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A moment later, her phone rang. Her heart lifted before it hammered against her chest as she swiped to accept the call from her friend. “Ava, hi.”
“Hey, Julia. What’s up? You sound really…desperate. Everything okay?”
“Yes, and no. I’m…facing a problem that I can’t fix on my own.”
“Okay?”
She heard the uncertainty in Ava’s voice. The woman probably wondered why, after years of merely liking each other’s social media posts, she’d suddenly texted her as though they were best friends.
“I…” Julia swallowed hard. “I hate to ask this, but…is there any chance you are still in contact with Alex?”
“Yes. Actually, he’s sitting right next to me.”
Julia’s brow furrowed. She hadn’t realized they still hung out together, she had just hoped for contact info. But this was even better. She breathed out a sigh of relief. Another step forward. She hoped the next step she took didn’t end with a brick wall shoved in her face. “Oh, uhh…”
“I’ll put you on speaker, and you can tell us both. Just a second.”
The speaker muffled, and Julia’s pulse raced as she tried to formulate the words she’d say to Alex Stone. She hadn’t anticipated speaking to him now. She thought she’d get contact information and send him a nicely worded email or text.
“Okay, Julia, you’re on with both of us.”
“Hi, Alex. It’s been a while.”
“It definitely has been.”
“I’m not sure if you remember me–”
“Of course, I do, kid. You passed your required computer science course because of me. I fixed your double-linked list.”
Julia grinned at the words. “Yes, you did. In two seconds flat.”
“Ahhh, I think it was more like one-and-a-half seconds, but who’s counting.”
Julia chuckled, recalling the computer whiz’s ego when it came to tech. She hoped it could help them now.
“So, what can I do you for, kid?”
“I’m not exactly a kid anymore,” Julia said.
“Who is?” Ava asked with a laugh.
“You two are still a little younger than me. Anyway, uh, I have an issue, and I don’t know if there’s anything that I can do about it. I need a professional assessment.”
“Shoot,” Alex said.
Julia swallowed hard. “This is a little hard to explain, but the long and short of it is there are some…compromising photos of my stepdaughter that someone has gotten a hold of. They’re using them as leverage to make life pretty uncomfortable. In the age of cloud storage, though, there’s no way to get rid of them, really, right?”
She pressed her lips together as she waited for a response.
“Were they posted on socials or what?” Alex asked.
“No. They’re not public. Not yet. We’re trying to stop that from happening.”
“You paying someone specific?”
Julia fluttered her eyelashes as she considered her response. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Well, that’s never going to work,” Ava said. “They’ll just keep demanding more. And by the way, when did you get married?”
