Page 84 of The Refusal

“I’ve got a message. A warning, or shit, I don’t know,” I say, swallowing.

His eyes widen on me. “What? Where? How did it come in?” He plonks the beers on the desk and comes to read over my shoulder.

“Holy shit,” he says, reaching over and taking the phone out of my hands as his thumbs fly over the screen. I rise out of my chair and peer at the phone.

“Text,” he mumbles. “I guess that’s good.”

“Good?”

He inclines his head. “Well … I mean … it’s unlikely that they’ve hacked your phone. They’ve just got your number. Although we probably shouldn’t assume that,” he mutters as if he’s half-talking to himself. “Let me take a look at the message.”

“I think we can assume they haven’t hacked it. My phone’s encrypted,” I say. “We did it a while ago.”

“Great.” He walks over to his desk and sits down. He stares at the phone for a few seconds and then tilts forward, pressing his head into the desk. “Fucking hell.”

“What?”

“It’s all to do with me.”

“We don’t know that.”

He snorts. “Come on, Janus—‘friends’? It’s got to be.”

I sink down into my chair. He’s right. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s been obvious for a while. And who knows what someone that Fabian’s crossed might try and do?

“Fuck.” He slumps down in a chair, loosening his bun and burying his hands in the wild mess of his hair. “Why would they send us a text like this?” he mutters. “I mean, why not just go all in? It’s like they’re stringing us along.”

Jo’s comments about cat and mouse dances into my thoughts.

“What do you mean ‘all in’?”

“Well, once they’re in the system, they could do anything, destroy data, anything. What I don’t get is why they haven’t done it already.”

Destroy data?My stomach drops out.

“Jesus, Fab, who are these people? Will that message tell us anything?”

“We can check, but they’ll be using a burner for sure.”

“Do you think it is this Russian lot?”

He purses his lips as if he’s wondering how much to say.

“Come on, man, you don’t need to guard your responses. I think we’re way past that now.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not because of that. It’s pretty complicated. Over the years there’s been hundreds of people I’ve annoyed. I mean, I thought they didn’t know what I was doing, but maybe I’m just being naïve here.”

“Can you make a list? Like right now?”

He nods. “I’m already on it.”

“They knew we were in Hong Kong, too.” I walk over to stand behind him and stare at my phone in his hand. “I wonder if they’ve got some kind of tracker on my phone.”

“You’d have to have downloaded something. I can look at it,” Fabian says. Then he gives a half laugh. “Why am I even suggesting this? It’s always the simplest answer: They probably just saw the photo of you and Jo online.”

Ugh.

Fabian raises his head. “I’ll check your phone, but we need to talk to Jo and Matt. I can do that if you like,” he says carefully.

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