Hidden (Nicole Jones #1)(41)

‘Are you OK?’ Jeanine asks, the concern lacing her tone. She reaches over and holds my upper arm, as if knowing I need the touch of a friend.

I manage a small smile. ‘I’ve been better.’

‘I saw you from the window.’ She frowns at the moped. ‘I’ve never seen you on one of these before.’

I give her a sheepish look. ‘My bike’s gone. I needed something to get around on, and Pete let me use it.’

She eyes the backpack in the basket. The laptop is peeking out from the corner where I have not zipped it shut.

‘I stopped over at Mike Burns’s earlier.’

I don’t have to explain further. It’s clear from her expression that she knows about Mike’s unofficial business, which tells me that it’s the worst-kept secret on the island.

I glance at the spa building and it gives me an idea. ‘You wouldn’t have a place I could hang out in for a little while, would you? Do you have wireless?’

She gives me a funny look, but it is gone quickly. ‘Sure, I guess so. I’ve got a room in the back.’

She indicates I should follow her, her long skirt swishing as we walk. As I step through the doorway, she cups her hand under my elbow, as though I need the support.

Perhaps I do.

Jeanine leads me down a dark hallway into a room that has an extra massage bed on one side and a washer and dryer on the other. Shelves next to the dryer are filled with white, fluffy towels, bathrobes and white sheets used on the massage tables. A tall shelving unit filled with a massive number of bottles is against the third wall. I peer closely at the bottles, thinking of my smashed jars, and see they are massage oils.

Jeanine chuckles. ‘I’m a little bit of an oil hoarder.’ She clears off a small table that seems to be used for folding the towels and sheets and pulls over a step stool that’s high enough to use as a chair. ‘I hope this is OK,’ she says apologetically.

‘It’s fine. Really.’ She has no idea that once I begin my work, I will not even notice my surroundings. ‘Jeanine, has anyone been around asking about me? I mean, a stranger?’

She frowns, and I see the answer in her face before she says anything. ‘No. Who would be asking about you?’

While it would be easy for Carmine to go into a gallery or to ask about my bike tours, it would be more difficult for him to come to a spa and start asking questions. But there is no guarantee that he is not watching the spa, waiting for Jeanine to leave for the day and follow her.

‘You haven’t seen anyone hanging around outside, have you? A tall man, salt-and-pepper hair, in an overcoat?’

‘No.’ She is puzzled by my questions. ‘Who is he?’

‘Just someone who’s been asking about me. If you see him, tell me, and then go tell Frank Cooper.’

She chews on her lip for a few seconds. ‘So we’re not talking about Zeke Chapman?’

I shake my head, unable to look her in the eye.

‘Nicole, I’m worried about you.’

‘I’ll be OK.’

‘What is it you need? Can I be any help?’

Her kindness brings a tear to my eye. I blink it away quickly. ‘No, this is help enough. But please don’t tell anyone I’m here, OK?’

I am struck with an overwhelming urge to tell her everything, as I have told Steve, but I can’t put her at risk, too. It is bad enough Steve knows. She comes over to me and gives me a hug before heading back out, but before she leaves the room, she gives me a look that tells me she is not going to give up on finding out what this secret is that I’m not telling her.

‘I’ll come back in an hour, when I’m done with my client, OK?’ she says at the door. ‘Maybe then I can work some hot stone magic on you. You’re really out of sync.’

No kidding. The door closes, and I am alone.

Except that I’m not. Not really. I open the laptop and hope that Mike has sold me something that works the way it should. I am still leery of refurbished computers, because even though he has told me he’s only updated this, he could be lying.

I do a quick check of the system. The history has been wiped clean, as have any bookmarks or any signs that anyone else has ever used this computer. But with a few keystrokes, I could find out everything about it and about who owned it before.

I don’t feel like I have the time or the curiosity, though, right now. I type in the VPN URL and navigate my way through it and into the chat room, where Tracker has left me the message he promised. There they are. The list of account numbers. I sit and stare at them, knowing that they are the reason I am holed up in this room, hiding from everyone. The reason why I have been holed up on an island for fifteen years.

But maybe now they can set me free.

I study the numbers, looking at each one carefully, trying to see if there is any sort of pattern. Trying to see if one stands out as different from the others. But I see nothing; they are random in their purest form. It will only be after I find out to whom they belong that the lines might be drawn.

My fingers hover over the keyboard. They are trembling. Part of me is scared, but there is another part of me, that part of me that came back when I saw Ian, that is eager to get started, to prove to myself again that I can do this.

I know the bank that housed these accounts, and suddenly I am transported back. It is as though no time has passed at all, and I am on autopilot. I hunch over the laptop, my fingers flying. The bank probably closed the accounts we’d stolen from, but new ones would have been created, as long as the account owners wanted to stay with the bank. I’m sure the bank made it worth their while, to keep the business. These accounts, while no longer active, would still be in the system, however. Nothing is ever really lost in a computer. What’s challenging is finding out where everything might be.