Say It Again (First Wives, #5)(76)

AJ sat on the hood of the rental car, sunglasses hiding his eyes.

She sat beside him and took the cup of coffee he offered. “Now what?” he asked.

Sasha looked at her watch. “We find out whatever intel the team managed overnight.”

“And then what?”

“I’ve overlooked something. Can’t help but think I need to get back into Richter.”

“Impossible to break out of the place, how do you expect to break in?”

She sipped her coffee, liked the rich flavor. “Underestimating me is never a safe bet, AJ.”

“Wouldn’t that play right into their hands?”

“Friends close and enemies closer.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

She was already working out how to get back into Germany without the Neil roadblock.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. Texas.

“Good morning.”

“Ohh, someone is in a much better mood today. Did you get some last night?”

Sasha rolled her eyes at Cooper’s question. “One of these days I’m going to kick your ass,” she warned him.

“Sounds like a promise.”

That made her smile. She motioned for AJ to get back in the car. “What do you have for us?”

“Several things. I’m putting you on speaker.”

She waited until they were inside the car with the doors closed and did the same with her phone so AJ could hear.

“Okay, so it’s me, Neil, Claire . . . and Reed is dialed in.”

“You a father yet?” Sasha asked once she heard Reed say hello.

“I think you’re more anxious about it than I am,” he told her.

“I doubt that,” she said.

“AJ, you there?” Neil asked.

“I’m here.”

“Okay, first off, who is MJ Hofmann?”

AJ stared at the phone. “My mother, why?”

“Your mother was on the board of directors at Richter while your sister attended. The picture of your father and Pohl was taken at a directors’ gala and used as recruitment propaganda for other political figures to send their children to the school.”

“How come I didn’t know this?”

“Most of the names of the board members are initials and not easily traced. Several parents of attending students did come up in our research,” Reed told them.

Sasha let the information sink in. “Did you find Alice Petrov’s name?”

“We did, Sasha. But she used her maiden name.”

“I’m not sure this is information that will help in any way, except to suggest that the Hofmanns knew some of the inner workings of Richter.”

“Especially my mother,” AJ said.

“Okay, Claire, you’re up,” Neil said.

Claire’s voice was full of teenage cheer. “Hey, guys, you behaving out there?”

“Not if I can help it,” Sasha teased her back.

“Awesome. Okay, so remember the senior computer room?”

“Of course.”

“My friend Jax and I devised a way to talk inside a video game chat room so that when she left at the end of the year, I’d be able to keep in touch with her.”

Sasha seemed to remember a few students during her time doing the same thing. “So you talked to Jax?”

“Yup. She left a message, all code you know . . . in case Lodovica caught wind. Anyway, long story short, Richter isn’t just placing lilies in vases, they’re planting those things. Everyone was kept out of the dining hall for the entire day, said something about a contamination. A crew came in, wrapped it up like they were going to fumigate. When it came down and the trucks left, the stairwell to the lower levels was sealed off, walls up. It’s like it isn’t even there.”

The magnitude of what Claire was telling her took the wind out of her lungs. “Something big went down.”

“I know, right? I have a few questions out to Jax and need to wait for her to sneak away to answer. They’re on early curfew.”

Sasha saw an even better reason to return to Germany.

“You still there?” Cooper asked.

“Yeah.”

“Someone went into Amelia’s condo last night. There was an obvious break in the feed the second the motion detector blipped on,” Cooper told them.

“I take it you didn’t see a face.”

“Not even a shadow. Whoever went in knew the camera was there, but they didn’t destroy it.”

Sasha looked at AJ. “Guess that means we’re going back to DC.”

“Smells like someone is flushing you out, Sasha,” Reed said.

“I smell that, too. Don’t worry about me.”

“Hey, AJ,” Reed said.

“Yeah?”

“We need you to visit Amelia’s coworkers while Sasha is at the condo.”

“Why?”

Sasha already knew the answer to that.

“You’re not going to like it, but we need you to cooperate.”

“The suspense is riveting. Spit it out.”

Sasha looked him in the eye. “To keep you safe. If you’re inside a government building while I’m at the condo, then I don’t have to worry about anyone’s ass other than my own. If someone is watching and waiting to snag you to get to me . . .”