Night Is Darkest by Jayne Rylon (books recommended by bts .TXT) 📕

when Tyler guided them farther into the bowels of the station rather than toward the front desk. “I want to check in with the tech guys. The decoding of your emails should get bumped to high priority now. Make sure to smile and bat your lashes a lot, these geeks will do anything for a pretty lady.”

“Like you wouldn’t?” Lacey wrinkled her nose. She’d seen some crazy and inventive ploys by women hoping to get Ty’s attention over the years.

Mason laughed. “She’s got you there.”

The closer they got to the labs, the more drastically the atmosphere changed. By the time they’d made a handful of turns, shoulder-length hair replaced buzz cuts as the style of choice while an array of ripped or faded T-shirts advertised a plethora of heavy metal bands. She ducked her head to conceal a tiny smirk when Mason greeted a techie with a clap on the back that resulted in a dislodged pocket protector.

The way the male dominant culture of the station dealt with Rob’s death struck her as polar opposite from the nurses’ reaction to her return. Not one person mentioned the tragedy but several gave brusque nods in the partners’ direction that communicated respect all the same. She supposed they had to compartmentalize their work from the personal in order to survive. Not that different from working on a family member at the hospital, she supposed. Hopefully, she’d never have to find out for sure.

With light pressure from the fingers resting on her elbow, Mason nudged her into a bustling hive of activity. Cubicles lined the outside walls of the cramped room while long conference style workstations allowed for collaborative pursuits. Tyler scanned the chaos for a second then took off for the far corner.

A monitor angled away from the action for the maximum privacy afforded by the communal space. As they neared, she realized a familiar face huddled behind it. The neat man with classic Roman features felt so out of place in the mishmash of wires, data ports and social ineptitude that she had forgotten he belonged to the cyber crimes division. Lacey had always found her brother’s friend attractive. He’d even taken her out to dinner a few times and to the movies once but the chemistry between them hadn’t transcended the platonic phase.

“What’s taking so damn long, JRad?” Mason never beat around the bush.

Lost in his work, Jeremy Radisson blinked several times but didn’t even look up from the screen. Tyler whapped the mesh back of the ergonomic chair cradling the young computer whiz, who disengaged the miniscule, state-of-the-art earphones none of them had realized he wore.

“Hey guys. Lacey.” He flashed her a sad smile. “Sorry, it gets kind of crazy in here. If I don’t tune it out I’d never get anything accomplished.”

“Have you been able to descramble the email yet?” Tyler usually had more patience than Mason but today it looked like they were both fresh out.

Jeremy frowned. “I made some significant progress here in the last ten minutes or so. I wanted to clean up the artifacts a tad before I called you guys in.”

“Yeah, well, we need to put a rush on the job.” Mason bordered on rude.

She covered his fist with hers, prying his fingers open until she could slip her hand into his palm.

Jeremy glanced up from his station for a closer look at the three of them. “Shit, Lacey, what happened to your face? What aren’t you guys telling me?”

“Some piece of shit made her a Harmytal cocktail. It’s a bad idea to drink and drive.”

“Oh, man. You guys aren’t going to like this, then.” Jeremy rubbed the lower half of his face. His dove grey eyes flicked to her then away.

“Whatever you have to say to them, you can say in front of me.” She propped her hands on her hips. They wouldn’t dare send her away now. Would they?

He sighed. “The email looks like it was from some guy named Jackson. I tracked the header info back to a mail server at Rocky Forge Penitentiary. From there it was a breeze to secure the IP address of the terminal it was sent from.”

Jeremy paused instead of blurting out his findings. She appreciated the opportunity he provided for her to come clean before he filled in the details. Though unnecessary, his thoughtfulness improved her high regard for the conservative officer.

“We already know about what that bastard did to Lacey.”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze when he said, “I did some research to figure out why some slimeball in lockup would be contacting her. I, uh, secured a copy of the state’s report on the incident four years ago as well as this jerk’s records. Now, you can’t use any of this in an official capacity yet—the request hasn’t come through the proper channels—but it looks like he’s up for parole in a few weeks, if he can convince the state he’s a reformed man. The subject of his email pretty much sums it up. The gist is that he wanted to talk to Lacey in an attempt to convince her that his time in jail had made him see what a fuck-up he was. I haven’t decoded all the lines of the message yet but I deciphered enough that my program can fill in most words with possible alternates. From that, it seems like he was asking for her to attend the trial and plead on his behalf or, at the very least, to not show up at all.”

“I didn’t know they let people smoke crack in jail.” Tyler shook his head.

“No kidding.” Jeremy shrugged. “But here’s the weird part. Like we talked about when you called this in to me, Ty, the message was clean. There was no virus in it. I mean the dude wanted Lacey to read it. Trashing her computer would be counterproductive.”

“So you’re saying someone else didn’t want me to talk to Jackson?”

Tyler rubbed her tense shoulders.

“Yeah.” Jeremy hesitated.

“Tell us the rest, JRad,” Mason rumbled through clenched teeth.

“The