Chapter 59

chapter

fifty-nine

Gage shouldn’t be surprised that Sigmund was most likely the one behind this. The man had been a suspect in Gage’s mind the whole time, but he’d had nothing to prove it.

Now they had this evidence. Sigmund had come into the building at midnight and left thirty minutes later—enough time to kill Rob and frame Nia for it.

Gage had already called the man’s office. His secretary said he hadn’t come in today.

He was tempted to swing by the man’s home. Gage still might do that. But he couldn’t show up without a plan.

“What are you thinking?” Nia moved back to her seat on the couch, but the concern on her face was still evident.

“We need to figure out a way to catch this guy—in a way that no one gets hurt.” Rob, Darius, and Brittany had already been casualties .

“I agree.” Nia glanced at the time on her phone. “We only have an hour and a half before I’m supposed to give these people the cyber key information they want—and I’m still not sure what that information is.”

Gage nodded stiffly, hearing the mental clock ticking in his head. “I would call in backup, but there’s not enough time.”

A strange expression crossed Nia’s gaze. But as quickly as it appeared it was gone.

Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at it. Her face went paler.

“What’s going on?” Gage could tell by her expression that something was wrong.

“It’s Mario,” she told him. “He keeps calling, but I’ve ignored his calls. I don’t feel like dealing with him.”

“He’s calling about what happened at the cafe yesterday, I assume.”

She nodded. “I knew the police would want to question us. I knew our images had probably been caught on camera, and cops knew we fled the scene. We look suspicious.”

Gage couldn’t argue with that. “Has he left any messages?”

She nodded. “He sounds angry. Keeps telling me about how much trouble I’m going to be in and that there’s nothing he can do to protect me—not that he would. His words not mine.”

Gage’s muscles tightened again, even though he wasn’t surprised .

Nia glanced back up at him. “Should I answer? Should we just get this over with?”

“We can’t do anything rash,” Gage said. “Let’s just take five minutes to think it through. Then we can come up with our plan of action.”

Nia’s thoughts continued to race as she sat on the couch. Austin had slipped out to grab some specialty coffee drinks for them at the shop downstairs. Gage still studied some of the files they’d grabbed from Rob’s place.

But she was having trouble staying focused.

She wanted to do the right thing. The thing that would ensure her sister’s safety.

She mentally shuffled through all the options.

She picked up Rob’s notes again and scanned them.

What was she missing? There was a lot of information here to go through. How could she narrow it down?

Sophia’s life was on the line, and the pressure of knowing that scrambled her thoughts instead of making her sharper.

Too much was at stake. There were too many unknowns.

Tension squeezed at her chest.

Nia stopped at one page she hadn’t examined yet. It was an analysis of a test study of the app Rob had sent to a few psychologists so they could give feedback and offer an endorsement.

Part of what made his app more appealing to users was the test results behind it.

Nia read through some of the notes and stopped at a section that had been flagged.

“Why are you making that face?” Gage asked.

“I’m not sure this is anything.” She sat up straighter. “But it looks like something happened during the test run on this app that had Rob concerned.”

“What is it?”

She squinted as she read the words. “It says, ‘Cannot recommend. Could have adverse effects.’”

“What?” Gage quirked an eyebrow. “Really? Can I see the prototype for this app?”

“Sure. If you let me see the tablet, I think I should be able to pull it up.”

He handed it to her, and Nia hit several buttons.

But before she could open the files, the device glitched.

She let out an irritated growl. “I’m going to need to reboot this.”

“I’m going to grab a granola bar from my room. You want one?”

“That would be great.”

Gage disappeared down the hallway, and Nia continued to play with the tablet. Finally, she got it working and got the app pulled up.

All at once, something snapped in her mind.

Nia stood, no longer in control of her own body.

Even though she was barefoot, she shuffled to the door, opened it, and quietly closed it behind her.

Then she walked down the hall.