“Our cabin’s clean,” Alice says, putting a reassuring hand on me. “We swept it for bugs.”
“Can you sweep mine?”
“Sure, we should have thought of that,” Sylvester says. “Let’s do that after we take apart this phone. Sometimes, you have to take the battery out, if you really want to make sure it’s not secretly transmitting on you.”
“Wow, that’s spooky stuff.” I eye Sylvester with newfound respect. “What did you do before you retired?”
He gives me a mysterious smile without an answer, and I glance at Alice, who snickers in Morse code.
Does anyone under the age of thirty know Morse code? I shrug and follow them back to their stateroom.
As soon as we shut the door, Sylvester retrieves an electronic device with several antennas and flashing lights. Alice shuts the drapes while he sweeps the room.
“You can’t be too careful these days,” he says, after putting the detector away. “Now, let me look at this phone.”
He takes the SIM card out and connects the phone to his laptop.
“You sure this is your phone?” he asks.
“Yes, this is the cover I picked, and it even has the bling I decorated it with.”
“The outside is yours, but from what I’m seeing, this is a hacked version. I was right. It detects your voice and records. Look, there is your voice print.” He points to a bunch of jiggly lines on the screen.
“How did Jordan set all of this up?”
“He must have had access to your voice to make the prints.”
“I’m a voice-over artist,” I exclaim. “Anyone who buys the audiobooks I recorded has my voice print.”
“Then it might not be Jordan,” Alice says. “Your ex could have also set this up. Didn’t you say he admitted to stealing your phone?”
“Yes, he did. But he says Jordan did the recording.” I try to recall whether Jordan acted suspiciously. “I don’t remember seeing him fiddling with his phone all the time.”
“He doesn’t have to if it’s voice-activated.” Sylvester taps on his keyboard and brings up more graphs and charts. He plugs in headphones and says, “Let me listen to a few of these clips. What’s the password to your phone?”
“I changed it back last night. It’s my name in numbers, 3261.”
Sylvester types it in. He taps around the phone and frowns. “This only unlocks the most recent folders. Was there another one?”
“You mean Jordan’s? It’s Loki in numbers.”
He types it in and readjusts his earphones. After a few minutes, he says, “I was right. This is his phone on the inside. Not yours.”
Jordan swapped the SIM cards,” I remind him.
“Not only that, but the original files, including all of the audio, are encrypted with his passcode, and only the most recent files are protected by yours. Those are the ones picked up yesterday and this morning.”
“You mean the phone continued to record?” I blink and my gaze wavers between him and Alice.
He unplugs the headphones and plays a recording of me talking to the room service staff.
“That’s why I told you to turn off your phone this morning,” Sylvester says, pointing at the laptop screen. “See here? All the folders from before Maui belong to Jordan. There’s a gap, and then someone added you as a user the day we stopped in Maui. They also transferred your apps and ebooks from your phone, even your screen saver and ringtones. The geo-location history shows the phone never left the cruise ship, but we know you and Jordan got off the ship that day.”
Everything’s going over my head. “What’s the purpose for the swap?”
Alice snickers as if it’s obvious. “For Stephen to take the hacked phone and give it back to you so he can continue to monitor you.”
“Ah ha, if Stephen doctored the phone to detect your voice, Jordan might not have been aware he was recording you.” Sylvester strokes his chin as if he’s a detective gleaning a point.
I grasp at all the straws I can reach. “Then Jordan is innocent?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Alice says, tapping her fingers on the desk. “Jordan could have fixed up his phone and swapped it so he could keep tabs on you and Stephen. He gave the phone to Stephen to return to you, but because it’s his phone, he can tap into it at any time.”
I groan and drop my head to my hands. “He still could be guilty.”
Alice grabs the phone and switches it off. “Here’s what you do. When you go back to your room, activate your phone and talk out loud. Flush out the guilty culprit and trap him in his own game.”
“Good idea,” Sylvester agrees. “There’s still the chance Jordan is really on board and still spying on you.”
