Page 33 of Single Teddy (Mayberry Protectors #6)

TWENTY-SEVEN

TEDDY

I got in touch with Slade right after Wesley’s call, and the next day, we gathered bright and early at Wyatt’s bar.

“Is there any progress with the phone? Wesley is concerned and justifiably so. And so am I,” I asked Slade.

“Me too,” Joey added. “We need to get those kids out of there as soon as possible, no matter what.”

“Yeah. At this point, I don’t even care if it’s a stash house or the base of operations. We need to save the kids,” I added.

“That’s dangerous talk, and you know it. You know they hold an ace up their sleeve, and we don’t. They know who we are. We don’t know any of them. We’ve been walking in blind every time—” Wyatt started.

“And you want to keep on doing that with those kids’ lives on the line?” Joey asked incredulously.

“That’s not what I said, and you know it,” Wyatt huffed. “I’m saying if we don’t know who this man is connected to and what he knows, all we will be doing is putting those kids and ourselves in further danger.”

“I don’t care. The kids are living in fear and probably abuse. Can we risk it?” Joey retorted.

Wyatt opened his mouth, but Slade raised his hand and interjected.

“If you don’t mind,” he said. “I do have an update on the phone.”

“You do?” Wyatt, Joey, and Maddox asked in unison.

“Yeah?” Slade replied, looking at each of them and last at me.

“Then why didn’t you say so?” I asked.

“It’s complicated. It wasn’t easy to crack, and I kept getting stumped.”

“On what?”

Slade retrieved a phone from his back pocket and passed it to me.

“This is the phone we copied. Give it a try.”

I grabbed the phone and carefully pressed the lock screen button.

The screen came to life, and I swiped up to unlock it.

Surprisingly, there was no password. I dragged my thumb this way and that, looking at the minimal apps installed on the phone, but even when I dug in deeper, I didn’t find anything groundbreaking.

Just a couple of files, a couple of images, a couple of messages.

“Wh-what is this? There’s nothing here,” I said.

Slade nodded.

“That’s why I was stumped. It’s a normal-ass phone. A cheap one at that. It’s the kind of phone old people buy off the store because their flip phones have finally given up.”

“Who are you calling old?” Wyatt grumbled, and Slade smirked.

“No one, but if the shoe fits…”

Joey laughed only to get a deadly glare from Wyatt. As did Maddox and Ash, who were sitting next to Wyatt.

“Can we focus, please?” I asked them. “So was this whole operation a dud? There’s nothing here. Wesley will be devastated.”

“I didn’t say there was nothing,” Slade corrected, and I grimaced.

“But there’s nothing here. Nothing sinister anyway.” I glanced down at the phone, and Joey snatched it out of my hands so he could have a look too, only to come to the same conclusion.

“Are you quite done yet?” Slade asked and took the phone back. “As I was saying, I was stumped. Because even for a normal phone, there was minimal activity. Hell, there wasn’t even a browser history, and we’ve all looked at porn on our phones late at night every now and then.”

“Not me.” Joey put his hands up. “I’ve got a porn star at home. Don’t need no fakes.”

Wyatt groaned, and I shoved Joey’s head away from me.

“What?” Joey asked. “Don’t tell me you do when you have We?—”

I cleared my throat, interrupting Joey and turned to Slade.

“You were saying?”

I didn’t need everyone knowing my business, although I didn’t trust that either of my friends hadn’t told the whole team and beyond.

“Yeah, like I was saying, the phone was sus. No internet history, no call history, no messages, no pictures. And the guy has kids. Surely you’d take pictures of your kids. I mean, I can’t stop taking pics of Mac?—”

“You’re a normal parent. He’s—” I said.

“A twat,” Joey added.

“That too.” I nodded.

“So that’s why I kept digging deeper. I thought maybe it was a new phone, but it had been registered for a couple of years now, so that wasn’t it. Then I dove into the backside to figure out if there was anything hidden.” Slade smirked.

“There was?” Joey asked.

“Ever heard of GhostLink?” he asked all of us.

I shook my head. So did everyone else except for Ash.

“Isn’t GhostLink some sort of encryption service used by criminal organizations?”

“Bingo.” Slade pointed a finger-gun at Ash and winked at him. “Watch this.”

He picked up the phone and switched it off. Then, once the screen was completely black, he pressed the power button and volume button at the same time.

This time, instead of the Android logo, a silver chain appeared, and when it cleared out, it gave way to a whole new homescreen with the same logo and a whole new set of apps. There was an app named GhostChat, another named GhostCaller, GhostCam, GhostWeb, and everything under the sun.

“What exactly am I looking at?” Wyatt asked.

“The phone is a GhostLink phone. It’s been specifically modified to have two modes.

A dummy Android phone when you boot it up the normal way.

And a GhostLink encrypted device when you press the power and volume buttons together.

Anything you do on this version is encrypted, bounced off several servers across the world, and completely undetectable and untraceable.

