Playing God (Helford #2)

(28) Blood

We found him.

The answer, of course, had been with Shawn all along.

“This is a bank account for a vault in a Belgian bank,” Jonathon explained to Meade and I without looking at either of us, pointing to the screen and keeping his eyes firmly planted there. “It was registered to the same number, but, somehow, he or whomever he has been working with has been able to scramble the signal to keep us away. Whatever is in there must be damn important for him or who he’s working with, because I don’t know why else Krantz would need a vault to protect it.”

“That,” I said, “and we have to keep in mind that this might be a trap.”

Meade glanced over at me, his face guarded. “It’s never easy, is it?”

“Never,” I told him, laughing once dryly before continuing. “Shawn did not sound nearly as surprised that we managed to infiltrate his hard drive than I thought he would have been, and that’s starting to make me wonder if he threw some decoys in there as a trap.”

“The bank account and the vault exists, and the numbers all match,” Jonathon said stonily, like I was insulting him personally. “That’s all I can tell you on your end. But it’s not like you have much of a choice on going to check it out or not.”

Even with the cold attitude, Jonathon was completely right—Meade and I had finally gotten a lead on a case we should have been able to close over a month ago, and if we let an opportunity like this pass, it would be a lot more than our asses on the line. I pressed my lips into a line, a sick feeling in my stomach instinctually telling me that I knew better than to fall into this, but I knew that I didn’t have a choice. I turned toward Meade, sidestepping away from the desk, as if Jonathon was carrying an infectious disease.

“It shouldn’t take us long to get there,” I relayed to Meade, although he was definitely already well aware of that fact, “so we should probably gas up a car and pack an arsenal. I have a really bad feeling about this.”

“I don’t like when you have bad feelings,” Meade sighed. “Usually, they’re right.”

“I know,” I said gravely.

Jonathon surged onto his feet, his eyes determined as he looked through us rather than at us. “I’m going,” he declared.

I laughed once, haltingly, at first so startled that I was sure he had to be making a joke. And then I started shaking my head, my lips pulling back into a sneer as I condescendingly told him, “I don’t think so, Sour Puss. You’re going to stay right here where you are needed. Meade and I are big kids. We can handle it.”

“You might need to hack into the account,” Jonathon told me smoothly, deflecting my argument without even acknowledging me, and the thought of having to endure a longer torture of his cold shoulder was plenty enough to turn me off from having Jonathon accompanying us. “I am supposed to go along if anything like that is possible.”

“It’s not going to be necessary,” I responded surely.

“What makes you think?”

I smirked. “Because none of your business. Meade?”

Meade, always ready to get the hell out of the room when Jonathon was there, nodded and was gone before I could blink. Jonathon stared me down for a moment, his eyes on fire, and I stared back without emotion, waiting for him to get it all out of his system. He breathed fire through clenched teeth.

“Have you thought of how to explain it yet?” he demanded, his tone flat. I shook my head, shrugging as if it was the least of things on my priorities, when, in reality, I hadn’t slept for three days because I have been contemplating exactly how to break the whole situation to him. He somehow grew darker, further away from me, and I watched him drifting to a place I couldn’t follow him, couldn’t stop him. I held my breath to add some pain to my chest, hoping that, one day, the pain would knock me out of it and I would stop hurting everyone in my life.