Page 21 of Black Ice
She’d almost forgotten he was there until the lesson was over and the other players wandered off to other activities. “I’ll walk you out.”
He frowned at his phone again before shoving it into his pocket. “Will you be here all night?” he asked. “In here, I mean.”
“Yes.” She told herself his obsession with her schedule didn’t matter. It wasn’t romantic or flattering, just an old friend keeping tabs. Probably out of boredom as much as nostalgia. “And you need tonotbe in here.”
“Fine.” His brow furrowed and he reached out, his fingers a whisper along her jaw. “I just wish you were home in front of a big fire with a mug of hot chocolate.”
“Me too.” It’s how they’d waited out more than one storm as kids. Something was troubling him, but it was too soon to resume her role as the person who gave him a place to vent and talk out his worries. “If you’re still in town after the storm passes, you should come to the house for dinner. Dad would love to see you.”
He perked up. “I’ll hold you to that, Evie.”
She expected no less. As he walked off, she realized she wasn’t nearly as afraid of that dinner anymore. All of the hostility and insecurity she’d felt yesterday had faded and she wanted to stay on this happier ground.
Oh, what a difference an investor made.
5
Wyatt barely got around the corner before his temper kicked into high gear. He’d received text messages from Agent Pickering and Cordell, along with alerts from the National Weather Service.
At least the NWS didn’t expect anything from him.
He reviewed the last three messages from Pickering, all of them relating to Evie’s ties to Cordell. The agent needed to back off, but it clearly wasn’t going to happen. Keeping in mind the reward the FBI promised him, he returned to his room.
Pickering was waiting. “I don’t even want to address how you got in here,” he grumbled.
“Good. Address this instead.” She opened a laptop and turned the screen to face him. “Cordell just promised your old pal ten thousand dollars. Hours after a casino guard is found dead.”
“Coincidence.”
Pickering swore. “The sheriff and detectives dismissed her as a suspect,” she said. “They’ll change their minds when we give them this. It’s an obvious payoff.”
“I hate Deadwood,” Wyatt muttered, stalking to the window. He never should’ve come anywhere close to home. It was a blackhole that sucked at his soul. The only bright spot had been Evie and now, thanks to him, somehow Cordell and the FBI had fixed on her. “If anyone had saved her business, she wouldn’t have come in today.”
“She had to be here to kill the guard and earn that business-saving payout.” Pickering sneered. “If you can’t see that, you might want to rethink your plans as an investigator.”
“Same to you,” he snapped. “Evie is not the killer. Whatever Cordell is up to, it’s about the robbery. The only business he’s interested in is his own.”
Wyatt was running out of time to figure out what Cordell would gain by dragging Evie into this online, or in person. He showed Pickering the texts from Cordell on the burner phone stating the robbery would go down at seven p.m. tonight.
“You have to keep him in the building,” she said.
“The plan is to drive away, to the rendezvous. That’s why you gave me the GPS tracker.”
“Have you looked outside? The conditions will be impassable by then. It’s perfect. You can keep him in the building.”
“How?”
“Use your friend,” Pickering suggested. “She knows where to hide, how to navigate around cameras.”
“That’s a tragedy waiting to happen.” There was no telling what Cordell might do, who he might hurt if he felt cornered.
“The guard’s death makes sense now,” Pickering said. She was practically glowing with excitement. “One less person on staff. He’ll use that gap.”
“A gap interrupted by a casino crawling with a sheriff and detectives. If Cordell did set up that guard, he’s a fool.”
“But he thinks it’s only local law enforcement. He’s overconfident. Wyatt, I’ve studied him and I can tell you he studied the area and the resources. He brought you on because of your experience.”
“You set that up. Made me look like the right man for his crew.” He regretted reaching out to ask that favor of his pal from the Army. They probably should’ve tapped someone like Evie, someone far more familiar with the area than he was after eleven years away. He wasn’t about to say so.
