Page 42 of Don't Let Go

The lack of sleep would be the death of all of us if we weren’t careful. At least my morning view included a deliciously rumpled Fallon, cradling her coffee mug in hand as she stared at the map McQuade had spread out.

“So,” McQuade said. “We didn’t get much out of our invaders because they didn’t know much.” Annoying, but practical, his tone suggested.

“Except, we may have figured out how they kept finding you.”

Fallon snapped a look up at Remy and he gave her a gentle smile. “Are you going to share?”

“Yes,” McQuade said. “Injectable isotope. I’ve heard about it…”

“Slow decay over forty-eight hours, not harmful, and hard to scan for without the proper equipment.” Of course she knew what it was. “But I’ve been at that house for a week and based on our discussions, for a few weeks before that… Why now?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Remy said before McQuade responded. “The isotope is likely gone, but we’ll want to scan for it regardless.”

No arguments from anyone on that subject.

“You were likely injected while they had you, probably updated it—a failsafe.”

Her nose wrinkled.

“It took us more than two days to secure the house,” I said. “They had to have used a tracker to get close and then stay close…”

Fuck.

McQuade met my gaze and nodded. “All they had to do was get a tracker on a car or on one of us. The smart thing would be to make them slough off or activate one at a time, so we wouldn’t find them in a simple sweep. They used us to triangulate.”

“That’s a lot of work,” Fallon argued. “A hell of a lot of work, not to mention the risk to keep track of me. The fast decay, bouncing trackers. Unless…”

The moment she said unless it was almost like you could see the processing reflected in her eyes. She’d thought of something. Hands planted on the tabletop, McQuade stared at her steadily.

As rough and ready as he came off, he was a master of patience with Fallon—rock steady. Dependable. His punch earlier had fucking hurt. At the same time, he hadn’t been wrong.

No, he hadn’t been wrong in the slightest. When she’d noticed my new bruise the night before, she’d frowned at the explanation I offered. I’d deserved the blow and that was enough for me. While she seemed like she would object, Remy distracted her.

“Skimmers might have caught the call…” There had been no word from her contact since the meetup went to hell. McQuade was sure whoever they were, they’d been dead before the meet. “But if they’d already tagged me to the house, they could have tasked a satellite to keep an eye on it.”

No sooner did she say that then she shook her head.

“Overkill.” No, it wasn’t. Her concentrated frown seemed to say she’d evaluated the statement and discarded the idea immediately. The interplay of emotion dancing through her expressions fascinated me. “No, not overkill. But the cost of resources seems exponentially out of balance with the return unless the information I encoded is more critical now than it was then.”

All at once, she was talking to herself and not us. She pushed away from the table, her gaze and mind a million miles away, then she whirled to face us.

“I need to do some research.”

“Your system is onboard and ready to go. We have enough power for the juice, but if we go too many hours we’ll need to recharge it.” McQuade folded his arms, a content look on his face.

“My system?” She frowned. “It’s very annoying that I helped with any of this and I can’t remember it.”

“Trust the source, luv,” Remy told her. “You set up the specs and got everything on board. Locke brought your tower with your hard drives from the house.”

I had. “Yeah, let me grab that.”

“Wait,” she said, before focusing on McQuade and Remy. “Did you get anything else out of them?”

“Not really.” McQuade shrugged. “The tracking data was what they had. The idea they knew about the house but didn’t move on it bugs me.”

“They were waiting for her to get the files,” I said. Son of a bitch. “Once she was out of their hands, and they had the tag, they had to keep someone on her. On us. Once they had the location and a solid fix, they sat back and waited. They wanted you to bring the information to them. Or at least get it to where they could lay hands on it.”

“It’s digital,” Remy countered, skepticism rifling over his words. “How would they know when she collected it?”

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