Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“How did he find you?” Callie asked, echoing the question Daphne had asked the night before.
“James thinks it was my car,” Daphne replied.
They were sitting in Callie and Gabe’s kitchen, drinking tea and eating molten chocolate cake topped with ice cream and caramel sauce.
The guys were outside chopping wood in preparation for the coming storm.
Daphne wouldn’t have minded watching, but Callie’s eyes had already darted between her and James several times.
Suggesting they watch the two men play lumberjack would raise her suspicions even more.
Callie’s spoon dangled from her hand as she stared at Daphne. They hadn’t broached the subject of James, but Daphne didn’t fool herself; it was coming.
With a small shake of her head, Callie scooped up another bite. “He thinks Weeks was just hanging around, hoping to find you, then followed you without Lovell noticing, all while his picture is plastered all over town?”
“I forgot about that last part, but yes, that’s what he thinks,” she said, taking another bite.
Callie’s gaze grew distant, the way it did when she was thinking, working out a problem. “Hand me my phone,” she said, gesturing to the device that sat on the kitchen counter.
Reaching behind her, Daphne snagged it. “What are you doing?”
“Texting Ava an idea.”
“Don’t make me pull teeth, Calypso.”
Callie flashed her a grin, finished her text, then set it aside. “I don’t buy Lovell’s theory. It’s possible they tracked your connection to Harper, then Harper’s ownership of the cabin, but that’s even less likely than finding a needle in a haystack.”
“And?”
“And it’s much more likely that someone is tracking you. Or, more likely, Lovell.”
She paused, spoon halfway to her mouth. “You mean like a tracking device on my car?”
“Or on your phones. His phone.”
She frowned. “Wouldn’t they need to put a tracking app on the device or something? I can see getting access to my car, but not our phones. They hardly ever leave our sight.”
“There are lots of ways to access things,” Callie said. “Including remotely.”
“Are you saying they could have, I don’t know, planted a bug in James’s phone remotely that’s been tracking him?”
“It’s not as complicated as that,” Callie replied. “Our phones ping cell towers all the time. It’s how we have instant weather or emails. Things like that. If someone has your number and the right skills, they can track you that way.”
“Or through IP addresses or Wi-Fi signals,” Daphne said, sitting back in her chair. “The internet at Harper’s cabin.”
“Possibly. It’s not my wheelhouse, so I texted Ava.
” Her phone dinged with a response. Callie glanced at the message.
“She’ll look into it tomorrow. It’s a slow process because she’ll be looking for someone who’s watching you, or Lovell, and will have to weed through how all the signals are flowing, but she’ll keep us posted. ”
“I remember talking to one of my CIA contacts ten years or so ago about this. He told me that what you described, people being tracked through their phones, would become one of the biggest security threats to everyday people. I’d forgotten about that conversation.
The government was doing it back then, but that’s it.
I guess we’re beyond that now,” she said, setting her spoon down as the delicious dessert started churning in her stomach.
“If it makes you feel better, without putting an app on your phone, it’s not that easy. Your average Joe couldn’t do it,” Callie countered, not making Daphne feel all that much better.
“Should I be doing something to protect my device?”
Callie wagged her head. “Ava can get you set up with a few security features that will help. It won’t be foolproof, but it will slow a hacker down.”
Daphne made a mental note to follow up with her once they sorted out James’s mess.
“You and Lovell?” Callie said.
Daphne’s eyes jerked up. Her sister studied her. Disconcertingly, she couldn’t tell what Callie thought about the possibility.
“Things were intense last night,” she said, testing the waters.
“So you jumped into bed?”
For the first time, Daphne had a sense of how good an FBI agent her sister had been—just the right amount of curiosity with no judgment in her question. An invitation to confess her sins.
“Not exactly,” Daphne replied, picking her spoon up again and swirling it in the semi-melted ice cream and caramel sauce.
Silence.
Daphne sighed. “If it bothers you, we’ll stop.”
“Could you?” Callie asked. She looked up in question. “If I told you it bothered me and that I didn’t want you to take things further, would you stop? Could you?”
Daphne sat back. “Not the question I was anticipating.”
