Page 34 of Buried Too Deep

“I see,” Alan murmured.

I won’t know what’s in Cora Winslow’s letters.

It was possible, of course, that she hadn’t given the letters to the PI—yet, anyway—but he wasn’t betting on it. Sage’s bugs had revealed that the PI’s secretary, Joy Thomas, had told her to bring the letters with her to her meeting with Broussard this morning, or to email them. He had to assume Broussard had the letters.

If I can’t get into Broussard’s email, I won’t know who sent them. Because it certainly hadn’t been Winslow’s father. He’d been dead for twenty-three years.

Alan should know. He’d killed the man himself.

He didn’t know what was in those letters, but their very existence—and Cora Winslow’s continued attempts to get the police to investigate them—had him nervous. He needed to make sure there was nothing in the letters that could lead police to what Jack Elliot had been doing twenty-three years ago.

Or my part in it.

Medford backed toward the door. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll just—”

“Stay where you are.” He narrowed his eyes at Medford, hardening his voice. “You need to at least try. One of them might have passwords that include the names Nala, Louisa, Wayne, or Jerry.” Because those were the receptionist’s children.

Finding the woman’s children’s names had been simple enough. Joy Thomas didn’t have a social media presence, but her kids did. He knew where they’d gone to school and the names of their significant others and their pets.

Medford shook his head. “I’ll try, but I really think we set these passwords to be completely random and I didn’t write them down.” His words sounded desperate. Panicked. “I’m not going to be able to guess them.”

Alan wanted to snap viciously at the useless man, but he held it back, keeping his smile benign. “Please try.”

“Yes, sir, as long as you know that there’s a risk of wiping the entire drive.” Hands trembling slightly, Medford pulled on a pair of disposable gloves and opened the first laptop.

And then Alan saw what had Medford so spooked. With his failing eyesight, Alan hadn’t seen the holographic label on the laptop’s lid. It was the same color as the computer itself, visible only when the light hit it a certain way.

But now he could see the label in sufficient detail.

It read Broussard Investigations in an elegant art deco script.

Sage was sure to have seen the label, but he hadn’t said a word.

Alan seethed. He should have examined the laptops more closely. Now Medford knew exactly where the machines had come from.

Which meant Medford knew that Alan was behind their theft, which had been all over the news that morning because of the shooting of Joy Thomas.

It also meant that Medford now knew that Alan was connected to the shooting of the Thomas woman, easily the worst thing that Sage had ever done.

Alan remained where he sat, trying to think as his heart raced faster and faster.

I’m not a violent man. The only time he’d killed was that one time twenty-three years ago. After that he’d been careful. He blackmailed. He manipulated. He did not kill.

But Sage might have. The Thomas woman was still alive for now, but that could change. Alan didn’t have to ask to know that even attempted murder crossed Medford’s moral line. He might tell the police everything.

That can’t happen.

Medford was staring at the laptop’s screen in what looked like disbelief. He was sliding his finger over the trackpad rapidly, his frown becoming more intense.

“What do you see?” Alan demanded.

“There’s no password. It just…opened.”

That was good, right? But it was also suspicious that Broussard hadn’t taken precautions. Maybe the man was cocky, given his recent successes at catching some very bad criminals. Success did make a man cocky. Alan had fought against that himself.

“The drive isn’t wiped?”

Medford finally met his eyes and the man’s expression was one of reluctant knowing. “I don’t think so. There doesn’t appear to have been much on the hard drive. I think it’s trying to connect to a server, but it can’t because the Wi-Fi’s turned off.”

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