Half Empty (First Wives, #2)(61)

Trina felt her hands start to shake. “Are you telling me I’ve had a shadow all this time and didn’t know it?”

“Maybe. If not physically, virtually,” Reed explained.

“What does that mean? Virtually?” Wade asked.

“There are cameras everywhere. City streets, department stores, hotels, airports. All she would need is a tracker on you and the hacking skills of a second-year computer nerd at Caltech, and boom.”

“That’s scary,” Wade said. His hand covered Trina’s.

“What’s scary isn’t her tracking you, it’s Ruslan tracking you.”

Trina shivered. “How can they? It isn’t like someone put a microchip under my skin like a dog.”

Lori turned to stare at her boyfriend. “Oh, let’s see . . . Reed snuck a pen in the trunk of my car, bugged the wine corks in my condo . . . what else was there?”

Reed growled. “That’s it. Pens and corks.”

“You tracked your girlfriend. Isn’t that stalkerish of you?” Wade said with amusement.

“I wanted to keep her safe. Anyway, this isn’t about me, this is about you.” Reed changed the subject and looked at Trina.

“Bugging my houses or a single car would prove useless. I’m not at any one for any length of time. Bugging all of them doesn’t seem possible.”

“We have a trace on your phone. We talked about this last year,” Reed reminded her.

“I forgot about that. I replaced my phone when we were in the Bahamas.”

“It’s attached to one of your apps. Finding friends, only it’s encrypted. It’s entirely possible that someone hacked into that, or placed their own.”

Wade’s hand squeezed Trina’s arm. “Hey, remember I told you the guy at the phone store in the Bahamas said there was something glitching in your phone in a different language, suggested you check it out?”

“I completely forgot about that.”

Reed put his hand out, palm up.

Trina stood and crossed to the table holding her purse. She removed her cell phone and handed it over.

“If someone is hacking my phone, why was Avery the one that was attacked?”

“We’re working on that.” Reed stood, pulled Lori to her feet. “So we’re clear . . . no more drugstore runs unless you’re together. If you need to leave for any reason, call me. I’m right down the hall.” They reached the door. Reed turned. “What was so important, anyway?” he asked.

Wade shifted his eyes to Trina.

She tried to hold back a smile as she studied the floor.

Lori started to laugh.

“Stop,” Trina said under her breath to her friend.

“You do look awfully relaxed, all things considered,” Lori teased.

Trina shoved her arm.

Lori stopped giggling. “Oh, by the way, the nurse said they were going to get Avery out of the ICU in the morning and to a monitored room elsewhere.”

Trina glanced at the clock in the room. “I need to get back over there. It’s been over six hours.”

“She’s slept most of the day.”

“Still.”

Lori gave her a hug. “Don’t stay all night. You need your rest, too.”

“I won’t. I want to be there when the police show up to question her, and then I need to track down Fedor’s things she placed in the auction houses. Any chance your team has a trace on Avery’s phone? That would make it easier.” Avery still didn’t have any memory of what happened since she left the house in the Hamptons. It was like she’d blocked the whole thing out.

“No. You, Lori . . . Shannon. Avery seemed the least likely to find this kind of trouble.” Reed shook his head as if he were kicking himself. “I won’t make that mistake twice.”

Lori placed a hand on his arm. “We’ll walk over with you tomorrow. I don’t want you talking with the police without me there.”

She kissed the side of Trina’s cheek before they walked out of the room.

Trina leaned against the door, rested her head, and closed her eyes.

“Hey?” Wade brought both of his hands to her shoulders and gently squeezed.

She opened her eyes to stare at him. This was all such a mess. “Are you sure you want anything to do with all this? People around me get hurt.”

“I’m a little bigger to take down than Avery,” he pointed out.

She tried to smile but couldn’t look him in the eye. She didn’t want him to walk away but wouldn’t blame him if he did.

Wade lifted her chin with his finger. “Hey. You didn’t do this.”

No, but she was responsible.

“People murder for the amount of money at stake. I never wanted any of this. Fedor and I were practical in our marriage . . . we had a prenuptial agreement that didn’t amount to anything compared to what Alice left me. I haven’t spent Alice’s money, any of it. I use what Fedor and I agreed on, and that’s it. If I could give it all back and make this go away, I would. Now Avery is in the hospital, you’re stuck here with me, my friends need to be traced like stray animals . . . even my parents have a security system in their house now. The same house our neighbors would walk right into without knocking to bring a batch of cookies.”