Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(42)

She looked at me, confused. As though trying to figure out exactly what I meant. “You think you know about their secrets? You have no idea. Whoever you are.”

“So tell me.”

She laughed. A brief, rueful laugh. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Get another person dragged in. Were you telling me to get out of the water? Or had you wanted to jump in?”

“Those men. You were with them in San Francisco. You gave them something. What was it?”

She set her cup down. “You were there?”

I said nothing.

“Forget it,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. I don’t know why I’m sitting here.” She ran a hand through her black hair, made as if to stand.

“Sit down, Karen.”

“You’re telling me to sit?”

“I’m asking you to sit. You asked me a question. I’ll answer it.”

She sat back in her chair, slowly, defeated. As if the prospect of getting up, of walking off the porch into the chilly, wet afternoon, was suddenly too much to even contemplate. “Fine,” she said. “Answer my question.”

“You’re talking to me because something has scared you. Badly. I don’t know everything. I know it’s connected to the people you work for and to the men you met today. But you’re talking to me for one reason only. You’re in danger. And you know it.”

I gave her a hard look, challenging her to disagree.

She was silent. Biting her lip, the mug back in her hands. “It’s not only me.”

“What do you mean?”

Her face openly weighed how much she wanted to say. “It’s not only me,” she said again. “What I’m trying to stop—people will die. A lot of people. Innocent people. And if I can’t stop them, it’s going to happen soon.”

“Stop who?”

“Care4, of course. My company.” She said the last word with special emphasis. Like she was describing the type of cancer she had.

“If you’re not trying to sell their secrets, how’d you get caught up in this?”

“Selling secrets? That’s what they told you? You think I’m doing this for money? My God. You know how much easier it would be for me to just walk away?”

“Why don’t you, then? Why take these risks?”

Her voice was coiled with anger. “If you really knew me, you’d know why. If you knew anything about me, you’d get it. Some things are worth taking risks for. My parents taught me that in a way you won’t ever understand.”

“I think I might,” I said. “Give me a chance. Tell me. How’d you get caught up in this?”

“You actually care?” she asked, still upset. “You really want to know?”

“I’m asking because I do.”

Some of the tautness left her voice, and her eyes softened. “It started with an e-mail. That’s all. Just an e-mail with a weird subject line.”

“An e-mail?”

“Someone accidentally CC’d me on a chain I wasn’t supposed to see.”

“All this from an e-mail? That seems extreme.”

“It wasn’t so much the e-mail. If it was just the e-mail, I probably would have forgotten about it. We get hundreds and hundreds each day. It’s impossible to even read all of them.”

“What was it, then?”

“Their reaction. It was like they panicked. They shut down my account, reset the password, told me it was routine maintenance even though that was obviously BS. Then when I was finally able to log back in, the e-mail had been deleted. Only that one. That was weird enough, but it didn’t get scary until a few days later, when some of their lawyers called me in and read me the riot act. It didn’t matter how many times I explained I hadn’t done anything wrong—they didn’t seem to believe me. It got worse. After that meeting I started to feel like I was being watched. Finally, I decided that if they were so suspicious, I should learn more about what was worrying everyone so much.” She finished simply. “Sometimes I wish I could take that back. Because the more I learned, the more I understood about what Care4 is actually doing.”

“You mentioned a weird subject line. What was it?”

She gave me a quick, guarded look and then stared back at her mug. “Is this a trap?”

“No trap. I’m just asking.”

“‘In Retentis.’ That was the subject line.”

I took that in. “You said people would die. Who is going to die?”

Her face changed, becoming almost hostile. “What do you care? You were hired by people who hate me. And you think you might know some things. But I promise you—whoever you are. You don’t know the half of it. You don’t know a tenth of it. About what you’re doing, or who you’re working for, or what you’re getting into.”

“We both work for the same people,” I observed.

She laughed again, that short, humorless laugh. “I know them a lot better than you do. And they’re a lot more dangerous than you realize.”

“Yeah? Tell me about them.”

“Why?”

“So I can help you.”

“Why do you want to help me?”