That’s how these people are communicating.

That’s why we haven’t seen any real chatter on their devices. ”

“I thought you hacked their devices,” Wyatt said.

“I didn’t hack them exactly, but yeah, okay. The thing is, I only ‘hacked’ the dummy mode, which is why all the chatter we used to get led to dead ends.”

“Wait, you’ve hacked their phones?” I asked. I was so out of the loop.

“Well…yeah, kind of. I created this bug that’s supposed to spread from device to device with a simple text message. That was earlier this year, when King and I first met. But everything has been quiet since, and we couldn’t figure out why.”

“I’m guessing this explains it.”

“Yes. I couldn’t have hacked the GhostLink mode even if I tried. Even if I knew it was there.”

“But now—” I started.

“But now we’re in. Anything Barnes gets, we do. Wesley cloned the entire device so we have a perfect, synced-up dupe.”

“So we can get the kids out,” Joey said.

Wyatt turned to Slade, awaiting an answer, and my friend’s expression sank.

“I mean, we can. Or we can monitor the activity and find out who we’re dealing with at long last.” I knew he didn’t enjoy saying it any more than we liked hearing it.

“But doesn’t having the dupe mean we can take the kids, and if anyone comes for us, we can be prepared?” Joey asked.

“Do you really want to put the kids through that? We’d essentially be abducting them from their home, so we wouldn’t just have the syndicate after us, we’d also have the police and CPS on our asses,” Wyatt said.

I hated to agree, but Wyatt had a point. Having the phone access didn’t mean squat when it came to the kids’ safety.

“So let’s send CPS to him,” Joey continued.

“And get innocent people involved in this mess?” I said. “We don’t know what they’re capable of. What he ’s capable of.”

“So we just sit and wait? That doesn’t sound like a plan. That sounds like cowardice.”

“That’s not what we’re saying.” Wyatt glared at Joey. “What we’re saying is we need to be extra vigilant to ensure we don’t get those boys in even more danger than they are already.”

“Po-ta-to, po-tah-toh.” Joey groaned and leaned back in his chair.

“So what do we do?” Ash asked.

Wyatt crossed his hands on the table and huffed.

“You keep monitoring chatter on GhostLink,” he said to Slade. “And you make sure Wesley keeps his cover as the boys’ tutor in a safe manner. He doesn’t need to snoop or nothing anymore. Just be there for the kids.”

I nodded.

I hated this plan, but it made sense. Until we had a course of action, we needed to make sure Wesley didn’t raise any suspicions, and if he suddenly stopped trying to tutor the kids, it would do just that.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, but as everyone dispersed, Wyatt pulled me to the side.

“Tell that to your face.”

“What’s wrong with my face?”

“You tell me,” he said. “Is there something going on?”

I looked my old commander in the eyes, his ice blue eyes that resembled my own, and chewed on my lip.

A commander needed to know everything. That way, he could plan for every eventuality.

But that was out in the field. In service.

This was my personal life, which, granted, I’d never had, but I wanted to keep a part of it just for me.

“Wes-Wesley and I…” I started because as much as I wanted to keep it to myself, Wesley’s safety was far more important.

“You too? Man, what is going on with you guys? I’ve never seen men fall so fast, so hard in all my years on the field.”

I narrowed my eyes and grimaced.

“I didn’t say I fell?—”

“Oh please! It’s written all over your face.” He sighed. “I swear it’s like this island is turning my entire squadron gay.”

“What’s wrong with being gay?” I asked, and Wyatt coughed, turning away from me.

“Erm, nothing. No-nothing. I didn’t say there was anything—all I’m saying is I brought you here for a job and instead you keep getting distracted with hand jobs.”

I almost choked out laughing, but an evil glare from my commander set me straight.

“Are you telling me you are not in love with anyone?”

“I’m not gay!” he said.

“I didn’t say you were. Neither am I. I just asked if you haven’t fallen in love with anyone, man or woman.”

He huffed and his face hardened.

“Love is a bunch of bullshit. I’ve got no time for bullshit.”

“Are you saying everyone who’s found love is deep in bullshit?”

“No. Um, don’t put words in my mouth. I…all I was saying is it’s not for me. And you just be careful not to get hurt.”

I narrowed my gaze on my commander as if that would answer all the questions that had suddenly popped into my head, but naturally, it didn’t work.

“I doubt Wesley will ever hurt me.”

Wyatt scoffed, but when I asked him why, he didn’t elaborate.

Had Wyatt been hurt by love? When? And by whom?

He wasn’t one to open his heart and share like the rest of us.

In fact, in all the years under his command, I didn’t think I’d learned anything about him.

I didn’t even know where he was from. I only found out when I got the invitation to come live in Mayberry Holm.

Wyatt Goodman was a man of his generation. A man who kept things close to the vest, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to know more about him, if for nothing else, than simply to find out who had broken his heart so utterly to make him this grumpy older man with a single mindset.