“Yep. They also gave a fake name, but that’s not surprising. The Bitcoin—someone’s definitely taking precautions to not be found.”
“And it’s a fake name because you couldn’t find it in the system?”
“Ryan Reynolds,” she says.
“Guess he moonlights between Marvel gigs,” I mutter, stepping back and away from the car. From this angle, the GPS tracker isn’t visible. “Any chance you can trace ownership of the tracker that’s on her car?”
“I’d likely need to loop in law enforcement. We could determine the carrier, but then we’d need access to cell records. Is there any defining information on it?”
Gabriel crouches, studies it without touching. “It’s attached by a magnet. You see the scrape on the mount? Whoever placed it wasn’t new at this—he checked the magnetic hold after attaching. But it’s consumer-grade hardware. Someone who knows enough to hide a tracker, not enough to spoof the signal.”
Gabriel snaps a pic, and rises.
“We’re going to leave it on,” I say since Quinn can’t see what Gabriel’s doing.
Gabriel meets my gaze—silent agreement. Sometimes bait’s useful.
“Copy,” Quinn says. “Let me check and see what resources we have. Maybe I can find a way to trace the source of the tracker. I’ll update Hudson, but I expect he’ll want to assign extra resources.”
Richard hiring a PI is one thing. A GPS tracker and Bitcoin payments is something else entirely.
I pocket the phone. The afternoon passes humming with traffic, but every sound feels sharper now.
Someone’s been watching her. Studying her patterns, her routines, her car.
While I’ve been focused on keeping her close, someone else has been doing the same thing.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Alicia
There’s a sharp rap at the door—three quick knocks that jar my focus and my pulse. I grind my teeth, irritation fizzing in my blood. I have one blessed hour between client meetings. One hour where I told everyone to hold calls. My phone’s tucked away inside my handbag. A futile attempt at boundaries, but the gesture matters. This right here is why I prefer to work from home—no interruptions, no eyes watching me hold it together.
“Yes,” I bite out, voice clipped.
The door opens and Petra pokes her head in, guilt flickering across her features. “Dorian Moore is on the line. I told him you can’t be disturbed, but he said it’s urgent.”
Of course he did.
Once, Dorian was charming chaos contained in a Savile Row suit. Now he’s arrogance wrapped in urgency—too used to people jumping when he calls.
I have half a mind to make her tell him I’ll call back, but I’ve been staring at the same press release for twenty minutes, the words blurring into static.
“Thank you, Petra. I’ll take it.”
When the door clicks shut, I lean back, spine brushing cool leather, the faint aroma of coffee rising from the cup I haven’t touched. I reach for the desk phone and press the blinking light.
“Dorian,” I say, not bothering to hide the annoyance roughening my tone. Then, softening slightly, “Everything okay?”
“The team found a tracker on your vehicle.”
I flinch, twisting the chair toward the window. Outside, a skeletal tree claws at a washed-out sky, its branches reflected ghostlike in the glass.
“When?”
“Within the last hour. We’re going to increase security.”