Shift by Sidney Bristol Page A

starting to suspect the real leads were buried in a thousand useless documents intentionally.
    â€œWhat is it you’re working on? Or is there a reason you’re ignoring my question?”
    â€œNo, just concentrating.” He sat up and met her gaze.
    â€œShould I leave you alone?”
    â€œYou don’t have to.” He didn’t normally shy away from conversation, but with Tori it was always a struggle to know what to say. She didn’t fit into any neat box in his life. But she had told him to talk to her. He gestured at the screen. “I’ve categorized most of the data we took from Evers and I’m looking for the flow of money.”
    â€œOh? Money talks?” Tori leaned forward, elbows on the table.
    â€œExactly.” He paused, taking a second to organize his thoughts before he continued speaking. This was going to be work. Even CJ didn’t expect him to converse more than necessary. “Most of the front companies are either false or haven’t been used in so long there’s no record of them. I’m trying to determine which ones are still in operation and where the funding is coming from.”
    â€œDang. What about the company that was flying into Everglades Air?”
    â€œPrestige Shipping. They closed shop the day after. Completely shut the operation down. Haven’t been able to track them. Whoever is running the import-export business is good.”
    â€œThat sucks. What do we know about the rest of these shell companies?”
    â€œAlmost nothing right now. There’s too many of them.” He grimaced.
    â€œWhat do you think is going on?”
    â€œNothing for sure, but I’m starting to think it’s intentional.” And that worried him. What if this mountain of information was specially designed to slow down the Feds—him—while Evers implemented some kind of getaway plan?
    â€œHow long have you worked for them?” She turned her glass, drawing in the condensation.
    â€œSeven, almost eight years.”
    She didn’t reply immediately, and he was fine with that. It gave him the chance to simply look at her. She’d dressed for a day at the garage, wearing a charcoal-gray tank top and jeans over steel-toed boots. She’d let her hair down in the last ten minutes, which was unusual, but she had an elastic band around her wrist, ready to solve that problem. He liked her hair down. It had a gentle wave to it and framed her face in a manner that softened her features.
    â€œCan I ask you a question?” She didn’t look at him.
    Christ, she could ask anything of him and he’d do it, but that was probably something best kept to himself.
    â€œDepends.”
    Her gaze flicked to his face and she frowned. “You could speak in complete sentences.”
    â€œAsk me the question.”
    She opened her mouth and closed it.
    What bomb did she have to drop on him now? He waited, muscles tensing while she seemed to gather her thoughts.
    â€œWhy do you limp sometimes?”
    His knee didn’t hurt so much as ache in remembered pain. He shoved the memories down before they could whack him senseless.
    Damn. He should have seen that coming.
    Emery sat back in his seat. How much to tell her?
    â€œI had an injury. There was substantial damage to the joint. The limp is more muscle memory than anything else.” The shrink at Quantico had told him when he was ready to let go of his past, the limp would probably fade away. The only problem with the doctor’s theory was that Emery had already let his past go.
    She balled up a napkin and threw it at him.
    â€œI can tell that, jackass. I mean, how did it happen?”
    He’d deliberately misunderstood her question, postponing this answer. It wasn’t a secret, but it was tied to his shame. The necessary people knew his history, but beyond that he didn’t bother to share it, allowing people to come to their own conclusions. But this was Tori.