Chapter 13
CHAPTER
AN HOUR LATER, Ellie and I walked through the doors of the Women’s Care Clinic.
Rachel, the head nurse, greeted me at the reception desk.
She looked confused when I told her I was there for toxicity tests, since there were no appointments for me on the schedule.
My face felt hot with shame as I explained to her why I needed to take them right away.
“Hmm … I’ve never had a patient asked to do that before.
No problem, though, Ms. Mitchell. We can do that now, and I’ll leave Dr. Quinlan a note that someone will be following up to review the results.
But unfortunately, since these tests aren’t part of one of your regularly scheduled checkups, you’ll have to pay for them out of pocket. ”
I shut my eyes for a second and bit my tongue. “Got it. Thank you, Rachel.”
After the tests, Ellie treated me to a long brunch.
I could tell she was trying hard to cheer me up.
She asked me what I thought about the baby shower ideas she and Mom had come up with, and tossed out a couple options for dates.
Although doing the party at Mom’s house sounded nice, and more spacious, we both agreed that having it in the city made more sense, so more friends—especially the city dwellers who didn’t own cars—could attend more easily.
So it was settled—my baby shower would be the first weekend in October in the back room of Ellie’s bistro, which was very generous of her boss to offer up with no rental fee since she was such a treasured employee.
The very idea of a group of friends gathering to celebrate and support me made my eyes well up again. I truly wasn’t in this alone.
After brunch, Ellie headed home to get ready for work, and I decided to pop over to the cellular store to see if someone could take a look at my phone. It was high time I got to the bottom of the disappearing and fake text messages.
At the counter, a young twentysomething guy in a sky-blue polo shirt and a name tag that said OLIVER asked if he could help me.
“Yes, please. My phone has been acting really weird lately, and I’m wondering if I’ve been hacked.”
I explained about the anonymous texts that would disappear soon after I read them—making it impossible for me to show them to anyone—and the fake messages that looked like they’d come from my boss and Max.
Oliver reached for my phone. “Yeah, let me take a look.”
I followed him to a high-top table in the corner of the store and watched as he scrolled through my phone. After a few minutes, he turned to me and said, “I’d like to hook your phone up to my computer and run some security scans on it, if you don’t mind?”
“Sure. Whatever you need to do.”
“This could take a few minutes,” he said. “If you have other errands to run …”
“Sure, yeah. Maybe I’ll grab something to drink at the café across the street and come back.”
Ten minutes later, I was back, blowing on a hot cup of tea. Oliver was no longer working alone—one of his coworkers, whose name tag said CONNOR, was bending over his shoulder, peering at the screen in fascination.
“Did you find anything?” I said.
“Ohh, yeah,” said Oliver. Connor stepped back so I could join him at the table. “Someone installed a spy app on your phone. It didn’t show up in your phone’s settings, but I found it buried pretty deep.”
“A spy app? What?”
“Basically, someone got a hold of your phone and installed this program on it, and now they can see every single thing you do. They can track your location, see every text and email you send, if you log in to any apps like social media, banking …”
I felt lightheaded; my body started tingling. “So … can someone make it look like people are sending me messages? Can they intercept texts and delete them?”
“Well, it’s possible the person has cloned your phone.
If they had access to your phone for even five minutes, they could have taken the SIM card out and downloaded all the information to another SIM card.
Then they can put the new SIM card into another phone and make a clone of your phone.
So, yeah, they’d be able to see every message you got, delete messages, or even send messages to and from your number to make them look like they came from you. ”
“What about the fake messages from my boss and Max?”
“If they have control of your phone, it’s easy to change your boss’s number to their number in your contacts, and then send you a message—so it looks like it came from your boss.
After they send it, they can just change the number back to your boss’s so you’d never notice anything was different. I’ve seen it done many times.”
An ache started forming behind my eyes. I knew I should be grateful that Oliver had finally given me some answers, or at least vindicated that I’d been right—that I wasn’t crazy. But instead, I just felt worse.
“How long has this been happening?” Oliver asked.
“A couple of months,” I said with a sigh.
“Has anyone had access to your phone in that time? For at least five to ten minutes?”
