Criss Cross

Chapter 51

I pulled out my iPhone, looked at it, then glanced at Rivers. He nodded.

I went out of the room and shut it off, then asked the nurse at the nurses’ station if she could watch it. When I returned, Rivers said, “I’d put your phone in DFU mode if I were you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It kills any hidden app a hacker might have installed to access the mike and camera on your phone. Google it. DFU.”

I nodded, feeling invaded, creeped out, spied on, and determined to figure out if and how M hacked my phone and who knew what else. But how?

A nurse came in to say she had to take Rivers for a scan.

“We’ll leave you to it,” Mahoney said, and he motioned Sampson and me toward the door.

I stopped at the nurses’ station and got my phone, and then we went down the hallway and into the elevator.

“You’ve already looked at Rivers’s security tapes,” Sampson said when the doors closed behind us and we began to descend.

“Every one of them,” Mahoney said. “They all jibe with what Rivers said.”

“You see the deliveryman?”

“From multiple angles. And you can’t get a look at his face in any of them.”

“The van?”

“Tinted windows. No markings. Stolen plates.”

“So it was him,” I said. “M.”

“We might have had him if you hadn’t put mud on the lens of the camera above the door to the bunker,” Mahoney said. “All we could see was his shape when he made the deliveries and when he came back to lock you inside.”

I puffed up my lips and blew out my breath. “Blunder.”

“Yep.”

The elevator doors opened.

We exited and went outside.

“I think Rawlins should look at your phone, pronto,” Mahoney said.

“Agreed,” I said. “I’ll get it to him today.”

Mahoney hesitated and then gazed at me earnestly. “Rivers could have sued your ass off, and he would have won, Alex.”

“He still might if Cowles has her way.”

“The FBI doesn’t like its contractors getting sued.”

I felt myself flush. “Understood. It will never happen again. I promise.”

“Even the best of us have bad judgment from time to time,” Mahoney said, then he shook my hand and left. Sampson, who had been strangely quiet, said he was heading to his office to finish up some work.

“We okay?” I asked.

Sampson closed one eye before he nodded slightly. “We’re okay, but I’m not exactly happy. You could have gotten us worse than sued. What you did could have cost me my job.”

My stomach dropped because I knew deep down he was right. “I’m sorry, John.”

“I know. Just give me a little time to process, okay?”

The best friend I’ve ever had shot me a sad smile, then turned and lumbered away.

I watched him until he disappeared around a corner. I decided to walk home, mull things over, empty my head before a visit from yet another college track coach trying to recruit Jannie.

As I walked, I did my best to take my mind off Sampson, thinking that if Rivers was right, if M had slipped spyware into my phone, he was probably tracking me right now. Or he would have been if I hadn’t turned the phone off.

Feeling somewhat invisible for the moment, I started asking myself how it was possible for M to have gotten into my phone. According to the Wickr website, all anyone had to do to contact me on the app was call my phone. As long as I had the app, the message would appear.

I supposed there were any number of ways he could have gotten my number, but it didn’t explain how he’d figured out a way to track me and maybe listen in when I talked. Had M gotten close enough to me to clone my phone when I was using it? But when? And where?

It was maddening to think that M was staying three steps ahead of me. Or was he three behind, following me?

A wave of paranoia pulsed through me, and I couldn’t help but look around to see if I was being tailed. There were people on the sidewalk behind me and on the other side of the street. But none were obviously watching me or acting suspiciously.

I took a few short detours to make sure no one was following me, and by the time I reached the National Mall, I was sure I was alone. As I cut southeast toward Fifth, I decided I’d better call Rawlins and have him come to my house. I just wouldn’t say anything that would indicate our suspicions.

I turned my phone on, called him, and left a message asking him to call me on my landline at home. My regular messaging app showed two texts, one from Jannie reminding me to be home early to meet the coach and one from Nana Mama asking me to pick up a quart of milk.

I wondered if M could be monitoring my texts and was about to turn the phone off again when it dinged. A Wickr message appeared on the screen.

Stewing in a nasty kettle of fish these days, aren’t you? Or should I say, a kettle of fish heads? Get it? Fish heads. Fish heads. Eat ’em up, yum!

Enough fun. Now things get interesting, Cross. This will all make perfect sense soon.

M is for...

Before the message could disappear, I did what Mahoney had told me to do: pressed the sleep button and the home button at the same time.

The screen flashed just before the message vanished.