Alissa’s furrowed brows and puzzled eyes shifted to the door, and her defensive instincts kicked in. She extracted the hard drive from her laptop and slid it into the custom-sewn compartment in her jeans. Reaching for the loaded gun and heading for the door, she tried to guess who that could be. The property was bought under an alias. Her landlady never came up in the last ten years she stayed here. Greg and the others usually gave her a heads-up before dropping by.

She looked through the keyhole to see if she was able to get anything from the slit. All she saw was a sand-color shirt. She was...