Page 8 of Mountain Security

“No,” she said quickly. “That’s okay.”

He stood up, twisting his strong upper body left and right.

“You don’t trust me,” he said, his lips curling up once again in that easy smile she was starting to recognize as his trademark smile.

I don’t trust anyone.

Except maybe Pierre.

And my team.

She trusted her team. They were good people.

But she wasn’t about to get into that with him.

“We can leave now. I’m going to have to come back tomorrow, anyway. I haven’t managed to look through everything yet.”

She sighed. Fair enough. It’d been wishful thinking, to think he might magically hit upon all the answers in a matter of hours.

“Let me turn the computer off. I’ve been through the servers, and you were right. Only those seven files were copied. It would have been easier to copy the whole thing, but whoever was here, they were interested specifically in those projects only.”

“I could have told you that,” she said.

In fact, I think I did.

“I know,” Alex replied, not unkindly. “But I had to check. You have no idea who could have wanted those files?”

She shook her head.

“I’ll leave some searches running overnight. Tomorrow, I’ll do a physical check of all your equipment. I’m also going to see the other computers connected to the network.”

Shit.

She was going to have to come up with some way of explaining his presence to the team. But she would worry about that tomorrow. Now she had to get out of here, or she was going to be late.

“Come on,” she said, finding her coat and watching as he put his ski jacket on.

As they stepped outside, Yvette ran through the route she’d take to get to Annecy. If the traffic behaved, she could make it in forty minutes.

Right on time.

* * *

Alex

Alex was all the way by his SUV by the time Yvette finished locking the door to the office.

Alex was surprised. Thegendarmerienever closed, and for some reason he’d imagined the town hall wouldn’t, either, but that clearly wasn’t the case. At this time in the evening, the building had already been completely empty.

Yvette dug through the large purple handbag hanging from her shoulder. It matched her suit. Alex imagined she’d have to change it the next day, unless she always wore purple.

She changes it.

She definitely changes it.

Someone as careful as she seemed to be about her appearance would think nothing of changing her handbag in the morning.

Alex emptied his own backpack every day, to charge his laptop and the rest of his devices, but he only owned one backpack, which he used every day until it fell apart from old age. Even then, he usually ended up buying another one that was identical to the original one.

---