Page 61 of Best Served Hot
While he was eyeballing Lena, Nicole slipped the phone out and into her own pocket. ‘Right, I need to get the first aid kit.’
‘What for?’ Ethan asked. ‘They don’t have a bloody neck brace in there.’
‘Yes, but I think there’s a booklet with information about slips and falls,’ Nicole said.
There might be, but she didn’t know that. Which meant Ethan definitely wouldn’t know. He was not what you’d call detail oriented about his job. That skill set only extended to treachery.
‘Fine. Be quick!’ he barked.
Off Nicole went, casting one last glance at Alex. Alex looked back at her, and they shared one of those psychic moments they seemed to have often. Alex knew she’d got it.
Nicole went into the cupboard, and now came another tricky part. Ethan’s phone was locked, of course. He was a serial cheater, so he didn’t tell anyone his passcode. Though it did have face recognition. Nicole had spent quite some time looking into how to trick it. It wasn’t as simple as printing off a picture of Ethan’s face because it relied on 3D scanning and wouldn’t be fooled.
Unless you could ask someone with access to 3D printing—say the prop department of a TV show—to have a 3D mask created of their boss, telling them it was part of a practical joke they would be playing for his upcoming wrap party. Oh, and could it be to scale? Thanks, I’ll explain the prank later.
Nicole had the mask ready in a drawer, and she went straight to it, praying it would work. She showed it to the phone. Nothing happened.
She spent several seconds panicking, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do next. Until she realised. It was the eyes. She’d asked props for a mask, and they’d obliged, cutting out eyeholes for its wearer. The phone needed to see pupils, or it wouldn’t recognise that it was looking at a face. Nicole sighed and—somewhat grossed out—slipped the mask on and looked at the phone. Whoosh, open sesame.
Nicole didn’t waste time celebrating. She went straight into the photos and deleted that bloody recording. Then she went into the deleted folder and cleared that out. Into email and yes, he’d sent it to himself. What a technical genius. She deleted it and cleaned it out of the sent as well as the deleted folder. Last but not least, she needed to delete the iCloud backups and she needed to do it fast. Before Ethan noticed how long she’d been—
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
Nicole turned to see the door wide open, Ethan standing there. ‘Is that mine?’ he asked.
Nicole had his phone in her hand, and there wasn’t much she could say about that.
‘I knew it. I knew it! This whole thing was way too fucking fishy right from the start,’ he yelled. ‘You were after my phone to get rid of that video, weren’t you!?’
‘Ummm…’ Nicole responded.
She hadn’t prepared herself for getting caught. Everything they’d done was only to get the phone unlocked. Somehow, she’d believed that getting this far meant she was safe. If she’d locked the door behind her, she probably would have been. She’d been too eager to get the phone away from him and get the thing unlocked. Those had seemed like the major obstacles. Yet here she was, caught. Because she forgot to turn a bastard lock.
Still, it wasn’t all disastrous. If he hadn’t backed up his cloud in the last day, or if it wasn’t set to do it automatically? That was the real risk. Because he could load that earlier version and have the video right back in his grubby paws. If he knew to do it. But if not? They could still be golden. Only, she couldn’t be sure about any of that.
‘Look, Ethan, it’s too late,’ Nicole only slightly bluffed. ‘I’ve gotten rid of it.’
He was livid. ‘You deleted the video?’ He walked over and snatched the phone from her. ‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered, starting to scroll. Nicole liked how upset he sounded.
Alex burst in, bent over like an old lady. ‘Hey, Ethan, where are you going?! I think my back got better!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s a miracle!’
Nicole shook her head at Alex. Alex immediately dropped the act, straightening her back.
‘How far did you get?’ she asked Nicole, not caring if Ethan heard.
‘She deleted it!’ Ethan answered for her, and Nicole did her best not to breathe a sigh of relief. ‘You pair of scumbags! I’m going to the police!’
‘And what are you going to tell them?’ Nicole asked.
‘That you stole my phone and unlocked it… Wait, how the hell did you even do that?’ He glanced around and found the discarded mask on the floor. ‘Jesus Christ! Is that my face?’ He picked it up and looked at it.
He looked back at them. ‘You’re out of your minds. Seriously. Completely out of your tree. Who would go to this much trouble? And for nothing.’
‘Your phone is in your hand, so I don’t know how you’re going to prove we stole…’ Nicole’s voice died away. ‘Wait, what do you mean it was for nothing?’
Ethan was angry, but he started to look a bit buoyed. ‘Oh, yeah. Right. You go into my email, I take it?’
‘Yes, we deleted it from there,’ Nicole stated matter-of-factly.
