Chapter 14
“We are not calling Cam,” Vero said over breakfast the next morning.
Her mouth was set in a hard scowl, her eggs going cold on her plate as she glared down at her shiny new ankle bracelet.
Officer Oates had made good on her promise.
She’d escorted us home from church last night, retrieving a brand-new monitor from the trunk of her car before she’d followed us inside.
The new device wasn’t like the waterlogged one Oates had pried off Vero’s ankle.
That one had operated like an invisible dog fence, turning off completely during Vero’s brief windows for essential errands.
This new one was equipped with GPS tracking.
Oates boastfully explained its features, how it would record Vero’s every move, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
There would be no errands or field trips Oates wouldn’t know about.
These GPS units were typically reserved for more serious offenders, but—as Officer Oates had merrily informed us—the toilet incident had given her no other choice than to offer Vero the upgrade.
The fact that Vero had to pay for the damaged unit—plus the high monthly rent on the pricier new one—was an added pinch of salt in the wound.
On the positive side, since Officer Oates couldn’t prove Vero had broken her curfew, she hadn’t yet stripped Vero of her errand privileges. As long as Vero went only where she was supposed to be, her fancy new bracelet wouldn’t alert the authorities.
“This is getting ridiculous, Vero. If you won’t ask Cam for help, then I’ll call him,” I said. Give me Theo’s license plate number. I’ll have Cam track down his address.”
“We don’t need Cam to do it. I already know where Theo lives.”
“How?”
She hesitated, looking guilty when she said, “I took the AirTag off your key ring and stuck it to the fender of his BMW last night.”
My mouth fell open. “You can’t just put a tracker on someone’s car!
What if Theo finds it and reports it to the cops?
” How would she explain that in her trial?
Well, you see, it’s very simple, your Honor.
I employed a spyware device to help me stalk my uncommunicative ex and strong-arm him into providing me with an alibi for my other criminal charges.
Vero waved off my concern. “Theo has no idea the tag is on his car. I checked your phone while you were sleeping last night and traced him to a house. The car hasn’t left the driveway all night. I’m ninety-nine percent sure the house is Theo’s.”
I sighed, resigned. At least I wouldn’t have to involve Cam in all this. And I could quietly retrieve my AirTag now that we knew where Theo lived. No one would ever have to know about it. “When Javi and Ramón wake up, I’ll ask them to go with me.”
They had come home last night, bruised and bloodied, right after Officer Oates had left.
Stone-faced and silent, they had walked straight to the kitchen and put two bags of frozen peas on their black-and-blue cheeks.
When Vero had asked them what had precipitated the fight, they’d said it all started when Theo got suspicious—Theo ran, Javi tried to chase him, and someone spilled a beer.
Neither one of them mentioned Sophia, and I got the distinct impression that doing so wouldn’t be wise.
Javi and Ramón had split the remains of a bottle of whisky before heading to bed and they were still sleeping it off. Probably so they wouldn’t have to face Norma and Gloria over breakfast and explain where their bruises had come from.
“You can’t tell Javi and Ramón where Theo lives,” Vero said. “Not after what happened last night. If they show up at his house, he’ll probably call the cops. Javi and Ramón have no idea I put a tracker on Theo’s car, and I have no plans to tell them.”
“Well, I’m not going to his house alone. And you can’t go with me with that computer strapped to your foot—”
Vero tipped her head, her brow furrowed as if she’d been struck by a thought. “Let me use your phone.”
I handed it over. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Cam,” she said as she opened my contacts.
“Why?”
“I need him to hack my ankle monitor.”
“You can’t ask him to do that!” I whispered.
“You said it yourself: it’s just a computer.”
I snatched my phone back. “And if you and Cam get caught, you could both go to jail!”
“Good. It’s about time Cam suffered a few consequences for all this, too.”
“We don’t even know if hacking that thing is possible.”
“And we won’t know unless we call him and ask.” She held her hand out for my phone. We stared at each other, neither of us budging.
“Your mother is going to murder me if I let you out of this house,” I said sternly.
“She doesn’t have to know. I used her pruning shears to clip the wires to Ramón’s cameras last night while you three were getting ready to leave for the bars.”
“That’s what you were doing in the backyard?”
Vero looked incredulous. “Did you think I was gardening?”
With an exasperated huff, I swiped open my contacts and dialed Cam’s number. If I didn’t take control of this conversation, who knew what else Vero might ask him to try?
“Hey, Mrs. D!” Cam answered. “How’s everything in Maryland? I went to your house yesterday, but Nick said you were out of town.”
I frowned. Cam showed up at my house unannounced only when he needed money, maternal advice, or a meal—usually all three.
