“I’m not interested in working for the CIA, you know that.”
“It was Paul’s dying wish.”
“No, it wasn’t, and it’s crass and manipulative of you to say so.” She crossed her arms and walked to the mantel that held an antique clock, a picture of her mother and brother, and one of Ava with her childhood best friends, Sarah and Caden Denning. No pictures of her father, though.
“How can you say that? He’s been training you since the day you were born. You just didn’t know it until you were fifteen. We need you, Ava. We need your skills.”
“Those were his choices, not mine. By the time I realized what he was doing, I simply went along with him because it meant spending time with him. But I never planned to join the CIA. Still don’t.”
“Your country needs you.”
She whirled. “I served my country!” She stopped, gained control, and composed her features. “And I served it well. My mother needs me now and I’ll appreciate it if you don’t bring this up again. Now, how did he die?”
“The official version is a car wreck.”
“And the real version?”
“He was on the Donghae-Vladivostok ferry. The water was rough and he was swept overboard into the sea.”
Oh, Daddy, no . . . “You found his body?”
He sighed. “No, not yet. They will. They found his coat and a shoe.”
Her head snapped up. “Then he might not be dead. You know that as well as I do. He’s resourceful and—”
“There’s video. He went into the Sea of Japan, Ava. He didn’t survive.”
Ava pressed a fist to her lips and sucked in a breath through her nose. “Okay. Well, if he did, he’ll be in touch.”
“Ava—”
“Thanks for letting me know, John.”
“Ava! He’s not going to be in touch. It was a long fall. The water isn’t freezing, but it’s definitely too cold to survive for long. And land was a long way away. He went down, probably got knocked unconscious—and never came back up.”
Tears pressed against her lids and she fought to keep them from falling.
“I’m sorry, hon,” he said, his voice softening. “I’ll show you the video footage from the ferry’s security camera if it will help convince you.”
She sniffed and swiped her hands over her eyes. “Yes, okay, fine. Show me the footage.”
Twenty minutes later, he was gone—at her insistence—and she sat on her couch, replaying the images in her mind. John was right. There was no way he’d survived that fall.
She released the tears.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Ava stood in front of her dresser mirror, sucking in breaths to calm her racing heart and battered emotions. When she’d finished telling Caden the details of her father’s death, she’d had to leave the room. She understood his need to know, but revisiting memories that hadn’t had time to even scab over was brutal.
Caden’s knock on the door sent her pulse skyrocketing once more. Okay, she could do this. When she’d excused herself, he said he was going to check in with Zane. She suspected he knew she needed a few minutes to herself, but he must need something if he was knocking.
She crossed the room and opened the door.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m . . . managing. Sorry. I just needed to . . .” She waved a hand as though to push aside the thought.
“I understand. Come on back in here whenever you’re ready and we’ll see if we can figure some things out. Zane said they’re still running tests on Michael’s laptop—and they’re looking into your father’s history, trying to find the link between him and Michael’s father.”
She scoffed. “You know as well as I do, they’re not going to find a thing.”
“I know. Which is why we need you to do the finding.” He nodded to the laptop on her table. “Your father’s?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m assuming that’s yours on your desk.”
She shot him a tight smile. “Observant.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“I guess so.” She walked out to the table and sat down in front of the computer. “I was trying to get into it, but he changed the password.” She raked a hand over her ponytail and sighed. “About five years ago, he gave me strict instructions what to do should I receive word of his death—such as how to clean out his secret residence. He had more IDs and money stashed in different places than you could imagine. Anyway, I did that and, of course, grabbed his laptop. I haven’t looked at it since. But when you showed me the pictures, I pulled it out and got nowhere.”
“You’re a genius with computers. I have a hard time believing you can’t get in.”
She smiled. “I don’t know about genius, but yes, I should be able to get into it at some point, although it would definitely be a lot faster if I had the password.” Her smile flipped and she shook her head. “When I figured out his password at the age of fifteen, he upped the difficulty level. But later, he explained how to get into the laptop. He said I was the only one he trusted to destroy the information on there.” A groan slipped from her. “I don’t understand. Why make sure I had the password memorized—and the exact changes he would make each time he had to change it on the date he planned to do so—and then deviate from that?” The only answer she could come up with was because he planned to come back. But that was impossible, because he was dead—which only meant he’d been planning to come back, not die.
“Could it be he was afraid someone else would know his system?”
“Maybe.” She mentally ran through all of the calculations and still came up with what she’d entered earlier. But . . . She typed it again. And again, got a Password Denied notification. “Ugh.”
“Are you sure he didn’t tell you and you just didn’t know he was telling you?”
“Caden, my father and I spoke often. Sometimes via secure email, other times over a secure phone line. There was nothing in any of those communications about him changing the system for his password.”
“Maybe it wasn’t anything he said. Your father was always into games and surprises, puzzles and whatnot. Maybe there was something special about a scavenger hunt or—”
She laughed. “Do you know how many of those he did? How many word games—head games, really—and other stuff we did over the years?”
He sighed. “All right, then, I can get Daria to get into the computer.”
“Excuse me,” Ava said, indignant, “I can get into it, thank you very much. I just have to figure out—” She stopped and swiveled her attention on her bedroom. “Wait a minute. Puzzles.”
“What?”
“It couldn’t be that easy.” She gave a short laugh.
“What are you talking about?”
“The puzzle he sent me. Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Of course he would do that.”
“Puzzle?”
Ava darted to the bedroom and into her closet. She could hear Caden behind her. It only took her a second to extract the puzzle from its hiding place and rip the plastic off the plain box.