Shane frowned. He was the backup. “What about Yael’s safety?”

“I have no intention of placing Yael in danger.” Alex sent him a long look that suggested he hadn’t completely forgiven him for yesterday. Then he nodded to the doorway where the manager had disappeared. “While I was waiting for you to get here, I made sure there weren’t any bugging devices on the premises and also checked EG wasn’t able to somehow jump onto the motel’s surveillance system.”

Shane glanced at the camera above the desk facing the door.

Yael gave another visible shudder.

“I have people monitoring communications coming to and from this property and also flying a drone overhead that will warn us if anyone tries to escape out the back. But the family who runs this motel has been doing so for seventeen years. They’re hardworking people with no obvious computer skills. Even the Wi-Fi is dubious at best.”

Yael sat down in the chair behind the desk. “You want me to run the images through the facial recognition software at the same time as copying it?”

“Please.” Alex nodded.

Yael didn’t waste any more time. Her fingers began flying over the keyboard and she connected some sort of external drive to the motel’s PC and then opened another window on the monitor and downloaded some piece of software from a USB drive.

Watching her work was a turn on.

Shane stopped watching. “You checked the reservations for Tuesday night?”

Alex nodded. “One of them was made with a credit card number stolen with the same batch as the card EG used to buy the off-the-shelf VPN in Houston. Jason Jones. Unit eleven. It’s the farthest unit along on the far side.”

Shane checked his weapon. “How many of the other rooms are occupied?”

“Four. There’s no one in the adjoining unit.”

“You don’t want to evacuate the others before we knock on the door of unit eleven?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary.” Alex glanced at the parking lot through the window. “But I brought a handheld radar system with me so we can take a look inside the rooms before we go in.”

Shane nodded. “Good idea.”

“You and I can check all the units. See if anyone is hunkered down somewhere they aren’t supposed to be.”

Yael had her head bent over her keyboard completely absorbed in her task.

He headed outside and Alex dug the sophisticated handheld radar out of the bag in the trunk of his Audi. They stood hidden by the truck as they surreptitiously examined each unit in turn and compared it to the register. “All looks exactly the way it should.” Shane confirmed. “Unit eleven appears to be empty.”

“Let’s check it out. I have paper booties and gloves in my car so we don’t contaminate the scene should it belong to EG,” said Alex.