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“No. I took it as proof, showed the people online just enough to prove I really had it, then tossed it on that drive and didn’t really think about it. I always planned to take a look at whatever I’d taken—hell, I’d even thought about putting it back—but every time I pulled it out, something else took precedence. After a while, I kind of forgot I had it. But I wonder if that was all part of the setup.”
“Setup? What setup?” Cal asked around a mouthful of food.
“Agent Cooper set the whole thing in motion. He apparently found out about my skill set when I was in college and set up the whole thing that led to me stealing the file.” Felix set his fork down and pushed back from the table. “He orchestratedeverything, me meeting Jordan and helping him steal money from innocent people, my arrest, my parents’ death. He was pulling strings the whole time. He didn’t expect that I had taken a file he’d need later, and once he figured out I was the one who’d stolen it, he did everything he could to make sure I was always in his sight.”
“Shit.” Cal whistled.
Julius’s face was scrunched up like he was thinking hard about something.
“What?” I asked, directing the question his way.
“I don’t get it. If Cooper knew you had the file, why make it hard for you to get information on Amanda Vanderkaamp? I don’t see how the two things are related.”
Jack raised a hand. “I think this might have been a coincidence. I’m the one who flagged the information about Amanda.”
“What? Why?” Felix asked.
Jack sighed. “It’s kind of a long story, but I think everything is connected.” Cal made a go-on gesture, and Jack started talking. “When I showed up on your doorstep, I told you I worked for a friend of your grandmother’s, Reuben Machas.”
“Right. I remember that.” I nodded.
“Reuben used to work jobs with your grandmother until she retired. Since then, he’s become a bit of a recluse. He lives on a huge estate outside Queensland, and he rarely, if ever, leaves his compound.”
“Okay, and?” Cal waved a hand, the gesture impatient as he tried to get Jack to make his point.
“He doesn’t leave, but he has a network of people all over the globe that report to him on topics of interest. A few months ago, he started hearing rumors that there was something big going down in his former world. He’d heard conflicting details about a major heist, then about art thieves and forgers going missing.That’s when he hired me. He heard someone was specifically looking for Amanda Vanderkaamp.”
“How does he know Amanda?” Julius asked.
“They’re old friends or something. He never really explained their connection. Anyway, after he heard her name being tossed around at the center of a kidnapping plot, he sent me to go get her.”
“But no one was supposed to know where she was.” Felix was hanging on Jack’s every word, trying to make the pieces fit.
“Reuben knew and sent me to make sure she was okay. I caught up with her in Amsterdam and watched her for a few days. I thought Reuben’s intel was shitty until two guys approached her at a cafe. They kept asking her about a list, but she didn’t know what they were talking about. One of the guys grabbed her arm, and I intervened.”
“So where is she now?” Felix asked.
“She’s at Reuben’s lying low.”
“That explains why there hasn’t been any activity on the bank accounts tied to her new identity.” Felix appeared happy to have put at least that small part of the mystery to rest.
“Exactly. When we got to Australia, I set up alerts all over the web and dark web for any mention of her name and a list and made sure the international law enforcement organizations all knew she was missing and that whoever wanted her also wanted this list.” Jack looked at Felix. “I’m guessing that’s how you ended up looking for her.”
Felix nodded.
“I also set up a trigger that would let someone dig into Amanda’s identity only so far. Once they hit a certain point and I’d had enough time to get a rough idea of why they were looking for her, they’d get booted out of her accounts.”
“That’s clever.” My mate sounded impressed, and Julius looked it. The only part of what Jack had said that made anysense to me was the part about watching Amanda. All the tech talk went straight over my head.
“You”—Jack turned his attention to Julius—“were the first person not associated with law enforcement to go looking for her, and that made me curious.”
“So you decided to share information with me?”
Jack shrugged. “Sort of. More like I wanted to see what you already knew. See if you’d hang yourself with enough rope, so to speak. Took me no time to figure out you were bluffing about the list—you more or less told me you didn’t have it or know anything about it—so why else were you looking for Amanda? I embedded code into some of the files I sent you that let me track your other movements online, and from there, I figured out we were on the same team.”
“But none of that explains how you ended up here.” Felix pushed his empty plate away.
“I figured out Julius’s IP address. Or rather, where the address originated. Turns out I was already headed out this way to check on your grandmother at Reuben’s request.”
