Page 46 of Hellbent

She settled back against the bed again, as bored as ever. He read the coding here and there, catching up to it well enough to start directing the software.

“Lemme see the phone,” she said.

“I already checked it. It’s been wiped.”

“Two sets of eyes are better than one. Especially when the second set is mine.”

“Trust me. There’s no point.”

She plucked up the Samsung, started thumbing at it.

The laptop spit out some results. It took Evan a moment to decipher them.

“Shit,” he said.

“Hmm?” The phone made little tapping noises, its glow illuminating her round face.

“Looks like they used a secure erase tool,” he said. “Layered over the data with twelve hours of alternating ones and zeros.”

“There is a shortcut, you know.”

He closed the laptop a touch harder than necessary. “What’s that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the Waze app on his phone.” She held up the Samsung to show the nav application lighting up the screen. “It shows where the cops are, accidents, traffic jams. You know, useful stuff for lookouts and getaway drivers. Why did you think he had a phone?”

Heat rose beneath Evan’s face. “To make calls.”

“To make calls,” she said. “That’s so cute.”

“The app—it has all the routes?”

“Yeah. But we don’t need them.”

“Why not?”

“Because look what happens when you touch the smiley car.” She pressed the icon. A column of recent destinations came up. The second one down, an address in Portland’s Central Eastside, was labeled HQ.

“That’s what we in the spy business refer to as a clue,” she said.

Evan rubbed his eyes.

“You really need to watch your nonverbal tells,” she said.

He lowered his hands to his lap. “You have location services turned off on that phone, right?”

“Of course.”

“Power it off anyway. Just to be safe.”

She did. Then she tossed it back onto the worn network of threads that passed for a carpet. “When you said they could pick me up on the surveillance cameras at the train station, I thought you were being paranoid. But it’s not paranoid when you’re right, is it?”

“I need to get you far away from here before we put you on any kind of public transportation. I’m talking multiple states away.”

“What about the headquarters?” She tapped the phone. “I mean, we’re forty minutes away. You drive me to Idaho and come back, they’ll be cleared out by then.”

“What am I supposed to do with you?”

She just looked at him.