Page 56 of In Too Deep

“That might work, I guess.”

“Try it. Send the email.”

“I can’t.”

“You just said you could.”

“I said my phone could. In theory. But I need an address.”

“You sent messages to the guy before?”

“Obviously.”

“Then you must have his address.”

“Had. Ihadit.”

“How could you lose it? Don’t phones and computers remember that kind of thing?”

“Usually. Unless you tell them not to. Which I did.”

“Why?”

“Because what I was doing was illegal, Einstein. I didn’t want a paper trail leading back to me.”

“I thought email addresses are supposed to be easy to remember?”

“They can be. If you want them to be remembered, like the guy’s corporate email that I used for our first contact. Then he blocked me from that one and set up a special address for us to use. It’s not like he’s john-dot-smith-at-blackmail-target-dot-com. There was no name. The domain was disguised. And the rest was just a long string of random numbers and letters.”

“It was impossible to remember, and you never wrote it down?”

“Oh yes. I did.”

“Where?”

“In my ledger. It’s at my house.”

Chapter24

Knight’s first priority was tryingnot to be sick.

She was in the back of a van, on the floor, in the load space. It was totally dark. There were no windows. No ventilation. The van was moving. Fast. On a twisty, bumpy road. She couldn’t change her position easily because her wrists and ankles were tied. And she was sandwiched between two people. Both men. Vidic was on her right. He was still unconscious. One of the guys who had captured her had carried him down the stairs at the house, slung over his shoulder like a sleeping child, while the other had held a gun on her. They’d thrown Vidic in first. Then her. The other man was in the van already. He was the main problem because of how he smelled. He reeked of blood and stale vomit.

Knight was feeling too miserable to worry about where she was being taken, or why. She was focused on breathing through her mouth. Although if there had been a way to stop breathing altogether she might have seriously considered it. Then she pushed the thought away. She tried to summon happy memories. Sun-soaked meadowsor breezy beaches. Her mind refused to cooperate. And then the stinky guy started to poke her in the side.

The guy said, “Paris? That you?”

Knight tried to ignore him.

He said, “Paris? I saw them throw Vidic in here. Is he next to you? Is he OK? He looked like he was out cold.”

Knight turned her head away.

The guy said, “Paris. It’s me. Bowery. Can’t you hear me?”

Knight closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. She wanted to scream.

“Listen. This is important. There’s something you need to know.”

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