I ignored him, walking out into the hallway so I could hear. The phone rang half a dozen times before going to voicemail.
“It’s me. Jacob just got an odd email from my account. Call me.”
“Lucien,” Jacob said again, standing in the doorway watching me. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
What choice did I have? I dragged my fingers through my hair, trying to figure out where to start. At the beginning? What was the beginning?
My phone vibrated.
“Adrienne?”
“What did it say?” she asked, her voice full of a wariness that sent warning bells screaming in my head.
“That he should tell me not to mess with fire.”
“Fire? And it was sent from your account?”
“Yeah. How did they—”
“I’m coming to you. Stay there and wait.”
She hung up before I could say anything else.
“Lucien, why are you telling your girlfriend about this?”
“Because she’s not my girlfriend. Not really.”
Jacob’s face darkened, storm clouds moving across his eyes.
“We might as well get comfortable.”
Adrienne arrived not a minute after I finished explaining the whole thing to Jacob. He was sitting on the couch, his hands clutched between his legs, his eyes on the floor. I went to the door and let Adrienne in.
“I had to tell Jacob everything.”
She nodded, not really looking me in the eye.
“Hey,” I said, touching her arm, “are we okay?”
She looked up at me. “I have some hard questions I need to ask. Maybe it would be better if we do this and decide where we stand after.”
She brushed past me and went into the living room. She didn’t sit, but paced in front of the fireplace, her hands clutched behind her back. I watched, growing more and more uneasy the longer she simply paced and remained silent.
“You’re a private investigator?” Jacob asked.
Adrienne stopped, focusing on him. “I am.”
“And all that, that night at the bar, was just an act.”
She looked at me a second, then sort of shrugged. “I think that’s a little irrelevant right now. What we should be focusing on is whoever is sending these emails threatening Lucien.”
“Threats? He said they were just little warnings, like the one on my computer.”
“They’re threats. And we need to figure out who’s sending them.”
“Can’t you do some sort of computer thing and figure that out?”
Again her eyes moved to mine before she took a seat on the couch across from Jacob and leaned forward, looking him in the eye.
“We believe the emails originated from Lucien’s computer at the office.”
“My computer?” I said. “You’re joking, right?”
“No.” She didn’t look at me when she said it. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look like the emails were coming from your computer, but our people were able to trace them back to the desktop in Lucien’s office.”
Jacob shook his head. “Why would someone do that?”
“Who has access to his office?”
“Hey, I’m standing right here.”
She looked at me, her face a mask of tension. “Do you know who has access to your computer when you’re not in the office?”
“No one. I lock the door when I leave. Jaime and I are the only ones with a key.”
“No, the security office has one, too, in case of emergencies.”
“And who has access to that?” she asked.
“Jacob, me, and the head of security,” I said.
“Someone is using that computer,” she said. “Someone sent at least one of these emails when you were in Kemah.”
“What about Jaime?” Jacob asked.
I shook my head. “You know it couldn’t be her. She was one of the first people we hired.”
“So was Colin, but I’m not sure I could trust him, given this sort of evidence,” Jacob said.
“Jaime wouldn’t do this.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Adrienne said. Then she looked at me. “What about Tito? Your computer guy? If this person knows his way around a computer, he could do it remotely.”
“No,” I said, again shaking my head emphatically. “I’ve known Tito since freshman year of college. He wouldn’t do this. Besides, he has no motive. If he wanted the pancreas, he could have stolen it years ago.”
Adrienne rubbed her temple at the same time she cleared her throat. “That’s something else we need to talk about. We’re not a hundred percent sure that the pancreas is what they want.”
Jacob and I exchanged a glance.
“But…”
“I thought…”
Neither of us could finish our thought because the idea was just that far out there.
“Think about it,” Adrienne said. “Why wait until a week before the device is patented to try to steal it? Why didn’t they try to steal it months ago when you started the process of getting the patent?”
Jacob looked at me. “She has a point.”
“But what else could it be?”
“Is it possible that someone’s just trying to distract you? Or that they’re just trying to play head games with you?”