Page 30 of Frosted and Sliced

He waited to speak again until they were tucked in the car. “Let’s skip the how and get to the what.”

“What what? I am so confused,” Georgie said, putting a hand to her head. Was this actual spy work? What else could it be? How odd to see Burke that way. She knew he had worked for the intelligence community, but she had no idea he was still active. She’d assumed he was unemployed. “How are you allowed to go in there? I thought you didn’t work for the government anymore.”

“I don’t,” he said.

Her eyes bugged. “Did you just break in?”

His lips twitched. “Why are you whispering?”

She touched her fingers to her lips. “Am I? I had no idea. I thought I yelled that last part.”

“It was a whisper hiss.”

“Huh.” She wondered what that sounded like, suddenly self-conscious. Did other people whisper hiss? Georgie had no idea.

“To answer your question, I still have clearance on certain things. I wanted to take a peek at The Oracle to see what it’s been picking up from our area.”

Georgie blinked at him. “You’re telling me that computer in a shack in the woods has been spying on my neighbors?”

He nodded. “And you, too. Basically all of New England.”

Impossibly, her eyes widened. Was it possible to strain eye muscles? She was about to find out. “What? How?”

“Again, the how is not something I can tell you,” he said.

“All right, then tell me the what. Or maybe the why?”

“What?” he said, tipping his head.

“Burke,” she exclaimed. “What is going on? Please help a confused girl out. This is not my world, you remember. As aninnkeeper, I can’t remember the last time I went to a secret government facility to check in on my spy gear.”

“That would be a definite way to get a leg up on the competition,” he said.

“Burke,” she said.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. I can’t go into detail, but let’s say there’s a way to fine tune the intel, to cherry pick certain sectors to check on what’s going on.”

“And you checked our sector?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

He took a breath and let it out slowly, checking her expression as if to gauge what he was about to impart. “Last night, the person you saw, they evaded my cameras.”

She’d forgotten about the cameras, but how? She was appalled and upset by that. “We’ll circle back to the cameras, but I still don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.”

“Because it’s not something amateurs do, not something a local burglar would understand or even think of. The cameras are well hidden. How did he know to avoid them unless he’d been trained for it? And if he’d been trained for it, then I need to cast a wider net. Possibly a federal orinternationalnet.”

“You said ‘international’ like it has fifteen syllables,” she noted. “What’s significant about that?”

“Nothing, usually. But there are certain places that, when you see them on a list, send a shudder through you because of what you know about them,” he said.

“And you saw one of those places? Or The Oracle showed you one? I’m so confused.” She put her hand to her head again.

“I saw a little bit of chatter, enough to make me wary. I need to do a little poking around, see what’s going on,” he said.

“How do you do that? How do you begin to investigate ‘international chatter.’”

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