Free Girl Undercover 6 & 7: Emma's Secret & The Truth by Julia Derek

“Emma, come on. I know there’s something off with this woman and I think you not only know what that is, but have a reason to fear her.”
    Making sure no one was close enough to hear what I was about to say, I grabbed Emma’s arm and leaned closer, hissing, “She was physically abusing Ariel up on the sundeck, for Christ’s sake! The way you react to her each time you see her tells me you just have to have an idea what’s going on. What is it? Please tell me. I really need to know.” Or want might be a more appropriate way to put it, but Emma didn’t have to know that.
    Emma stared at me, and for a brief moment I thought she was about to tell me. But then she shook her head, removed my hand from her arm and stood up. “Please stop asking me about her, Jamie. I can’t tell you anything. You don’t want to know anyway. I have to go. I have a client. Thanks for buying lunch.”
    She grabbed her purse that hung over the back of a chair and swiveled around, marching away from me.
    I watched her as she walked out of the cafeteria, chewing on my upper lip. Well, at least I can be certain something’s off with the senator, I thought. Emma had just confirmed that for me. But how would I get her to tell me what was going on? Now I was convinced it was even more serious than I’d originally suspected.
    Sighing, I pulled out my phone from my pocket to see if Ian had responded to the text I’d sent him an hour ago, asking if he’d gotten the recording device back. After a good night’s sleep, I no longer felt so sure Ian had lied about what he’d learned during the dinner meeting; I’d convinced myself of that in the cab back home. But only because I couldn’t imagine how anyone would ever be able to explain away the outlandish things he’d told me.
    He had yet to respond. Disappointed, I put the phone on the table. I picked up the lonely piece of chopped tomato from my plate and listlessly stuck it into my mouth. I didn’t know what I wanted to know most—what Emma was hiding in regards to the senator, or if Ian had in fact been telling the truth about what he’d heard last night.
    “Well, for example, I learned that they’re planning a coup against all major governments in the world six months from now.”

    I huffed. How could he expect me to believe something so outrageous without having actually heard these people saying it? And why wasn’t he replying to my text? He was usually very quick to respond. Was it possible that he never got the text in the first place? Deciding that it was, I shot him another one, even though I was about to see him in an hour and a half for a training session.
    Staring at my phone screen, I dared it to light up with a reply text from him. But of course it didn’t.
    I put it in my pocket, got to my feet and left the cafeteria. I’d spend the next hour running on the treadmill. It was more than two days since I’d last put myself through any kind of workout and my body was yearning for one.
    I went into the trainers’ lounge where I switched into workout gear, taking my sweet time. Then I walked back into the club and took a left where there was a stretching area. A couple of people were lying on the black rubber mats there, doing abdominal exercises and a variety of stretches. I plopped down between them and did some dynamic stretching to warm up before my run.
    As I went up on my hands and toes in a pushup position, alternating moving my feet up to my hands to stretch my hips, I caught sight of Emma training a woman with big hair and too much makeup on. They were talking and laughing while the woman sat on a workout bench, doing bicep curls with dumbbells.
    I couldn’t help but notice that Emma’s eyes were red-rimmed and that her nose was red, which made it look like she had a cold or had recently been crying. Since she’d been well when I had lunch with her twenty minutes ago, it could only be the latter option.
    Had her hormones all of a sudden dipped again, making her