I racked my brain, going over all the times I’d been in the same room as Madison—the coffee shop when we first met, the High Note, my ultrasound—but my phone hadn’t left my sight any of those times.
It had either been on the table right in front of me or in my pocket or my purse.
I would have seen if Madison had made a grab for it.
All of a sudden it hit me.
“Oh my God,” I said, my hand flying to my forehead. “Yes—a few months ago. This woman I’ve been having problems with came by with groceries and suggested I take a shower while she was there. My phone was in the living room the whole time I was in the shower.”
That was back when she was actually being nice; it was all a sham. She never wanted to be my friend. She just wanted to spy on me.
“That could be it, yeah,” Oliver said.
The stupidly expensive tea … the gift of the pregnancy book I’d thought was so generous. It was all a part of her manipulation.
“So …” I said with a sigh. “Is there any way to get this spy app off my phone?”
“Sure. I can delete it off your phone. But if she cloned your SIM card, that’s a different problem. You probably want to get a new phone with a new SIM card. And I would definitely change your PIN and all your passwords as soon as possible.”
I groaned. More money down the drain.
Within fifteen minutes, Connor and Oliver had activated a new phone with a brand-new SIM card for me. While they were doing that, I walked down the street to my local bank to withdraw eight hundred dollars cash out of my savings to pay for it. Dear God, I need my credit card back!
As I walked out of the store a little while later, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
A woman in black leggings, a black sweatshirt with the hood up, and dark sunglasses was standing a few feet away, holding her phone up.
I heard a subtle click as she snapped a photo, then she looked up and saw me notice her.
“Hey!” I took a step toward her.
The woman whirled around and started walking quickly down the street, hands in pockets, head down.
“Hey! Stop!” I took off after her. When she looked back and saw I was following her, she broke into a full sprint.
I started running too.
As sweat sprouted under my arms, it quickly became apparent that this woman was not only younger than me but also much faster. When she turned a corner and disappeared, I slowed to a walk, groaning at the stitch in my side and clutching my belly.
What the hell? It looked like she was waiting for me.
This had to be the same woman who had been watching me from across the street the evening I’d gone maternity shopping with Ellie.
The same woman who’d been outside my building the night Madison made her social media baby announcement and I circled the block.
Who the hell is she? Every time I’d spotted her, she ran. Is this some friend of Madison’s?
Maybe the next time I spotted her, I could snap a picture of her. If I can’t get close to her, I can at least zoom in on a picture to get a better look.
Back at home, I plugged my new phone into my laptop to download all my contacts. I changed the PIN on my phone and the password to my iCloud account, like Oliver and Connor had recommended. Then I sent only my closest contacts my new number.
Still full from my big brunch with Ellie, I decided to make it an early night.
As I climbed into bed, I said a little prayer that maybe things would improve this coming week—at least a little.
With my new phone, hopefully I wouldn’t be hearing from Anonymous again.
And maybe Cousin Robert the lawyer could help me straighten out my credit and get Madison to back off.
And the results of my toxicity tests should come back too.
I knew they’d be clean, so hopefully DCS would see that any “concerns” about my pregnancy were bullshit and dismiss the whole case.
I closed my eyes and went to sleep with hope.
I was responding to a flurry of work emails in my cubicle Monday morning when a text came in from Ellie: Robert is willing to help as a favor to Mom, no charge. He can come to town the weekend after next.
Yes! I thought gratefully. This was great news, though waiting two weeks wasn’t ideal. But it would have to do, especially since his help was free.
Sam appeared behind me in my cubicle. “Hey, Savannah.”
I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I turned around slowly. “Hi, Sam … what’s going on?”
He grimaced, then sighed. “We didn’t get the Pedro Torres account.”
My stomach dropped. “Oh no … oh God … how’s Meredith?”
“Not great.”
“Who did they choose instead?”
“DigiMark. On a positive note, they said we were a close second.”
“Did they say why they chose them over us?” And did they say anything about my lateness affecting their decision?
“No. They didn’t go into detail.”
Crap. Meredith will definitely blame me. Am I about to get fired? I closed my eyes for a second as my panic started to rise.