Chapter 20
Standing in the study at Rockford Manor, I stare in growing horror at the tiny cameras on the table before me, separated from the ones Sebastian installed in my apartment with my permission.
They’re no bigger than my thumbnail, and my stomach turns over. Travis has been inside my apartment. Inside my home. The realization keeps hitting me in waves, each one worse than the last as the implications sink deeper.
“You’re sure you didn’t install these?” My voice sounds foreign to my own ears, like a child begging to be lied to.
Sebastian shakes his head, his scarred face grim in the warm light of the study. “I would never. Not without telling you.”
Saint slouches in a high-backed leather chair opposite me, his arms folded across his chest. His glare has been fixed on Sebastian since we moved from the security room to join him and Gabriel in the study. Milo had taken one look at our faces and hustled Phoenix out of the room.
Someone, probably a servant, had gathered the pile of security cameras from the foyer, and they now lay in a pile, disassembled with wires spilling out and lenses winking in the lamplight.
“So, we’ve established you’re both creeps,” Saint says, his boot tapping an impatient rhythm on the polished floor. “Just different flavors.”
Gabriel snorts from his position against the wood-paneled wall. He’s been watching Saint with undisguised interest since we arrived, his lingering gaze making my bestie twitchy. “You know, most people would be grateful for the level of protection Sebastian provides.”
“Most people aren’t being stalked by two different men,” Saint retorts.
I hold up a hand before Sebastian can respond. “Let’s focus on the actual threat here. When could Travis have gotten into my apartment?”
Sebastian leans forward, resting his palms on the table edge. “When was the last time you were gone for several hours? He would have needed time to install these without interruption.”
I rack my brain, sorting through the past few weeks. “The Blue Note Lounge, when I met up with Saint to pass off the soiled boxers. I spent some time at an internet cafe digging into Travis’s background before meeting Saint. I was gone for almost four hours.”
Saint’s suspicion shifts to murderous. “He was watching your place, waiting for you to leave.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.” My fingers find one of the tiny devices, tracing its plastic casing. “How would Travis know which day I’d be gone?”
“He wouldn’t need to know,” Sebastian answers. “He just needed to watch and wait. He already had your address from his job at the mail sorting place. You have patterns, habits. If he’s been surveilling you long enough, he’d recognize an opportunity when it presented itself.”
The thought sends ice through my veins. How long has Travis been watching me? Planning? Waiting?
Saint picks up one of the larger cameras from the pile, one of Sebastian’s, not Travis’s, and turns it over in his hands. “How did you not catch this when you installed the security system at Micah’s place?”
Gabriel pushes off from the wall and circles the table, coming to stand behind Saint’s chair. “If these are what I think they are…”
He reaches past Saint to pluck a tiny camera from the pile, examining it with the practiced eye of someone familiar with surveillance technology.
Saint shifts in his chair, discomfited by Gabriel’s proximity.
“RF transmitters,” Sebastian confirms, holding the device up to the light. “Old school, but effective. They don’t connect to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. They broadcast continuously to a receiver.”
My stomach sinks.
Saint’s brow furrows. “Which means?”
“It means,” Sebastian explains, “they wouldn’t show up on a network scan when I ran a search for devices connected to Micah’s internet, or ones broadcasting on standard frequencies. These operate independently.”
I hug my elbows. “I would have found them right away if they were Wi-Fi-based.”
Saint uncrosses his arms to lean forward, his distrust of Sebastian overshadowed by concern for my safety. “So, how would Travis access the footage? If they’re not uploading to the cloud?”
“He wouldn’t need to,” Sebastian says, the leash on his anger holding on by a thread. “He’d just need to be close enough to receive the signal.”
A muscle jumps in Saint’s jaw. “How close?”
“Within a hundred feet at most,” I say, my lips numb. The room tilts, and I grip the edge of the table to steady myself. “He’d have to be…”
“In your building,” Gabriel finishes. “Or parked outside.”
Saint’s hand comes down hard on the table. “So while you’ve been playing security expert, this guy has been sitting outside Micah’s apartment, watching him through hidden cameras?”
Sebastian’s lips flatten into an unhappy line. “I had people monitoring the building perimeter. No suspicious vehicles stayed long enough to—”
“To what?” Saint interrupts. “To get his rocks off watching Micah shower? To watch him take a piss?”
