Page 115 of A Secret to Die For

Aaron

Dinner at my place tonight?

A moment later, I got another message.

Garrett

Aaron wants us to go to dinner at Deals on Wheels.

Even though the car dealership had closed years ago, everyone still called the building by its old name, including Aaron and Brooke.

She grinned at me. “If Aaron’s cooking, the answer is always yes.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have had that third donut.”

Having a social life instead of merely facilitating other people’s was a novelty. I was still settling into this new normal, but I never wanted it to end.

“Before I take the lasagne out of the oven, I need to show you something.” Aaron beckoned us toward his study. There were six of us there for dinner tonight—Aaron and Blue, Brooke and Luca, and Garrett and me. “It’s good news and bad news.”

“Can we just skip the bad part?” I asked.

“It’s kind of the same thing.”

He punched in the code to open the safe, and the first thing I saw was the empty space where the hard drive had once been. In its place was a note, a single folded piece of paper with a smiley face on the outside.

“Where is it? Where’s the hard drive?”

“Gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

He removed the note and unfolded it. There were only two words, written in neat black capital letters.

BE PATIENT

“The Bad Samaritan took it.”

“Are you serious? Out of the safe?”

“Unfortunately. Blue copied the files into the cloud, but the drive itself is gone.”

“How did he get in? I mean, he broke into the building and then the safe? What about the cameras? The alarm?”

“The log shows a remote deactivation for thirty minutes yesterday afternoon. He hacked the system, then picked the lock on one of the doors and cracked the safe.”

Garrett squeezed my hand so tight it hurt. “Are we in any danger here tonight?”

“No more than any other night. And the good news is that the Bad Samaritan is going to act. All we need to do is wait a little longer.”

“Maybe we should wait somewhere other than Baldwin’s Shore?” Garrett suggested. “Cinderella, how do you feel about taking a vacation?”

“I’m not going to say no.”

“When we get back to the Peninsula, you’re packing a bag.”

Aaron chuckled. “Thought you might have that reaction, and in your position, I’d probably do the same. But before you flee the country, let’s go eat. The dough balls are drying out in the oven. Can someone open a bottle of wine?”

“I’ll do it,” I offered.

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