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Hacker:It’s a special untraceable, untrackable, unbuggable phone.
Me:Ooooohh! You serious? That makes me feel like I’m in a movie.
Scarlett brought me some tea, and I gave her a shaky smile.
“Okay, so it’s probably not a bomb. It’s a phone.” I read out the messages.
“We’ll still get it checked out. The team will be here in a few minutes.”
Hacker:I want to call you. I want to hear your voice.
I had to put my phone down for a moment to settle my breathing. “This is taking it to a whole new level. I don’t think I can do this.”
Daniel was standing near the door, watching the security screen. “Of course you can.”
“Daniel!”
He turned back to look at Scarlett. “What?”
“Stef’s a civilian, not trained for this sort of shit. The hacker’s behavior towards her is clearly escalating. She’s scared. You don’t need to dismiss her feelings.”
“Right. Sorry. It’s just…”
“We get it. This is the best chance you guys have of catching this guy. Which is totally thanks to Stef. So it might be a good idea to look after her.”
“Yes. Of course. Sorry, Stef. Believe me when I say I won’t let anything happen to you. He thinks this new phone makes it impossible to catch him. But he doesn’t know we know what he looks like now, or that we have that security footage of him. Or even that we’re onto him at all. We’ll be running the footage through our facial recognition system, and once we know who he is, it’ll be easy enough to find outwherehe is. This is all going to be over very, very soon. In the meantime, I’ll beef up the securityaround you. I can even stay longer. If you feel that would make you feel safer.”
“Longer? You’re already here for ten hours a day. I mean, not that I mind.”
Daniel smiled at Scarlett. “I can sleep over if you need. The couch is perfectly comfortable.”
“Oh. Well, that’s probably a good idea.”
Now they were eye fucking. In the middle of a criminal investigation. With a possible bomb right outside our door. Good on them, I guess.
“The quicker I extract that security footage, the quicker this is all going to be resolved. So I’ll do that now and we can go from there.”
The next ten minutes passed in a blur. Daniel extracted the video footage and sent it off. Then the bomb squad arrived. Honestly, it was like being in a really shit action movie. The fucking bomb squad was at my front door. I would have laughed if it wasn’t so scary. It took them less than three minutes to determine that the phone was just a phone.
Daniel brought it in and handed it to me. I wanted to drop it like a hot rock.
It started ringing, making me jump out of my skin. Did he know I had it? How could he know? Jesus Christ, I was going crazy.
Scarlett came to sit next to me and Daniel sat on the coffee table in front of me.
“Should I put it on speakerphone, so you can hear?”
He shook his head. “No, let’s not risk it.”
With the phone still ringing in my hand, I felt sick.
“Take a few deep breaths. I’m right here. There are agents all around us. If you are in any way threatened, I can have you out the door and in a safe location in twenty minutes.”
“Right. Here goes then.” I dragged in a few breaths and pressed the answer button. “Hello.”
“Stefania.”
Fuck, no. “It’s Stef.” It was an instinctive, visceral reaction. There was no way this guy was allowed to say my name the way Grayson said it. Judging by the way Daniel was looking at me, I’d been too blunt. “But this is really amazing. Thank you so much for giving me this phone.”