My stomach lurches at the thought, and I press a hand to my mouth. Each time I’ve been in the bathroom, believing myself alone, the man sending me threatening packages has been watching, witnessing moments meant to stay private.
“Why the RF technology?” Saint asks with frustration. Not knowing what’s going on always grates on him. “What’s the advantage for Travis?”
Sebastian picks up one of the smaller units, his fingers dwarfing the tiny device. “RF transmitters are short-range and don’t leave a Wi-Fi trail. As Micah said, he had to be within a hundred feet to pick up the signal.”
He sets the camera down. “The advantage is that they’re impossible to detect without specialized equipment. And they leave no digital footprint.”
A visible shiver runs through me as the full implications hit home. Travis wasn’t some faceless threat operating from a distance. He was nearby, possibly in my building, definitely close enough to have approached me at any time.
Sebastian rounds the table to kneel beside my chair, his hand finding mine. “Micah, I’m so sorry. I should have been more thorough.”
“I do my own regular checks and never found anything,” I say. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have,” he insists, his fingers tightening around mine. “This is what I do.”
The warmth of his hand anchors me as my mind spins with horrifying possibilities. How many nights had I paced my apartment in my underwear? How many times had I talked to myself, thinking I was alone? Every moment of perceived privacy was a lie.
“We need to find him,” I say, steadier than the turmoil inside me.
Sebastian’s lips thin with determination. “We will. And this time, we’ll do it together.”
Saint scoffs as he shoves away from the table, his boots scuffing on the plush carpet as he begins to pace. “You should have let me handle things my way. That’s what always gets the job done. Why are we relying on this billionaire softy?”
Sebastian remains still, his scarred face impassive. “Barging into private residences without evidence would have tipped him off and landed you in jail.”
“Better than letting him continue to spy on Micah,” Saint shoots back, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “While you played at securing Micah’s apartment, this creep was recording everything.”
I wrap my arms around myself, cold despite the study’s comfortable temperature. My skin crawls at the thought of Travis watching me, not through a screen where I controlled what was visible, but through hidden cameras capturing moments I thought were mine alone.
“I’ve had bots combing through the internet,” Sebastian explains, his apparent calm only serving to irritate Saint further. “Searching for any sign of footage being uploaded or shared. Nothing’s surfaced yet.”
“That’s supposed to be comforting?” Saint stops his pacing to glare at Sebastian. “He’s keeping it for his private collection, which is somehow worse.”
Gabriel turns to Sebastian. “If we search the street cameras, we might be able to find this creep going into Micah’s building to set up the cameras, and track his whereabouts there.”
Sebastian shakes his head. “It was over two weeks ago. Most of those cameras don’t keep the footage past seventy-two hours.”
I register their voices from a distance as my mind flashes to the night after Sebastian disappeared, when I sobbed into his abandoned T-shirt. Had Travis watched that? Had he taken pleasure in my pain?
“Was this my fault?” My shoulders hunch. “If I wasn’t camming—”
“No,” Sebastian cuts me off. “You’ve done nothing wrong. Some people just can’t keep fantasy and reality separate in their heads.”
“I have footage,” Saint announces, pulling me from my spiraling thoughts. He reaches into his backpack and extracts his laptop, setting it on the table with a thud.
Sebastian’s eyebrows rise. “You have what?”
“Footage,” Saint repeats, booting up the computer. “From the hallway camera outside of Micah’s apartment.” He glares at Sebastian. “Where the only cameras should be that aren’t ones he set up himself.”
“Stop it,” I tell my best friend. “After the first package, I felt better knowing Sebastian could check in on me inside my apartment. He had my permission.”
“Never should’ve moved out,” Saint grumbles, not taking his focus off his screen. “With how many creeps keep sniffing around you, leaving you alone was the wrong move.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I argue. “We needed our own spaces.”
Being roommates with an Alpha I didn’t want to mate with had been tricky, and forcing Saint to find somewhere else to sleep for almost a week out of every month was too much once we could afford separate apartments.
Saint ignores our old argument and turns the screen so we can all see. “I store everything in the cloud, sixty-day retention.”
He navigates through folders organized by date and clicks on the one from the day of the Blue Note Lounge. The footage shows the hallway outside my apartment from a long angle, the camera hidden in the fire alarm at the far end.