“Michelle,” Jack said, and she flipped over and looked at him, amazed that mere hours ago she’d been flying home, blissfully unaware that her career was being tanked. “You said in Paris that you had a new client. You thought he was checking you out during a session, and then in the next one he knew too much about you,” he said, repeating her words back to her. He’d remembered every single one. “Standard businessman, you said. He had dark hair, dark glasses. He looked like someone you bumped into outside your office.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Could it have been him? Did he take your phone? Did he have access to your phone at all?”
“No,” she said, but then she swallowed back the word as the memory unfolded before her eyes. Clark coughing. Michelle leaving him to get water. Was that enough time? “Well, there was this one time right before we went to Paris,” she said, and explained what happened during Clark’s last session. “But he didn’t take the phone. At the end of the session, it was still there in my drawer where I keep it.”
Jack shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. “He doesn’t have to take it. There’s software that can clone a phone like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “All he had to do was have access to your phone for a minute, maybe two. Were you gone long enough?”
Down the hallway. Opened the fridge. Didn’t see bottled water. Grabbed a mug. Filled it from the tap. Walked back to the office.
“Yes,” she said as the chill seeped from her bones into her skin.
“He had to have done it. He took your personal phone while you were getting water and dropped an app on it that clones it. I bet that’s what he did. Then, when he was on his computer watching the cloned phone, he was able to steal your password to your email.”
Her brain pounded against her skull. Her mind was swimming, slipping further under water, gulping for air.
“But my personal phone has a screenlock. My work phone does too. How would he have gotten past it that quickly?”
“It’s easy to break screenlocks,” he said, grabbing his own phone, and showing her the screen. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking for until he tilted it in the light next to her couch. When he had it angled just right, she gasped. The streaks from his fingerprints revealed his own screen lock. “The oils from your fingers. All he had to do was hold it just so to see the pattern you make.”
“But why?” Davis asked, pressing once more. “What does someone have against my sister?”
Something caught her eye on his phone. An incoming email flashed across his notifications, and she swore it was from Michelle with two Ls. Her veins filled with ice. Before he could answer, Michelle pointed to his phone. “You have a new email from me,” she said, in a dead voice.
from: [email protected]
date: Oct 1, 6:32 PM
subject: You like it dirty?
Try this for dirty. There’s more with this came from. Back off now or else we’ll really hit below the belt.
Jack turned to Michelle and her brother and gave them the answer. “They have nothing against her. It’s me.”
* * *
Her brother was a fighter. He had his fists clenched and was ready to go knock some teeth. Jack understood the impulse. He was ready to go to war for Michelle too. But he knew enough about battle to know this—you don’t go to war without understanding the enemy.
Everything you can possibly learn.
That mantra had served his country well during his time in the army. He had to apply restraint now. Casey had sent over a batch of photos from an art show last night, and had captioned them My lame attempt at playing Nancy Drew.
But that lame attempt might be what they needed.
He showed each one to Michelle. First, a thin, baby-faced man.
She shook her head.
Next, a blond man.
“Not him.”
He clicked on a guy with slick dark hair who looked eerily familiar, and the fingers of his memory reached all the way back to the night he’d met Michelle. He’d seen this man at The Pierson. This man had been watching Denkler. And watching Denkler meant watching Jack and Henry. Watching Jack turned into seeing him with Michelle.
She shook her head. He wasn’t Michelle’s fake client.
“It started with him, though,” Jack said, seething. “They’ve been on us from the start. From the very first time Henry and I met with his brother-in-law. It was the night I met you. Conroy’s guys have been watching every move Denkler made from the get-go. They must have been tailing Denkler that night when we met him. Then they stayed on me, and saw me with you.”
“What the hell?” Davis said, interjecting, as he held out his hands as if to say what gives.
“There’s one more picture,” Jack said.
He reached the last photo and the quick release of breath, the slow-motion change in her expression, and the way she dropped her head into her hands said it all.
“That’s him. Clark Davidson. That’s what he said his name was. Oh my God, I feel so stupid,” she said, and her brother sat next to her, draping an arm around her to comfort her.
“You’re not. He pretended to be someone else. You’re not stupid.”
She lifted her face. Her eyes were rimmed with red. “I even looked him up. I never do that. But I just got this vibe from him. I tried to track him down online. He said he was a market researcher, but I found nothing, obviously.”