Chapter 20
Daniel
My phone buzzed with Lydia’s name on my screen. I hadn’t texted her in months, trying to keep my distance and feeling like shit at how happy she looked when I stayed away.
?? Hey Becks! I can’t wait for drinks tonight!
I frowned. That didn’t sound like her. I knew from Becca that they were friends now, but Becca would have hated to be called Becks. Not to mention all the exclamation points.
Maybe she’s like this with people who aren’t her boss.
I forwarded the message to Becca and added: This sound like Lydia to you?
After a few minutes, she answered.
?? Fuck no!
I sent Lydia back a question mark and got an immediate response.
?? Whoops! Sorry boss! I wasn’t wattching
That's… not Lydia.
‘Becks,’ exclamation points, typos, bad grammar, and ‘boss’… this wasn’t like her at all.
“You’ve been making a weird face for five minutes.”
I forgot Jake was with me. I shook my head and showed him the texts.
“This isn’t like her.”
“Maybe she’s drunk,” he shrugged.
“No, I don’t care how drunk she is, she doesn’t talk like this and she doesn’t do typos. You should see the notes she works on with Chris. Besides, wouldn’t the phone fix it?”
“You think it’s an SOS?”
I smiled and grabbed Jake’s phone. “Let’s find out.”
I copied her number and sent her a text from his number.
?? Hey babe, it’s Jake
Jake laughed. “Babe?”
His phone buzzed.
?? Hey handsome
“Fuck. I’m taking the bike, take my car—I’ll see you there.”
“You sure she’s not just flirting with me? I know you’re into her but—”
He stopped when he saw my glare and nodded. I gave him the keys to my car while I took the bike to get there faster. If something happened to her…
I banged on her apartment door. She opened it almost instantly, and I froze.
Her hair was down, and she was wearing a white tank top and shorts, which revealed a huge tattoo of a snake and roses from her mid-thigh up.
I could only see the smallest hint of skin between the tank and her shorts, but it was enough to know that the tattoo continued up to her stomach or ribs.
This image is not going to leave my mind anytime soon.
“Lydia, are you—”
“Hey, Danny! Come in, I’ll get you a beer.”
She’s never called you Danny. And her voice was overly friendly.
“Sure, thanks. Jake’s on his way.”
“Great.” Her cold tone was back. I sat on the couch and opened the beer she gave me, trying to figure out what was wrong.
She tapped on a laptop that was on the coffee table. “I looked up flights to Paris for your trip with Chris next week.”
What trip?
I frowned and looked at the screen when she opened the laptop. Her finger was above the camera, tapping, and the browser was open on flight options from DC to Paris. For a second, I thought the camera flashed green.
Shit. This is my fault.
I moved her hand and nodded. “Send it to Chris on Monday.”
I closed the laptop and got up to open the door for Jake, giving him a look that he knew meant shut up.
“You’re spending the day at Becks, right?” I turned to Lydia.
“Y-Yes?”
“She asked me to drop you off.”
“I’ll get changed.” She went into the only other room in the visibly small apartment.
I turned to Jake. “She doesn’t do typos.”
Jake’s eyes widened, and I knew he was remembering the misspelled word in her text. Watching. He frowned and nodded.
“I’ll call Terry. See you outside.”
Lydia came back wearing skinny jeans, sneakers, and the same white top. When we were outside, I took her keys and gave them to Jake.
“Give the computer and phone to Terry, and scan the apartment. Have him do the same with Chris and Dianne, just in case it’s related to…”
“Yeah, on it.”
Lydia took a step toward Jake and smiled. “Hi Jake. Sorry about the text.”
He chuckled and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t worry about it. Danny saw right through it.”
She nodded and looked at me. “What now?”
I gave her my second helmet. “You okay to ride? We’ll talk on the comms—they’re secure.”
She nodded, put on the helmet, and got on the bike.
“Mr. Mason?”
I realized we’d been riding for a few minutes, and I hadn’t said anything.
“Daniel,” I corrected.
“Daniel. Thanks for coming. I didn’t know what to do.”
