Page 99 of All Along The Watchtower

“Having nightmares?” Bree asked softly.

Nightmares. Because of course she would be. I mentally moved therapy higher on my list of priorities.

But Peyton shook her head. “No, it’s not that. Well, not really.” She tucked her head a little tighter against my shoulder. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Nothing in that statement boded well. I fought my instinctive need to tense. Peyton needed to feel like she could share anything with me. That I was a safe space.

I stroked a hand down her hair. “Okay.”

She sucked in a breath. “I found it.”

“Found what?”

“The thing those men were looking for. At least, I think I did.”

Now I did pull back to look at her. “What are you talking about?”

Peyton fidgeted, hooking one bare foot behind her ankle. “You said you saw my notes about that Galef guy’s murder and what I thought was going on.”

“We did.”

“It was at the first site we dug. But the guys who had us were distracted. They kept looking around, I guess, in case anybody stumbled on us. I knew once they had it, we’d be expendable, so I shoved it in my pocket and lied that it wasn’t there.”

All the blood drained from my face at the risk she’d taken. At the fact that my thirteen-year-old knew what expendable meant.

“That was risky but really smart,” Bree told her. “It bought more time for us to find you.”

I was glad she, at least, could speak. Horror still had me by the throat.

Her fingers knit again. “I know I should have given it to the police, but honestly, in all the chaos with the rescue and after, I kind of forgot about it until we got home.”

Swallowing down my emotions, I tried to manifest a calm I didn’t feel. “That’s okay. We’ll turn it over to the police when we go in to make your full statement later today.” They’d no doubt have things to say about fingerprints and chain of evidence, but I absolutely didn’t have the bandwidth to think about that right now. “What is it, anyway?”

“A flash drive.”

“Have you looked to see what’s on it?” Bree asked.

Peyton shook her head.

I scooped a hand through my hair. “Okay, bring it to me.”

“But I want to see.”

I didn’t have a clue what kind of information might be worth killing for, but my imagination was happy to provide a multitude of terrible options. “Baby, we don’t know what’s on there. It may be a thing you don’t need to see.”

Her expression took on that mulish cast I was starting to recognize. “Well, can you open it and see first? It may just be files or information or something. But I’ve come this far. I want to know.”

“Peyton—”

Her shoulders squared in a defiant stance that would do Mom proud. “I put together what the police didn’t even manage. You can’t argue with that.”

“Nobody’s questioning your intelligence, kiddo.”

Bree laid a hand on my arm. “She’s not wrong, Ford.”

I split a glance between them, recognizing I was outnumbered. “Fine. Okay. Bring it here. I’ll screen it.”

While she retrieved the flash drive, I grabbed my laptop from my office. She came back into the kitchen with a thick zip-top bag rolled around a flash drive.

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