottom lip. “I gave a lot of consideration to whether I should spill the details, but in the end, I was hoping to surprise you.”

I nodded toward the laptop. “You certainly did that. What else aren’t you telling me?”

“Other than classified work shit, that’s it, I swear.”

Did I believe him? I wanted to, and I still had that niggle of guilt over the blow job porn. Another realisation hit me—Ryder said he’d been looking for my money for weeks, which meant that he’d tried to help me even when I refused to speak with him. That he’d cared even when I pushed him away.

“Prove to me that you’re not lying.”

“Okay.” He rocked back on his heels. “Okay.”

He opened a bunch of files on his laptop and handed me the mouse. Elene was pretty in a fake kind of way. She wore too much make-up, and I’d bet fifty bucks her hair had extensions.

“Those boobs are fake,” I told Ryder. “They basically defy gravity.”

“I figured they were.”

She’d sent him a picture of herself taken in a bathroom, quite a nice bathroom, and anger fizzed inside me when I realised that my money had probably paid for it. Was it better or worse that she’d stolen the money from a thief?

“Here’s the project file,” Ryder said, and the pictures disappeared. “You want coffee?”

“No, I feel sick.”

Sick and inadequate because not only were my boobs half the size of Elene’s, I was also the world’s slowest reader. It took me over an hour to scan through the logs and the background notes. But by the time I got to the end, I knew how hard Ryder was trying to make things right for me, and I did understand why he’d kept me in the dark. Because now I was feeling nervous and a tiny bit impatient. Would they catch Elene? And if they did, how much of my money would be left?

“Tripp? Your name is Tripp?”

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea.”

I quickly grew serious. “What do you think the chances of success are? Honestly?”

He considered for a moment. “Right now, I’d say around eighty percent. Ninety percent that we find her, seventy percent that we get the money back. Yesterday, I was on seventy-five, but if she’s feeling comfortable enough to send me nudes, the chances just got better.”

“Tell me you don’t have to reciprocate?”

“If I do, the cyber team will mock up a picture. But it’s likely I’ll have to go back to Georgia at some point.”

“I hate that.”

“I hate it too, moon.”

There was nothing unusual about having half a dozen reporters standing outside Cromer Place when I left for the Nile Palace after lunch. Ryder had snuck out the back way, switched vehicles, and parked by the front door to wait for me.

But what was unusual was the bunch of flowers Danny Wells held out as I passed.

“Ugh, no thanks. What did you do, hide a camera in a tulip?”

“Ms. Maara, we’re very sorry if we’ve disturbed you these past few weeks.”

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