Chapter 20 - The Unseen Click
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My heart hammered painfully against my ribs.
“Vance,” I said, standing up abruptly, my chair scraping loudly against the stone patio. “Get the server room on the phone right now. I need the raw, unedited audio file from the library incident pulled up immediately.”
“On it,” he said, already dialing his radio.
Ten minutes later, we were standing in the secure communications room in the basement of my parents' house. The technician hit play, isolating the specific frequencies I requested.
Through the high-end studio monitors, I heard the agonizing replay of that night. Adrian screaming. Atlas whimpering. The dogs barking.
“Filter out my voice and Adrian’s,” I commanded, leaning close to the speakers. “Filter out the sirens. Isolate Marissa’s audio channel while she was pacing by the windows.”
The technician typed rapidly. The background noise dropped away, leaving only the frantic clicking of Marissa’s high heels against the floorboards.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
“Amplify it,” I ordered.
The volume swelled. And then, I heard it.
Beneath the panicked breathing, beneath the crying, I heard the incredibly faint, rhythmic tapping of Marissa’s fingers against the glass of her cell phone screen. But she wasn't just texting.
The cadence was deliberate. Structured. It was a digital transmission.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Pause.
“She was transmitting live data out of the room during the entire standoff,” Vance whispered, horrified. “She wasn't his terrified girlfriend. She was a handler. She was sending our security response times, our K-9 protocols, and our duress triggers to an outside server.”
Marissa was currently sitting in a minimum-security prison, pretending to be a victim. But she had willingly surrendered her phone to the prosecution. She had handed the authorities perfectly curated evidence to ensure Adrian took the fall, effectively covering the tracks of whoever truly pulled the strings.
The phone on the desk suddenly began to ring. It was an unrecognized, international number.
May you like
I reached out into the darkness, my hand hovering over the receiver.
The game hadn't ended with Adrian. It had only just begun. I picked up the phone, and listened to the silence waiting on the other end.
