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Jacob left Caleb to finish cleaning and turned his attention back to Lana She looked tired today, worried, but that wasn’t surprising considering what her friend had been through Her dark hair was puled back in a short ponytail, but a bunch of the slippery strands had worked their way free and hung around her face She was pretty in that natural, girl-next-door kind of way There was nothing exotic in her features, but she reminded him a little of the first wolish teacher Although he’dinstead, Miss Parish had taught his about how his adolescent body worked

"Morning, Ms Hancock," he greeted her She swept a loose lock of hair behind her ear and gave hiured out who did this?" she asked

"I’m afraid not Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"

She looked like she wanted to say no, but she nodded and puled up a spare chair for hi She see wel"

Lana nodded "I talked to her on the phone earlier and she asked n"

"Have you noticed anythingunusual or out of place?"

She hesitated too long, whichwhether or not to lie or thinking up one "No"

Okay, so notinvolved in that answer, so sheWhether or not she had, he wasn’t sure "I noticed the stacks of notebooks on the desks Is that how you left them?"

"I can’t re Stacie orking on"

Jacob scribbled down another note to remember to ask Stacie about it "We found what appears to be a listening device Do you know anything about that?"

She tensed up but covered it by shooting to her feet "Would you like some coffee?"

"Sure," he replied as if she hadn’t just tried to distract him

She poured him a cup of coffee that looked like it had been there for several hours--just like he was used to back at the station

"What about it?" he prodded "Know any reason why your office would be bugged?"

She gave a shrug that was too stiff to be nonchalant "We don’t do anything top secret here Our financial records are public, and we certainly don’t have a lot of iven hi have you been in this office?"

"About six ht the desks and chairs Why?"

"How about the blinds? The artwork?"

She gave him a confused frown "The blinds were here when I ht the desks"

"Where did you buy them?" He sipped his coffee

"That used-furniture store two blocks down"

"I know the one," said Jacob

"Can you think of any reason why someone would want to hurt Stacie?"

"She doesn’t have any enemies," said Lana

"That’s not what I asked"

"Why would anyone want to hurt her?"

"That’s my question," said Jacob

"I’m sorry I can’t help you"

Couldn’t or wouldn’t? Jacob wasn’t sure which What he was sure about was that Lana had a bad past Her office was bugged A highly decorated soldier was staying nice and close, and she was terrified

Whatever was going on here was both bigger and uglier than he’d hoped, which meant he had a lot of extra work to do Between this and the hoht, he had his hands ful

"What about you?" he asked her "Is there any reason so al these questions?"

"Standard procedure"

She raised a disbelieving brow "I have a ton of work to do"

Jacob nodded and puled out his business card "Keep this in case you think of anything else" Not that she’d tel him if she did

"Thanks" She took the card and set it on top of what looked like a stack of trash on her desk

Jacob waved a hand at Caleb as he left He wasn’t sure why the lad Caleb was here Jacob wouldn’t have felt safe leaving the woh hel The last thing he wanted was for her to go through it al again