Page 105 of Single Teddy
“Yeah?” Slade replied, looking at each of them and last at me.
“Then why didn’t you say so?” I asked.
“It’s complicated. It wasn’t easy to crack, and I kept getting stumped.”
“On what?”
Slade retrieved a phone from his back pocket and passed it to me.
“This is the phone we copied. Give it a try.”
I grabbed the phone and carefully pressed the lock screen button. The screen came to life, and I swiped up to unlock it. Surprisingly, there was no password. I dragged my thumb this way and that, looking at the minimal apps installed on the phone, but even when I dug in deeper, I didn’t find anything groundbreaking. Just a couple of files, a couple of images, a couple of messages.
“Wh-what is this? There’s nothing here,” I said.
Slade nodded.
“That’s why I was stumped. It’s a normal-ass phone. A cheap one at that. It’s the kind of phone old people buy off the store because their flip phones have finally given up.”
“Who are you calling old?” Wyatt grumbled, and Slade smirked.
“No one, but if the shoe fits…”
Joey laughed only to get a deadly glare from Wyatt. As did Maddox and Ash, who were sitting next to Wyatt.
“Can we focus, please?” I asked them. “So was this whole operation a dud? There’s nothing here. Wesley will be devastated.”
“I didn’t say there was nothing,” Slade corrected, and I grimaced.
“But there’s nothing here. Nothing sinister anyway.” I glanced down at the phone, and Joey snatched it out of my hands so he could have a look too, only to come to the same conclusion.
“Are you quite done yet?” Slade asked and took the phone back. “As I was saying, I was stumped. Because even for a normal phone, there was minimal activity. Hell, there wasn’t even a browser history, and we’ve all looked at porn on our phones late at night every now and then.”
“Not me.” Joey put his hands up. “I’ve got a porn star at home. Don’t need no fakes.”
Wyatt groaned, and I shoved Joey’s head away from me.
“What?” Joey asked. “Don’t tell me you do when you have We?—”
I cleared my throat, interrupting Joey and turned to Slade.
“You were saying?”
I didn’t need everyone knowing my business, although I didn’t trust that either of my friends hadn’t told the whole team and beyond.
“Yeah, like I was saying, the phone was sus. No internet history, no call history, no messages, no pictures. And the guy has kids. Surely you’d take pictures of your kids. I mean, I can’t stop taking pics of Mac?—”
“You’re a normal parent. He’s—” I said.
“A twat,” Joey added.
“That too.” I nodded.
“So that’s why I kept digging deeper. I thought maybe it was a new phone, but it had been registered for a couple of years now, so that wasn’t it. Then I dove into the backside to figure out if there was anything hidden.” Slade smirked.
“There was?” Joey asked.
“Ever heard of GhostLink?” he asked all of us.