Somehow, I had become a parental figure in his life.
While I didn’t mind assuming the role, being a de facto guardian to an eighteen-year-old career felon had come with its own unique set of challenges.
Especially since he supplemented his income by working as a confidential informant to the cops, which I knew only because my boyfriend was one of them. “Is your grandma okay?”
“Yeah, she’s good,” he said, perking up the way he usually did when he talked about his grandmother.
Cam’s parents weren’t in the picture. His grandmother was supposed to be his legal guardian, but lately it seemed more like it was the other way around.
“She met some British guy on that singles cruise I sent her on last month. I hooked her up with a Discord account, and they’ve been talking every day.
I’ve been keeping an eye on their conversations, you know, just to make sure the guy isn’t a creep or anything.
He seems okay. Everything at my house is great.
” The subtle emphasis he placed on his house suggested that something else, somewhere else, was not great.
“Is everything at my house okay?”
Cam’s pause was telling. “Yeah, sure, Mrs. D.”
“Cam?”
“Nick just asked me to come by and help him with something, that’s all.”
“Nick asked you to help him with what?”
“He wanted me to set Delia and Zach up with some kid-friendly entertainment. You know, Minecraft and Animal Crossing and stuff.”
“Is that all he needed help with?”
“I feel like the answer to that might get me in trouble.”
“Not answering that will also get you in trouble.”
“I swear on my grandma, Mrs. D, there is nothing you need to know.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling a headache coming on. “You’re sure?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Never mind.” I had promised to trust Nick, and he had promised to contact me if anything urgent came up. Whatever Nick had needed help with probably wasn’t a crisis.
“Did you need something? You called me,” Cam reminded me.
“Right.” I took a breath, dismissing my niggling worry. “I need to ask your advice about something. Hypothetically. Between us.”
“Shoot.”
I put the phone on speaker, trying to figure out how to frame my question while Vero gestured impatiently for me to go on. “Let’s say I was writing a story about a woman on the run—”
“Is she hot?”
“That’s not important.”
“It kind of is if you want me to get into the story.”
Vero cocked a hip and stared at me expectantly.
I rolled my eyes. “She’s hot, and she’s being hunted—”
“Jesus, Mrs. D. That’s dark, even for you.”
“The person who’s hunting her is using a GPS device to track her movements.”
“What kind of device?”
“Does it matter?”
“Depends on the answer.”
“Let’s say, hypothetically, the tracking device was embedded in something she would wear.”
“Like a smartwatch?” he asked.
“More like a bracelet. Is there a way my character could fool the hunter into thinking she’s somewhere she isn’t?”
“Hypothetically,” Cam said, mocking my tone, “if your character got in trouble with the law, and she’s now forced to wear a GPS monitoring system because she’s not supposed to leave her house until her court date, and if this hypothetical hunter happens to wear a badge, then it would probably not be advisable for your aforementioned character to attempt to spoof the GPS signal on her bracelet.
Because the penalties for getting caught would really, really suck, Mrs. D.
But since we’re obviously talking about fictional people—because no one would be that stupid in real life—then yeah, it can totally be done. ”
Vero gripped my hand and leaned closer to the phone. “How would that work? Hypothetically,” she asked, loud enough for him to hear her.
“It’s easy,” Cam said. “You just have to drown out the real GPS signals with louder ones.”
“What do you mean, drown them out?” I asked.
“Kind of like when Delia and Zach are shouting at each other while you’re trying to talk on the phone, and it makes it hard for you to think because all you can focus on is what they’re arguing about.
The loudest GPS signals are easier to pick up.
They make it harder for other signals to get through. ”
“And you know how to make those loud signals point to somewhere else?” I asked.
“Yeah, piece of cake.”
Vero’s hands were greedy as she reached for my cell. I angled the phone out of her reach. “But if you were to tell someone how to do this, you could get in a lot of trouble.”
Cam’s laugh was cocky. “They’d have to catch me first. It can all be done remotely. I can spoof the signals from anywhere.”
“And no one could trace those signals back to you?”
“I’m offended, Mrs. D.”
“I’m serious, Cam! I can’t ask you to help with this if there’s any chance it will get you in trouble.”
“You’re not asking me to help. I’m offering, pro bono. I’m always up for a little game of Whac-A-Mole with the cops. Besides, this whole house-arrest business is kind of my fault anyway.”
“See?” Vero said.
“I’ll be fine,” Cam assured me. “You just keep an eye on your jailbird.”
“I heard that,” Vero snapped.
“Good,” he said. “Maybe you won’t do anything stupid.”
I wasn’t sure there was anything more stupid than what we were already planning to do.