Page 21 of Wanted
Reno ran a hand through his hair. The pressure inside his chest was almost ready to explode, but he couldn’t describe it. Something about this whole mess was off. Way off.
“Maybe it’s time you took a break from the case,” George said. “You’ve been going nonstop for too long. Go get some rest. Change your focus. Let someone else take over this one.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she didn’t do it.” The words came out of Reno’s mouth so easily that they stunned even him.
She didn’t do it, he realized. And it wasn’t wishful thinking on his part; he believed it. That was why she’d kept in touch with him even as she was running. She could have gone underground before now and stayed there, but she hadn’t. She was scared, but she was still fighting to clear her name. He’d just been too bullheaded to listen to her.
He ran a hand over the lax muscles in his face. How could he not have seen it? He’d fought his attraction to her for so long that it had made him blind to something right in front of his nose.
“I need to help her,” he whispered.
“Oh, hell,” George said, flinging his arms into the air.
Reno quickly pulled up another chair. He sat down next to his friend and looked him in the eye. “I missed something, Georgie. Something big.”
The agent gave him a steady look—one that had broken down many a suspect in the interrogation room. It was like being stared at disapprovingly by your dad. “I need something more than that,” he finally said. “Just wanting it to be true won’t make it so.”
“It’s not a wish. I know it in my gut.”
“In your gut or in your cock?”
Reno winced. “My gut.”
George rubbed his chin. He knew what the evidence indicated, but he was also an old-timer. You didn’t ignore an agent’s instincts.
Reno saw him wavering and pressed on. “Everything seems a little too set and dried to me.”
George nodded slowly. “I’ve noticed that, too. It’s like somebody placed a line of breadcrumbs right to her door.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner? It’s been six months.”
“Hey, evidence is evidence. I can’t help it if it’s all just a little too clean. It’s your case, and you haven’t mentioned feeling anything hinky before.”
Reno rubbed his forehead. He needed to slow down and think. Dani needed him. He had to do this right. “Okay, so maybe I haven’t gotten all the facts. I need to go through everything again.”
George looked skeptical. He was a detail man, while Reno preferred action. Going back and starting over was hard to do. “You’re serious? You’re going to sit at your desk while she’s out there waiting for you?”
Reno’s fingers bit into his coffee cup. She wasn’t waiting for him. She was running as fast as she could. “She’s gone underground. I’m hoping that if I do my homework now, I might have some good news to tell her when she comes up for air.”
“She must really be something,” George said, shaking his head. He pressed his toe against the floor and spun back to his computer. “All right, let me know if you need help.”
The knots in Reno’s stomach eased. “Thanks, I might take you up on that.”
He pushed himself to his feet. George was right about the “sitting at a desk” thing. Waiting for the phone to ring would drive him crazy. Kind of like waiting for a text message…
“I’m going to take one of the tech guys over to Quadrangle.” He set his empty cup on his desk and headed to the door. “I want to take that place apart piece by piece.”
* * *
It turned out that Mr. Hanson, Dani’s former boss, was more than willing to work with the FBI to find additional evidence on the case. The man still believed in her innocence, and to prove it, he gave them his best man to help in the investigation. For the next week, Reno and his computer guru consulted with Arnold Pfizer, the man who’d taken over Dani’s job.
Pfizer was more what Reno had expected in the position, but somehow he didn’t look right sitting at Dani’s old desk. He was short and thin, with horn-rimmed glasses and allergies. Plenty of allergies. The guy spent more time reaching for the box of tissues next to the monitor than the keyboard.
He was competent, though. Whenever the tech or Reno had questions about firewalls, authorization protocols, the backup system, or security procedures, Pfizer was there to answer them. As a team, they looked for any weakness in Quad’s system. Painstakingly, they searched for anything that would have allowed somebody other than Dani access to the code that had been intercepted.
