Page 16 of Protecting You
He grinned. “At a few things, maybe.” His amusement faded. “Charles SandersisDariush Ghazi. And Dariush Ghazi is a very dangerous man.”
He needed to convince her, sooner rather than later.
“Fine. Why would he break in when I agreed to work with him?”
“Maybe he got spooked when I showed up. Maybe he wanted to find something to use to blackmail you. Or maybe it wasn’t him. Who else?—?”
“Why couldn’t it just be thieves, like you said to the Uber driver?”
“Think about it, Alyssa. Whyyourapartment? It wasn’t exactly a crime of convenience. Your building is secure. Even if someone gained access, there are lots of other apartments they could’ve chosen. Why yours?”
Her lips pressed together. “But why would Charles do it? There’s nothing there he could use to blackmail me.”
“His name is not Charles.”
“You know what I mean.”
Callan dropped his feet to the floor. “Let’s go over what they took.”
“My iPad. The hard drive from my desktop. Which reminds me…” She dug through her purse and pulled out the thumb drive she’d purchased on the way here.
“You think they could access the information on it?”
“Probably." She shrugged. "Nothing is completely secure. You know that. Every code can be broken if given enough time and resources. That’s why all my sensitive data is stored on a secure cloud server.”
“Which can also be accessed.”
“But they’d have to know where to look.”
He considered that. “Will the desktop tell them where to look?”
“Yes. Which is why I need to download everything off the server.” She powered up her laptop.
“What else was taken?”
“My planner," she said, "which holds my calendar and to-do list. That’s all I know, but it’s not like there was time to look around.”
“Did you have anything of value?”
She shrugged, though it didn’t come off as casual as she probably hoped. “Jewelry. Not super valuable, but sentimental. It’s not like I keep bundles of cash hidden in the cookie jar.”
“The thing is, I don’t think your burglars were Ghazi’s people.”
“You don’t?” She set the laptop aside. “I thought…why do you think that?”
“When they heard your keys in the lock, they were taken off-guard, which tells me they didn’t know you were home. So either Ghazi’s men didn’t follow us to your apartment, and I’m pretty sure they did, or the intruders weren’t Ghazi’s men.”
“I see what you’re saying. Ghazi’s men would have warned the intruders that we were on the way.” She seemed to consider that. “Then who were they?”
“It could’ve been his enemies.”
That had her straightening. “What do you mean? What enemies?”
“People like him always have enemies. It’s not like all bad guys are buddy-buddy.”
“I know that. But why target me? What do I have to do with anything?”
“Maybe they’re after the information you’ve already found for him.” He nodded at the thumb drive she’d inserted into the USB port of her laptop. “You need to secure it.”
