Susan Sleeman - Thread of Suspicion

She jerked her eyes away. She was working her dream case, and she had to let go of this hold Luke had on her. With his good looks, Tim probably had to deal with women throwing themselves at Luke all the time. She was not going to be one of those women. She focused her full attention on Tim.

“With skills like that,” he said, “it’s likely our hacker’s done this before.”

She nodded. “But why is the question. Since there’s really no financial payoff for this kind of hack, I’d say our hacker was hired to do it.”

“Hired by someone who wants us to fail.” Tim pushed off the door frame. “He’s no match for us, right? We won’t let him sink us.”

“Right,” she answered absently as his words tickled the elusive memory that she couldn’t help but feel was connected to the case. She needed to figure it out instead of standing here talking. “Thanks for the login, Tim.”

She turned back to the computer, opened Crypton and started clicking through the code while Luke and Tim chatted near Luke’s desk. She went deeper into the program. A line of code jumped out at her, sending her heart plummeting.

This was it. The elusive hint she couldn’t put her finger on earlier. Just a snippet of code but it was distinctive, like a trademark. A trademark for a ruthless hacker. A killer. Echo, the man who’d murdered Grace Waters, Dani’s friend and partner at the FBI, all because they’d tried to apprehend him for hacking a bank’s website.

And threatened to kill me if we ever crossed paths again.

How had she not seen the pattern yesterday?

“Oh, no,” Dani whispered as her world seemed to collapse in on her. Father, no. Not Echo. I can’t handle this again.

“Dani.” Luke looked up. “Is everything okay?”

Okay? her mind screamed as the two men watched her closely. No, everything isn’t okay.

Feeling as if she might be sick, Dani bolted from her chair and ran down the hallway to the women’s restroom. She leaned over the sink and took a good look at her face in the mirror.

Colorless. Fearful. Terrified.

This couldn’t be happening. Not when she’d finally given up on finding Grace’s killer and laid it to rest.

“But it is happening,” she mumbled, her mouth so dry the words barely slipped through her parched lips.

Echo was back and they were not only dealing with a ruthless hacker who worked for the highest bidder, but if she did her job right and got too close to him, he’d kill her without a second thought.

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