Page 136 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

She waited until her friends had disappeared down the hall before addressing him, her voice tight. “I don’t appreciate you using my friends to advance your own agenda.”

“You mean the agenda that is solely focused on keeping you safe? That agenda?”

Jules pursed her lips and studied him a moment. “I can keep myself safe.”

“I’m sure you can. But it would be easier to do that if you’d agree to stay somewhere this guy can’t find you.”

“Where would that be? Somehow he found me here, at one friend’s home. What’s to say he couldn’t do the same with any other place I go?” She frowned. “How do you think he did that, anyway?”

Dante lifted his shoulders. “He could have followed you. Or…” More chills slithered through him.

Her frown deepened. “What?”

“How did you make your plans to come here?”

“By email.” Her turquoise eyes widened slightly. “And he texted my friends. Somehow, he has access to my phone. But how could he?”

“He couldn’t. Now.” A vision of the device he’d found beneath the dumpster flashed through his head. It had been tucked neatly under the corner of the bin. A little too neatly, now that he thought about it.

“What does that mean?”

Dante ran a hand down his face. “The only thing I can think of is that he took your phone that night, which would explain why the police didn’t find it. All he had to do was remove the SIM card and use a SIM reader to copy it to a blank card. That would allow him to stick it into another device, effectively cloning yours. Then he could return the phone, and no one would be the wiser.”

“Until he started using it, as me.”

“Right.”

Jules pressed a hand to her abdomen. “That woman on the forensics team you talked to in my driveway warned me about something like that and said I should secure all my accounts. Before I had a chance to, I got the message from you that my phone was in the lab, so I didn’t bother.” She moaned. “If he has my phone, he has access to my bank account, my contacts, my social media, my email. What do you think he’ll?—”

She broke off abruptly when her friends came out of Kelli’s bedroom. As much as she fought Dante when he tried to protect her, she clearly didn’t have any qualms about sheltering her friends from everything that was going on. “You guys all set?” Her voice came out overly bright and chipper. From the looks on their faces, she wasn’t fooling them any more than him.

Brie’s reddish curls brushed the shoulders of a long-sleeved, light-blue shirt. Obviously, she had no desire to keep on the pink sweater the murderer had seen. Dante didn’t blame her for that. She stopped in front of Jules and tilted her head. “What is it?”

Jules sighed. “We just figured out the killer might have cloned my phone. Which would have allowed him to read my emails and know I was coming here. He’d also have access to my contact list, which includes a lot of home addresses, including Kelli’s.” Her head jerked a little. “It also means he’ll have your address, Brie. You better not go back there tonight.”

Her friend gnawed her bottom lip. “That’s fine. We’ll go to my parents’. You don’t have their address in your phone, right?”

“No, I don’t. That should work.”

Kelli touched Jules’ back. “Will you come?”

Jules hesitated. “I don’t think so. I have to work at seven am. And I need to go home and get onto my computer so I can close all my accounts.”

She didn’t look at Dante. Wise, since he doubted he was doing a good job of hiding his frustration at her insistence on putting herself in harm’s way.

He cleared his throat. “I can grab your computer for you.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather do it myself.” If anything, her voice had grown tighter, and she still refused to look at him. “You two should get going.” She planted a palm between Brie’s shoulder blades to direct her toward the door.

Dante followed the three of them. “I’ll walk you to your cars.”

“Actually,” Brie grabbed a pink purse—obviously a favorite color of hers—from the chair by the door, “I brought the bus here, so Kelli and I can go together.”

He nodded. “Even better.”

Jules picked up a brown leather bag from the floor and slung it over her shoulder before exiting the apartment without a backward glance at him. Once in the elevator, an awkward silence fell over the group. Both of Jules’ friends appeared to be trying to impart some kind of silent message to her—likely about Dante. Even when Kelli nudged the side of Jules’ sneaker with hers, however, Jules ignored her as studiously as she was ignoring him.

Mercifully, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open after a few seconds, and they all filed out. When they reached a silver Camry located in the tenants’ section, Kelli stopped, set her bag on the trunk, and dug around in it until she produced a set of keys. “Here.” She held the set out to him. “My apartment keys. You can give them to Jules when you’re finished going over my place.”