-Logan-
They came up quiet. Just a soft knock and the click of the door.
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Ledger slipped in first, looking almost annoyed. But curious. One of Viktor’s guys came in behind him. Lean and serious looking, with a black bag slung over his shoulder.
Ledger let out a low whistle as I pointed at the glass. “No fucking way.” He looked at me with a mixture of horror and something like professional admiration. “Where?”
–
I just jerked my chin toward the ceiling. The tech guy – Mikhail or something set his bag down on the floor and approached the counter. He didn’t touch the glass. He studied it with his head cocked.
“It is transmitting,” he said after a few seconds. He pointed a finger at it, clearly seeing something different from what I was seeing. “See? Power and signal. Very good gear. Military or intelligence grade. Not street–level.”
A fresh wave of rage washed over me, so intense it made the edges of my vision blur. He’d put a fucking spy satellite in my living room?
Mikhail picked up the glass. He unzipped his bag and slid the whole setup inside..
“Waterproof, yes. For a time. The tape was smart. Sound waves cannot penetrate well. But these cameras have excellent night vision. For now, they see a dark, silent room. But I’m afraid they do know we’ve found it. It will be difficult to use it to our advantage.”
He turned to Ledger. “We take it to the dark room. Open it, see its guts. Find its frequency. Perhaps we can feed it a loop. Show them something we want them to see.”
Ledger was practically vibrating with excitement. The reality of the situation was lost on him in the face of a technical challenge.
“A feedback loop. Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. We can give them a fucking soap opera.” He clapped me on the shoulder, and his grin faded when he saw my face. “Hey. We got it, brother. We’re on it.”
I just nodded. They slipped back out as quietly as they came. They’d taken the eye, but the feeling it left behind was soaked into the walls.
I was alone again with the knowledge that my home, my bed, my woman – none of it had been mine alone for who the fuck knows how long. And she had let it happen.
I stood in the doorway of the bedroom for a long time, just watching her sleep. The morning sunlight caught the curve of her cheek, the gold undertones in her eyelashes.
She looked peaceful now. Innocent. The knife in my back twisted again. Every instinct I had was screaming in my skull. But my heart was a stubborn, aching weight in my chest.
She’d been scared. She’d had a nightmare. That’s all. There had to be another explanation.
But the tiny black eye in the glass said otherwise. Don’t look up.
I crossed the room on silent feet. Her phone was on the nightstand next to her. A sudden, cold certainty settled over me. The answers were in there. I knew it. The ‘Shawn‘ story was bullshit. This was something else. Something worse.
I picked it up. The screen stayed black. I pressed the side button. Instead of lighting up, a keypad appeared. “Enter
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Passcode. My blood went cold. It never had a passcode before. She had never felt the need to lock me out before.
The violation of what I was about to do curdled in my stomach. This was a line. A big, fucking red one. But he had been in our home. He put a camera in our ceiling.
She said his name in her goddamn sleep. Any lines had already been vaporized.
I looked at her hand. It was resting palm–up on the pillow. Her fingers were relaxed. I reached out, my own hand hovering over hers. My heart was hammering against my ribs.
Gently, so fucking gently, I took her wrist. I lifted her hand.
She sighed in her sleep. Her fingers curled a little.
I pressed her thumb against the home button.
The phone unlocked with a click. The screen glowed to life.
The guilt was a physical pain in my gut now. I’d done it. I’d reached a new low. Because I couldn’t trust her anymore.
But she obviously didn’t trust me, either.
I set her hand back down on the pillow, carefully.
I opened her messages first. Nothing from any unknown numbers. Nothing from Shawn.
The conversations were mundane – Abby, Ruby, a couple other girls from the club. I checked her recently deleted folder. Empty.
My thumb hovered over the call log. This was it. The last place to look.
And… there it was. Validation.
At 4:03 AM. A call to Officer Samantha Andrews. Duration: four minutes and twenty–two seconds.
The air left my lungs in a rush. I stared at the screen until it seared itself into my retinas.
Four in the morning. After I had found her crying in the living room and brought her back to bed.
Why? Why the hell was my old lady calling a cop at four in the fucking morning? What could they possibly have to talk about that couldn’t wait? What was so important it had to be a secret?
The ‘Shawn‘ story was a lie. There was no doubt in my mind now. And this…. this was something else. A lie I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
Was she feeding information to the cops? Was Andrews in on something? Was she trying to protect me by going behind my back to the one person with a badge I almost trusted?
Or was it something worse?
I stood there staring at the screen while the evidence burned a hole in my hand.
The camera in the rafter, the name in her sleep, the nighttime call to a cop. The pieces were all there, but the picture they put together was fucking heinous, and I couldn’t make myself look at it directly.
I locked the phone and set it back on the nightstand, exactly as I had found it. I backed away from the bed, from her, until
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Chapter 140
my shoulders hit the wall.
I slid down it to the floor and dropped my head into my hands.
The heat in my chest wasn’t guilt anymore. It wasn’t rage. It was just pain.
AD
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
