“You live around here?” he asked in surprise. “I guess that’s a dumb question since you said you just moved, presumably you are still on the task force, and you’re here in this bar. Unless you’re only in Quantico for the task force meeting. Or stalking me.” He sent her a self-deprecating grin that made her pulse thrum in a way she’d forgotten could be fun.

She ignored her stupid fluttering heart. “As of two days ago I guess I do live around here.”

Something flickered in his gaze then was gone. “You never answered the question. Did you move because you were worried about a certain someone or was it a happy coincidence?”

Shane Livingstone sure asked a lot of questions.

She forced herself to unclench her jaw. The tension she’d been carrying all week was making her head start to pound again. “Alex Parker put me in charge of the cybercrime unit of our new satellite office down here, so I’d already planned to move.”

“Impressive.”

“Because I’m female?”

Those green eyes shifted to disappointment. In her. “Because you look so young.”

“Oh.” She pushed her hair behind her ear, feeling flustered all of a sudden. “Last week’s events and working on this joint task force speeded things up a little. Well, a lot, actually.”

She could see his neurons firing at a thousand volts a second. Why was he so interested? Was it because of what she might tell him about the case, or something else…?

“Traceable?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your new place. Can he who cannot be named link it to the image of Sphinx he captured online?”

She shuddered. “No. I bought it using an offshore shell company which seems very suspect but is completely legit. He shouldn’t be able to find me online but if he really wants to find me, eventually he will. Given enough time, access to certain databases, or the right social engineering skills you can find almost anyone. You only need a starting point.”

“Except him apparently,” Shane muttered, taking a swig of beer. “For some reason we can’t find him.”

Was that a criticism? “We’ll find him.”

But how many more people would die before that happened?

She felt the weight of Shane’s stare and picked nervously at the label on her beer bottle. Being alone with this man who’d seen her fail at the one thing she was supposed to be good at was disconcerting.

She needed to get out of here before he managed to eke out information she wasn’t supposed to share. She didn’t want to get thrown off the team. She needed to prove that Evi1Geni-us wasn’t better than she was. It wasn’t ego. She needed to help track him down, to prove that she was one of the good guys. The FBI had to catch him. The asshole deserved whatever he got from the justice system.