Callie shrugged. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if you would or could stop because I ask you to, maybe you shouldn’t be doing whatever it is you’re doing. And no, I don’t want the details.”
An interesting perspective. One Daphne hadn’t considered.
If whatever was happening with James meant so little to her that she could walk away at a simple request, should she really be doing it?
People had sex for all sorts of reasons: because it felt good, it was how they found validation, the moment and person felt right, or they hoped for more.
Some reasons were healthier than others, and she firmly believed that there was nothing wrong with enjoying a partner for the sake of enjoying each other, and that not every person she was intimate with had to be more than that.
But not every person she’d been with—not that there’d been a ton—came with the same complications as James.
Her sister’s brother-in-law, for heaven’s sake.
Complicated didn’t even begin to describe how things might shake out if the two of them were on different pages.
Which meant she needed to figure out not only what page he was on, but what page she was on.
And to Callie’s point, if this was nothing more than a situational fling, maybe they’d better rethink things. Was it worth introducing the risk of complications for something they enjoyed but didn’t put any stock in?
“Can I get back to you?” she replied, chagrined. That she hesitated made her think she did in fact know the answer but wasn’t prepared to face it yet. Because if James meant nothing more than a casual fling, that sentiment was an easy one to recognize.
“Get back to her on what?” Gabe asked, entering the room with a canvas sling full of wood. James followed carrying a similar contraption. He wore his coat so she couldn’t see the bulge of his muscles, but she was intimately familiar with what they looked like. And how they felt.
“Dinner tomorrow,” Callie said. “We’ll have to see how the storm goes.”
Gabe slid her some side-eye. Callie responded with wide-eyed innocence, a look so unfamiliar on her that Daphne snorted.
The guys made another trip as the conversation turned to much more mundane topics. By the time they filled the woodbin, it was time for her and James to leave. They still had to stop at the store, and flurries were already starting.
Promising to call in the morning, Daphne kissed both Gabe and Callie on the cheek before darting to her car, parked in the driveway.
James followed, unlocking it before she reached the passenger side, where she clambered in, leaving him to drive.
She liked driving as much as the next person, but he seemed to love it, and riding shotgun gave her a chance to watch the scenery.
“Where did you learn to drive like you did?” he asked, backing out of the driveway.
She looked over. “Like I did?”
“The day you ran Weeks and Beeks off the road. I didn’t see it happen, but it didn’t look like it happened by chance.”
She chuckled, memories vibrating through her chest. “It was not by chance. I met a lot of interesting people when I was modeling. Some of them have helped me with specific aspects of book research since then. One of those is the driving and anti-terror tactic instructor at a very prestigious school for nannies. He taught me all sorts of fun things.”
“Nannies? For kids?”
“High-profile kids. Usually kids from royal families around the world or kids of the ultra-ultra-rich.”
“Kidnapping targets, in other words.”
“Targets of all sorts,” she concurred as a clump of snow fell from a tree and landed with a wet splat on the windshield. She leaned forward and looked up. “You think we’ll have any trouble getting home?” The flurries had turned into proper snowfall, and the treetops swayed in the wind.
“We’ll make it, but if you want to skip the store, we can.”
The earlier reports had the storm passing through by midmorning the next day, but they’d been changing by the hour. “If you think it won’t be a problem, I’d rather stock up now while we can rather than count on being able to make it out tomorrow.”
James hustled her through the market faster than it took her to shower.
As someone who liked to linger in grocery stores, check out new items, often creating menus on the fly, it was a new and not entirely pleasant experience.
She understood why, but also made a mental note that under normal circumstances, they probably shouldn’t grocery shop together.
The plows were already out getting a jump on the roads. Daphne didn’t envy them; they’d be busy all night. Then again, this was likely how they made the bulk of their income for the full year, so she silently wished them well and sent a prayer up to whomever for their safety.
Harper had a generator if they lost power, but still, Daphne set her phone on the car charger as they exited the parking lot. Any amount of juice now would be less she’d need later when it might be scarce.
“Callie thinks it’s possible someone could be tracking your phone,” she said, reminded of the conversation she’d had with her sister when she set her device down.