Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games #2)(64)

Tabby cuts him a look.

“Obviously, you know that everything said will be recorded.”

He doesn’t have to explain the subtext: Don’t try anything funny, because we’ll have it all on tape. Also: Prison.

Tabby says drily, “Obviously.”

“The object is simply to keep him on the line for sixty seconds. Keep him engaged, keep him talking. But if at any time I feel that the conversation is veering toward something that will compromise the investigation, I’ll have Chan disconnect the call. Which will mean our agreement is null and void.”

Again unsaid: Prison.

With her icy calm still intact, Tabby replies, “You don’t have to paint the pictures on the walls for me, O’Doul. I get it.”

“Good. One final thing.” O’Doul turns his gaze to me. “No noise whatsoever from the peanut gallery. I want total silence in this room while they’re speaking. If I get anything less than total silence, if you even clear your f*cking throat, I’ll consider it sabotage.”

More prison.

I feel vaguely insulted and want to tell him so, but decide to bite my tongue so I don’t get thrown out before we even start. I’d chew off my own arm to be in the room during this phone call. So I swallow my pride and nod.

He turns his attention back to Tabby. “The origin of the signal will be digitally cloaked, so if he asks why—”

“He won’t ask why.”

When O’Doul raises his brows, she explains. “I’ve been cloaking all my digital signals since forever. In fact, he’s the one who taught me how. He’ll expect not to be able to trace my location.” Her voice darker, she adds, “Which is why he’ll try to, so you better hope your shit is tight, or this whole thing will blow up in our faces.”

Unthinking, Chan starts to give her an explanation of just how good the FBI software is, but O’Doul barks at him to shut up before he can get half a dozen words in. Chan turns red and mutters an apology.

O’Doul drags a chair next to Chan’s desk and points to it. “Sit,” he instructs Tabby. Uncharacteristically obedient, she sinks into it without a word.

She’s pale. Her hands fidget on her thighs. She swallows, breathing shallowly. Beneath her veneer of calm, she’s nervous.

Adrenaline snakes a jittery path through my veins.

Chan’s hands hover over the keyboard. “Sir?”

“Proceed. Tabby, give him the number.”

Tabby recites it robotically off the top of her head. I know she has a photographic memory, but it still irks me that she can recall so easily a number she claims never to have dialed in almost a decade.

Chan enters it, his fingers expertly flying over the keys. Then we wait.

A hiss, a faint click, and then the lonely electronic sound of a phone ringing somewhere out in the vast emptiness of cyberspace.

Three rings. Four. Five. The tension in the room ratchets higher.

When the line is finally picked up, the voice that barks through the speakers is so unexpectedly loud and jarring, I wince.

“Bun? ziua, cine este?”

It’s a male, his age indeterminate, the language—for the moment—unknown.

Without hesitating, Tabby answers in the same harsh tongue. “Spune-master care iad are peste congelate.”

I exchange sharp glances with O’Doul. His eyes tell me in no uncertain terms to keep my trap shut or get personally acquainted with a five-by-seven-foot cell. I look at Tabby, but she isn’t looking back at me. She’s staring straight ahead, unblinking. Her fidgeting hands have fallen still on her legs.

A pause follows. In the background, I hear street noise: traffic, a car horn, the squawk of a pigeon, people chattering nearby. I listen intently, trying to pick up any clues about who might be on the other end of that line, his location or even general whereabouts, when finally, in heavily accented English, the voice says, “He’ll be pleased.”

What the ever-loving f*ck?

“How can the master contact you?” continues the voice.

My eyes bulge. Master?

Tabby looks to O’Doul for direction. He whips a yellow pad off Chan’s desk, dashes off a number, and holds it out. Tabby reads it aloud.

The voice makes a noise of assent. “You will wait.” Then abruptly, the call is cut off.

Bewildered, Chan says, “He hung up.”

“He’ll call back,” Tabby says quietly. “It won’t be long.”

O’Doul is irritated. “Chan, did you get anything?”

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 curses 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 S?ren’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.”