Page 62 of Shadow Operative

Throughout that whole process, Nia had tried to learn to be gracious.

Grace was something she needed in her own life, so it seemed as if she should offer grace to others as well.

Including Gage.

Even though the man hadn’t been totally honest with her, she hadn’t been totally honest with him either. They were both dealing with a murder, and doing the best they could to muddle through it.

She placed her half-eaten slice on the box top of the pizza and then wiped her mouth with a napkin.

“What do we do next?” Nia asked. “If we don’t find this killer, I’m afraid I’ll go to prison for this. It’s only a matter of time before the police discover I was in his apartment. I know how this looks.”

It looked like she was the killer.

chapter

twenty-eight

“We need to develop a plan,”Gage said, purposefully shifting the conversation. “One of our first orders of business should be figuring out why you’ve lost your memory, Nia.”

Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that probably hadn’t been one of them. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. They needed to find some answers.

Nia pulled her legs beneath her and sank deeper into the chair. “I keep thinking about it, and I just don’t know.”

“No tenderness on your head from where you could have been hit?” Austin grabbed another piece of pizza.

“No.” Nia touched the side of her head as if feeling again for bumps or sore spots. “It was one of the first things I thought about.”

“No needle marks on your arms or anywhere else?” Gage asked.

“I thought there was a spot on my armat first, but I think it was just a mosquito bite.” She paused. “I suppose something could have been slipped into my drink. But, at this point, I’m not sure how much good it would do to go to the hospital and be tested. The risk may not be worth the reward. It would take a lot of time to get the results.”

“I’m not sure what else it could be if it wasn’t a drug,” Gage said. “Let’s say something was put in your drink. Did you walk away from the table during dinner?”

Nia shook her head. “I didn’t. Rob and I met for a couple of hours, and the conversation was pretty intense. There were no opportunities to get up.”

“You don’t think that Rob . . . ?” Austin didn’t finish his question.

Gage swung his head back and forth. “He wouldn’t have put a drug into her drink. I know him. He wouldn’t do that.”

“I can’t see him doing that either. But unless the waiter did it . . . I don’t know how it would have gotten there. I suppose someone who’s amazing with sleight of hand tricks could have walked past.” She frowned. “But Rob and I were sitting against the wall, and I just can’t see it happening.”

Gage’s thoughts still raced. He didn’t have any other good explanations as to what could have happened.

The last thing Nia remembered was being in that restaurant, so something had clearly occurred after their meal.

They needed to retrace the timeline. They’d find some answersif they did.

“You said the conversation was intense.” Gage shifted in his seat. “Did Rob give you any clues about why he wanted to back out of the contract? Have you remembered anything new?”

Nia stared off in the distance, her eyes darting back and forth as if she tried to recall something. “Rob just told me he thought he could improve on the project and that it wasn’t ready for release. I pressed him to go deeper with that. I’d seen the app myself and thought it was great. Honestly, when he told me that, I thought he was being too hard on himself. That’s why I didn’t capitulate to what he was saying.”

“So you weren’t going to let him back out of the contract?” Gage clarified.

“It wasn’t as simple as that.” Nia ran a hand through her hair, leaving her curls standing on end. “We had signed a legally binding contract. This wasn’t something that just popped up in a day after we signed the paperwork. This deal has been in the works for months. Up until yesterday, Rob was excited about it.”

“So this goes back to the fact that something happened between his meeting in your office and the time that he called and asked you to meet him for dinner . . .” Gage wished he had some type of magic device that would let him see into the past. If only those existed.

“Someone texted him right as he was leaving my office. Then he had a call from that same number twenty minutes later,” Nia noted. “My best guess is that phone call was what set this in motion. If we could figure out who made the call, then maybe we could getsome answers. But like I said, the call came from a burner.”

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