“It may just be a hack on your computer. Nothing to worry about.”
“I felt like I was being watched.”
“Jake will check your apartment and Terry will clean the computer and check your phone.”
“Okay. Did I overreact?”
I laughed. “The cryptic messages were interesting.”
“I figured you’d notice, or at least forward it to Becca and she’d tell you that something was wrong.”
“I don’t think you overreacted. There’s something going on that Jake and I have been looking into… This may be my fault.”
She was quiet for a few more minutes. “The delivery guy.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
I wondered if she could feel my heart racing faster now that she was touching me without the jacket and gloves between us.
“Why would you say that?”
“Jake’s a ranger, you used to be one, you’re looking into this together, and that delivery guy had major military vibes, in a bad way.”
Connecting the dots again. How the fuck is she just an office assistant?
“Maybe. Hopefully, Terry finds something helpful.”
“Where does Becca live? Isn’t she in the Hamptons for the weekend?”
“We’re not going to her place. She doesn’t know about this and has enough to deal with.”
“Oh.”
“It’ll take Jake about an hour to check your place. We can just ride or stop somewhere to eat if you want.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Thank god.
I sped up a little bit, and she held on tighter.
I hadn’t spoken to her outside of the office for two months, hoping it would make me forget whatever I was feeling, but I was wrong.
I thought about her all the time, and went to sleep every night looking at our chat history, forcing myself not to text her and dying to touch her.
I saw a bump on the road and tapped her thigh. I was going to tell her to hold on, but she tightened her grip on me before I could. She definitely rode with someone before.
I heard her sigh a few times, making my heart flutter. She was enjoying the ride.
Be my backpack? My brain was reverting to a teenager’s around her.
My phone rang.
“Terry, I’m with Lydia on comms.”
“Oh. Hi. Um, yeah the laptop was infected, phone too. Found it pretty quickly.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Ter?”
“It wasn’t from something she—sorry, you, Lydia—downloaded. They had to have accessed the device to install it.”
I felt her body stiffen behind me and stopped on the side of the road. I hung up and got off the bike, but Lydia stayed on.
“Why did we stop?”
“I thought you were going to have a panic attack. I felt you… I mean—”
“Yeah. Yes.”
We didn’t take our helmets off. Her shoulders and chest moved up and down slowly, like she was trying to control her breathing.
“Talk to me, Lydia.”
“That laptop never leaves my apartment.”
Fuck.
There was so much weight to that simple statement.
Her phone could have been compromised at work, at a bar, running errands…
anywhere. But whoever installed the spyware broke into her apartment.
This was definitely related to our case.
It’s not just some random malware she downloaded from clicking a bad link in an email.
“I’m sorry. I did this.”
“Is my apartment safe? Am I?”
“They’re looking for information, not to hurt you, but I still wouldn’t want you staying there. At least for a couple of days until Terry tracks where the data is transmitting to.”
“Please take me back.”
Her tone was so cold, I wasn’t sure what to do. I sat back on the bike and turned it around toward the city.
“Is there somewhere you can stay? Friend or family?”
“No.”
“Becca’s out of town, you can crash at her place.”
“You’re right not to involve her. I don’t want to do that.”
“Lydia—”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You can use my guest room. Or stay at Jake’s if you’d be more comfortable with that.” I hated saying that.
“That would be inappropriate, and I wouldn’t.”
Good.
I couldn’t leave her alone, but I couldn’t force her to stay at my place. I pulled up to a large retail shop and went in to buy and activate a new phone.
“My number is saved and I added Jake, Terry, Becca, and the office just in case.”
She nodded and put the phone in her back pocket.
We got back on the bike, and I called Chris, leaving the comms open.
“Hey, sorry to call on a weekend.”
“What’s up?”
“I need to take the week off. Cancel meetings Monday morning and take the week off too. I’ll let Lydia and Dianne know.”
“Everything ok?”
“Yeah, something came up. Oh, and the security team will reach out for a systems check on all of your and Dianne’s devices—don’t worry about it but let her know.”
I hung up and stopped outside my building.
“Wait here, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”