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“Hhmm,” Nora said, by way of agreement. “If he thinks you think you might be in danger, thatishis Achilles’ heel—he feels that way about all of us. He may be a prickly little lord who enjoys playing chess with people’s lives, but he does have a soft spot for us.”
“Either that or our countries have threatened him with death if anything happens to us,” Six countered, only half joking. She had no clue how a member of the British aristocracy and handler for MI6 had ended up being the handler for all four of them. They all assumed it had something to do with Franklin’s relationship with Cyn and his ability to convince anyone to do what he wanted. But she also liked to think that a part of the decision was because he liked them. And Nora was right—on the rare occasions when any of them had felt uncertain or in danger in a way that wasn’tnormal, he’d always gone to the mat for them.
“So what are your plans now?” Nora asked.
Six stopped at the edge of her dock. The water was calm but murky after last night’s churning. In a few weeks, she’d have her boat brought out from its dry dock up the coast. But day trips out on the water were a vague desire at the moment.
“I have a few more files to look through before my dinner tonight. If I don’t find anything going through those, I’ll do a deep background on Jeremy. We all knew him, I don’t think he was involved in anything nefarious, but maybe he inadvertently got caught up in something. If there’s anything there, I’ll find it.” She hated the minutiae of tracking people’s movements, but she’d do it. Even if she hadn’t promised Heather, she would have done it for her own peace of mind.
“You’ll let us know if you find anything?” Nora asked.
“Of course. You’ll be the first to know.” It went without saying, and yet it was something they always said to each other. As odd as it might seem, it was their way of ensuring they never took each other—and their unique friendship—for granted.
After ending the call, Six slipped her phone back into her pocket and tipped her face up to the sun. The gentle heat warmed her skin, and a subtle breeze lifted the end of her ponytail. As she listened to the water and the birds and the rustling of the tree leaves, she couldn’t help but feel things were changing. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t ever investigated anyone or anything before. She’d done plenty of that in her role at the DA’s office. But Jeremy’s death was different. It was like the work she did for AISE—filled with more questions than answers. It wasn’t an approach she’d ever brought to the US and certainly not, metaphorically speaking, into her home.
Cyn had done something similar in January when a “friend”of hers had left a dead body on her doorstep. Thank god she had decided to investigate, though—thank god they all had—because hundreds of lives had been saved. But still, it was an uncomfortable place to be. Six didn’t like to mix her two lives. Her life in Massachusetts, despite some of her cases, was her refuge. She wanted to keep it that way.
A seagull screeched, and Six opened her eyes. A lone boat bobbed on the water. It was a beautiful day to be out; she wondered if maybe they were fishing. She wasn’t a fisherman, but she’d heard that sometimes, after storms, the catches were good. She watched the small boat trawl slowly up the coast, then she turned back toward her house.
She paused and looked at her home, her sanctuary. She could keep the status quo or she could investigate Jeremy’s murder. There was no question Jeremy won that contest.
And if that meant things would change, then so be it.
Chapter Seven
Six placed a plate of cheese,crackers, and fruit on her desk, then sat down at her computer again. She had ten more of Jeremy’s files to go through and then, if she still had nothing, there were some decisions she’d need to make. Not yet ready to concede to the possibility that the files would tell her nothing, she dived in.
Two hours later, she leaned back in her chair and stared at her screen—not so much looking at the content but considering her options. The last ten files had all been minor cases and mostly a reflection of the pro bono work he did with a few immigrant communities.
Six had said that she’d do a deep dive into Jeremy if she didn’t find anything in the files. But her instinct wouldn’t let go of the idea that what had happened to her friend was tied to his work. There was no explanation for how strongly she felt thisknowing. Before he’d died, it had been about a month, maybe six weeks, since she’d seen Jeremy. Anything could have happened in that time. Maybe he’d witnessed something he shouldn’t have. Or maybe one of the abusers of the women Jeremy had helped had found him. There were all sorts of things that weren’t associated with his work that could have made him a target of a killer. And yet she found it hard to believe it could be anything but.
As she considered her options, her gaze drifted over her monitor, the screen showing an exact replica of Jeremy’s laptop. She was about to jump back into the files again and see if she’d missed something when the recycle bin on the screen caught her attention. The one place she hadn’t looked.
She clicked the icon, and the file manager popped up. There were dozens of items, so rather than reading the names, she filtered them by date, showing the most recently modified document on top.
Six’s skin tingled, and she felt a welcome rush of adrenaline. The file at the very top, titled simply “SJC,” had last been modified the morning Jeremy was killed. She’d found it. She knew she had. She didn’t know what it was, but her instincts were rarely wrong in these situations.
Taking a deep breath, Six opened the file to find several more items inside.
The first was a photographed image of a business card, Austin Fogarty, VP of Sales for Shanti Joy Cosmetics, LLC. Six had no idea who Austin Fogarty was, but she was definitely familiar with Shanti Joy. It was one of the largest cosmetic companies in the world that ethically and sustainably sourced, developed, and delivered all its products.
Needing more context, she clicked on the next few files. One was an itinerary for a flight from Indonesia to Boston. The other looked like a journal entry containing random thoughts about Jeremy’s own trip to that country the prior January. None of the notes made much sense—not yet, anyway—so she closed that document out and opened another. A scanned image of a deed to a piece of property about an hour and half west of Cos Cob filled her screen. The deed was in Jeremy’s name. He’d never mentioned buying or owning the land to Six, and she made a note to ask Heather if she knew anything about it.
The last item was another file with the name “Indonesia Pictures.” If the situation had been different, Six would have smiled. In all the years she’d known him, Jeremy had taken maybe a handful of good pictures, though he loved doing it and always had a camera ready. But given that the files had intentionally been hidden away,smilingwasn’t on the list of things Six felt like doing.
As the mouse hovered over the icon, a sense of dread slithered down her spine. She had a feeling she wasn’t about to see a series of images celebrating the beauty of Indonesia. On a deep breath, she clicked the file open, then enlarged the view of the images so she could see thumbnails of all sixteen on her screen. Most were too dark and blurry to see much, but on a few, she could make out a circle of men, some holding drinks, some not. Clicking on one that looked clearer than the rest, a single image filled her screen.
Six’s stomach dropped. It was indeed a circle of men, and some were indeed holding drinks. But what caught her attention were the two naked women kneeling on the floor, blindfolded and with their hands tied over their heads.
Not letting herself contemplate the fate of those two women yet, Six instead focused on the details. Zooming in on various parts of the picture, she gathered what data she could from the moment in time that the image had captured.
The women appeared to be Indonesian, although Six’s assumption was based only on the color of their hair, the tone of their skin, and their general build. When she found nothing more that might tell her who they were, she shifted her focus to the four men in the picture. Scanning their faces, she didn’t recognize any of them, but wondered if they had something to do with Shanti Joy. The company wasn’t shy about marketing its ethical practices, and Six knew it sourced a lot of oils from Indonesia. Nothing in the picture looked remotely ethical, though.
Breaking the image up, she saved four individual files, each a picture of one of the men. She’d run them through her facial recognition program as soon as she finished going through the rest of the photos.
Deciding she needed the full impact of what Jeremy had deemed important enough to save, she closed the image she’d opened and started at the top of the list. There were only sixteen pictures in all, but Six had a feeling those sixteen images were going to pack a punch. And with each one that she opened, that feeling proved more and more true.
Ten minutes later, Six closed out the last and rose from her seat so abruptly that her chair tipped back. Catching it before it fell, she set it to rights, then stalked into her living room, where she paced in front of her picture window.
