Page 85 of Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games 2)
Chan quickly navigates around the software interface and then shakes his head. “No. We need more time to dial down to the country and city.”
“What’s the country code at the beginning of the number?”
Chan types into his interface and then shakes his head. “No matches.”
O’Doul cur
ses and then turns to Tabby. “What language were you speaking?”
“Romanian.”
Suspicion is etched into his blunt features. “So we just called Romania?”
“Maybe. Probably not. The man who answered the phone could know several languages. Today he could’ve been instructed to answer in Romanian…maybe last week his instructions were to answer in Italian. I don’t know. We can’t assume anything, except that that phone won’t be anywhere near Søren’s actual location. From the sounds of it, we called a pay phone on a busy street. He’d have picked a spot with bad cell phone reception, poor infrastructure, or an area where a sizeable part of the population doesn’t own mobile phones. That pay phone probably gets used by dozens or even hundreds of people a day.”
I hate to admit it, but that’s a smart move. If that pay phone were located and put under surveillance, you’d have dozens of suspects to follow…and dozens more the day after that. And on and on. It would be a logistical nightmare.
O’Doul slowly lets out a breath. “So someone has been paid to answer that phone when it rings, and then relay any messages to Søren.”
Tabby nods. “And there are probably several more someones in between who know nothing of the links in the chain beyond the one past themselves. And before the call even got to that pay phone, it was bounced through different telecommunications satellites in different countries and the encryption changed an infinite number of times before finally reaching its destination. I told you there would be layer after layer of obfuscation. His paranoia is almost as big as his ego.”
“What did you say when he picked up the phone?” My voice is rough.
When Tabby turns her head and our eyes meet, I’m startled by how wide her pupils are dilated. It almost looks as if she’s recently ingested drugs.
“I said to tell the master that hell has frozen over.”
We stare at each other. The moment stretches out. I feel like I’m on the verge of understanding something important, something I’ve been missing that’s the key to this entire mystery, when a distinct electronic ring comes through Chan’s computer speakers.
Because we’re looking right at each other, I see clearly how all the blood promptly drains from Tabby’s face, turning it white as stone.
“It’s him,” she whispers.
She’s terrified.
Operating on pure instinct, I stride over to her, kneel beside her chair, take her hand, and squeeze it.
She squeezes back, hard.
“Answer it,” says O’Doul.
Chan taps a single key on the keyboard, and the ringing stops. There’s dead silence.
No, not dead, I think, listening. This silence has a weight and a temperature, an actual presence, like it’s alive. It takes a lot to rattle me—I’ve seen men trying to hold their bloody intestines in their mangled stomachs after being savaged by a grenade—but the texture of this silence makes my skin crawl.
Faintly, Tabby says hello.
The awful silence breaks with the sound of a low exhalation, and then a single word, murmured like a prayer.
“Tabitha.”
Tabby’s arms break out in gooseflesh. Her eyes close. She stops breathing.
I watch all that with impotent rage, not understanding what the hell is happening, only that I want it to stop. Now. I squeeze her hand again, but hers has turned limp and clammy in mine.
Perfectly still, Tabby sits. The air crackles with electricity.
“You’ve made me wait,” says Søren, “a very long time.”
