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Chapter 24
“You’re a bastard. I bet your father didn’t do this to you when you were studying for the exam,” Ava said to Jacob.
He smiled at her then threw another two part question her way.
“When you take the test, you’ll thank me. Have you registered for it yet? You know you have to do it this month.”
“I’m finished, and they have everything they need. I’m just waiting for my location assignment. I hope it’s not upstate.”
“More than likely you will either be here in Manhattan or White Plains.”
He continued to drill her until the phone on his desk rang. She checked her watch and saw that it was after 3:00 PM. She needed to get home because she wanted to change before Tim came over… again. He was taking her to dinner and a movie.
The weather had turned markedly colder, and she had dug out her thick wool coat that morning. The temperature for tonight was going to be in the high thirties with a strong wind. She hoped that they weren’t going to walk anywhere.
Tim was late, and she kept looking at her watch. When he finally showed up, he seemed scared. She tried to ask what had happened to him, but he waved her off saying he was fine. Through dinner, he kept looking over his shoulder and seemed very nervous.
He barely touched his food, and he told her that he wasn’t feeling well so they would have to forget the movie. He practically jumped out of his skin when the waiter came by with the check. He threw several bills onto the table and abruptly got up. They took separate cabs home, and he didn’t even kiss her goodbye. Tim could be strange at times, and it scared her.
Earlier — after school but before meeting Ava — Tim had changed into his dark clothes choosing a black wool cap to put on his head. He couldn’t let the incident that freaked him out this afternoon mess with his business. He had been waiting for his distributor, the guy that was selling to all the local colleges. He wasn’t paying attention and was fooling with his phone. He was sitting on the back stairs near the gym with a small duffel bag filled with bags of weed. This was the most convenient place for him to hand it off to his contact. Security was almost non-existent at the school in the late afternoon on a Friday.
The next thing he knew he was being pushed against the concrete wall with a gun shoved against his forehead. At least he thought it was a real gun. The men had their faces covered with ski hats, but their voices sounded familiar. He gave them the duffel bag and any cash he had in his wallet. In total, it ended up being three thousand dollars in street value of weed and eight hundred in cash from his wallet. The men told him that he better get off their turf or else. They ran up the stairs, and he heard them laughing. He was sure that at least one of them was a student.
He quickly ran out of the building. Lucky for him he had forgotten his money clip or they would have scored about two thousand bucks more. He was so shaken that he ran several blocks before realizing he was running home in the wrong direction. At home, he downed a small glass of whiskey before he went to get Ava. He should have canceled, but he was trying to cultivate their relationship. As it is, he acted like a frightened rabbit at dinner and canceled their movie. At this rate, she was never going to be his.
Ava got home and texted David. Her phone was so slow lately that it was driving her crazy, and it took forever for texts to go out or to pull things up on her email. She had rebooted it several times hoping it would speed up. She was no technology whiz, but Dani’s boyfriend was. He could fix just about anything related to electronics or computers. She called Dani, who told her to come over the next day. Roger would be there helping her move some of her paintings to a gallery in the Village.
The next day with her phone still acting buggy, she went over to see Dani. She handed the phone to Roger and watched as he removed the battery and SD card. Then he did a few other things. She helped Dani wrap some of the paintings in bubble wrap and get them ready for transport.
Roger joined them in Dani’s studio.
“Did you know that you have tracking software on your phone?”
Ava felt her heart skip a beat. “What is tracking software?”
“Someone can track your exact location as long as your phone is on. That’s not all I found on your phone.”
“What else?” Ava started to feel anxiety exploding.
“I found software that allows someone to see every text, email and phone call you make. They obviously can’t hear your phone conversations, but they can see whatever you write in your texts and emails and to whom as well as the numbers you are calling.”
“Is that what is causing my phone to be slow?”
“It seems like you got an automatic update for one of the applications and it might have a glitch, so it’s slowing down your phone.”
He showed her the applications and told her that it took some doing for him to locate them since they were hidden. She asked him if he could delete them and he set to work to remove them from her phone. Who could have done this?
“For the third time, can you hand me the tape?” Dani said.
Ava was deep in thought as she handed the tape to Dani. She had a very uneasy feeling. It could have been any number of people who could have put the software on her phone. It might have been Luca, Tim or even David. She suspected David since he was the one that seemed to want her the most. But he didn’t seem like the type. He was sincere, sweet and had been nothing but supportive. Unless it was all an act, and he had access to her phone the week before.
He could have easily put the software on while she was in the shower or even asleep. The night they had sex she had left her phone on the living room table and didn’t find it until the next morning, but he had woken up after she did. He could have just as easily gotten up during the night to install the software.
“Roger, can you tell when the software was installed?”
“Maybe if this was an Android, but you have an iPhone. I can give you a general timeframe based on the build or version of the apps that were installed because those occur tied to certain dates, but I already deleted them. And why don’t you have a password on here? I’m surprised the law office allows you to sync to the work email without one, given all the confidential projects and information. Put one on there now. Here’s the screen to pick a six-digit pin to do that,” he said as he returned her phone.
He handed the phone back to her deeming it totally clean, watching her enter the passcode to make sure she did it. She thanked him and was in a trance as she took the subway back to the city. She was puzzled as to who would want to do this.
* * *
Tim was still jitterythe day after his encounter in the stairwell of the school. He had gone to the alley near Ember to sell, but after an hour his nerves were shot. He went home and had a couple of glasses of whiskey before he fell into an uneasy sleep. He woke up late and missed his appointment with his supplier. The guy was not someone you wanted to disappoint. He called him to say he had an emergency, and he would meet him later that day. His supplier was not too exuberant about the oversight.
He sat on the corner of his bed and checked his phone. The software he had put on Ava’s phone was not working. The GPS tracker was malfunctioning. He couldn’t locate her, not even at her apartment. She used her phone on a daily basis since she had no landline. He didn’t get one text, email or dialed phone call from her since early this morning when she called her cousin Dani.
Maybe her phone was dropped and damaged. He called her and got her voicemail, then hung up. Nothing registered on the software. His phone number should have come up since the software recorded incoming and outgoing calls. As much as he didn’t want to, he was going to have to go and see her.
He texted her to see if she wanted to go out to dinner. She replied that she was busy tonight, but maybe they could go to lunch tomorrow. He checked his watch and had to leave to meet his supplier. His stash was low since it was the weekend. He usually got replenishment each Saturday morning. Since it was getting cold, they would have to discuss a new meeting place. He didn’t want to seem conspicuous now that the park goers had decreased with the cold weather.
After he had finished with his supplier, he got to work putting together his product for sale the next week. He was going to have to worry about Ava tomorrow.
