Page 61 of Too Broken to Love

John’s eyes twinkled brighter than the beading on the wedding gowns displayed in the window. “My career was in intel, but jewelry is my passion. I’m known as John the Jeweler around here. Did I tell you that my family’s been in the business for four generations?”

“No.” When they’d arrived, John’s wife had spirited Tessa from the small reception area into her studio in the back of the building. John had offered him a seat on the white couch and a bourbon. “You just said you liked old jewelry and asked about the history of my grandfather’s ring. Now you’re telling me I’ve been wearing a listening device?”

The crinkles around John’s eyes deepened with excitement as he handed the ring to Hudson. “Take a look.”

Hudson stood and held it up to the light. He didn’t see anything odd. Just shiny silver metal. He squinted and angled it for a closer inspection. A gleam of something just a hair different than platinum hugged the bottom of the band. “Holy shit.”

“That thin film is the device. Mind if I remove it and get a better look?”

“Do it.” Hudson handed the ring back like it might burn him if he held it another minute longer. If that tiny piece of silver film really was a listening device, the deadly game that had commenced with Pop’s death had just escalated.

John gently pulled the film out with tweezers and held it up. “This is almost as brilliant as the ruby.”

“Son of a bitch.” Hudson stared at the device like it might take off like a drone. “That’s some seriously high-grade tech.”

“The best on the black market. I worked on a prototype similar to this a few months before I retired, but it wasn’t close to beta testing. I would have heard from one of my colleagues if we had gotten any further, which means this wasn’t developed by us.”

Hudson didn’t care who invented the tech, only who procured it and when it was put in Pop’s ring. “I have so many questions, but first I need to know if it’s been recording.”

“Come.” John rose from the couch. “I have a lab in the back.”

Of course he did. No wonder he was friends with the General.

Sorting through a dozen scenarios, Hudson followed John to a door next to the one his wife had spirited Tessa through. Dark red bricks lined the short hall down to an ancient-looking archway hugging a shiny silver metal door. A biometric reader blinked to the right of it.

Hudson didn’t raise an eyebrow as John pressed his hand to the pad. An eerie green light circled the hallway as it confirmed John’s biometric print. With a beep, the door slid into the bricks and Hudson stepped into a spy movie.

Shivering under a blast of cold air from a vent above, he blinked against the fluorescent lights. Computers in varying sizes and shapes lined every inch of the long, narrow room.

John strolled to a table on the left and placed the film in a scanner. Slipping on glasses, he sat at his desk and hit a few keys on a computer. He smiled brighter than the models in the bridal magazines out front as he read the results of the scan.

“What is it?” Hudson rounded the desk and looked over his shoulder. He didn’t understand much of the report, but he knew what the materials analysis meant. “Shit.”

“The device isn’t recording now, but I hear you have a meeting at the Pentagon tomorrow.”

“Yes, and it’s classified.”

John took off his glasses. “If I wanted intel from that meeting, this is the device I’d use. The materials it’s made of are nearly undetectable by the Pentagon’s scanners.”

Hudson pinched the bridge of his nose, but the implications of John’s words still penetrated his senses and spread through his mind. “How’s the audio transmitted?”

“My guess would be whoever is receiving the transmission would have to be within a half mile or so. Whoever put that technological miracle in the ring must have gone through a lot of trouble to procure it. The cost of something like this must be astronomical, and you’d need serious connections to get it. Any idea who that person might be?”

“Yeah.” A good fucking idea with no proof, but he’d get some. “Is there also a tracker built into the film?”

“No. The prototypes we designed that had both were much bigger. We were years away from solving the size issue.”

“Is there a tracker in the ring somewhere else? Like under the ruby?” That’s where Malcolm’s contact hid the tracker in Tessa’s ring. He glanced at his phone. Yup. Still working. She was right next door.

Thank the fuck.

His relief didn’t stop the oil coating his insides from thickening with guilt. His privacy had been violated, but he’d done the same thing to Tessa. Now that he knew the extent of her parents’ unforgivable acts that had violated her in so many ways, his actions were doubly reprehensible.

He should tell her. She’d understand why he’d kept the tracker there for her safety. But what if she got mad, and rightly so, that he knew where she was every minute of the day. And what if she refused to wear it and he didn’t have a way to track her if she was abducted. Not that he’d let that happen, but he wasn’t dicking around with human traffickers.

John pried the stone from the setting. Without a word, he held it up to the light at different angles. “No tracker here.” He replaced the stone and held it out.

Hudson took it and slipped it on his finger. “Is there any data recorded on the listening device?”