“Oh my God, that would be incredible.”
“I’ll ask her today.”
“Thanks, Ellie.” I wiped my nose with the sleeve of my robe. “Well, I guess I’d better get dressed and get down to the clinic.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Ellie asked. “I don’t have to be at work until five.”
“That would be great.”
“Listen, Savannah …” Jenna began. “I wish I could come too. But I have some things I need to take care of today.”
“Of course, don’t worry about it, Jenna. Thanks for hanging out last night.”
“I’ll call and check in on you later, okay? I’m so sorry you’re having to go through all of this.” She reached over and pulled me into a hug.
“Thanks, Jenna.”
As I walked into my closet to pull out a change of clothes, I steeled my resolve.
I am not going to let Madison get away with this.
CHAPTER13
AN HOUR LATER,Ellie and I walked through the doors of the Women’s Care Clinic. Rachel, the head nurse, greeted me at the reception desk. She looked confused when I told her I was there for toxicity tests, since there were no appointments for me on the schedule. My face felt hot with shame as I explained to her why I needed to take them right away.
“Hmm … I’ve never had a patient asked to do that before. No problem, though, Ms. Mitchell. We can do that now, and I’ll leave Dr. Quinlan a note that someone will be following up to review the results. But unfortunately, since these tests aren’t part of one of your regularly scheduled checkups, you’ll have to pay for them out of pocket.”
I shut my eyes for a second and bit my tongue. “Got it. Thank you, Rachel.”
After the tests, Ellie treated me to a long brunch.
I could tell she was trying hard to cheer me up. She asked me what I thought about the baby shower ideas she and Mom had come up with, and tossed out a couple options for dates. Although doing the party at Mom’s house sounded nice, andmore spacious, we both agreed that having it in the city made more sense, so more friends—especially the city dwellers who didn’t own cars—could attend more easily. So it was settled—my baby shower would be the first weekend in October in the back room of Ellie’s bistro, which was very generous of her boss to offer up with no rental fee since she was such a treasured employee. The very idea of a group of friends gathering to celebrate and support me made my eyes well up again. I truly wasn’t in this alone.
After brunch, Ellie headed home to get ready for work, and I decided to pop over to the cellular store to see if someone could take a look at my phone. It was high time I got to the bottom of the disappearing and fake text messages.
At the counter, a young twentysomething guy in a sky-blue polo shirt and a name tag that saidOLIVERasked if he could help me.
“Yes, please. My phone has been acting really weird lately, and I’m wondering if I’ve been hacked.”
I explained about the anonymous texts that would disappear soon after I read them—making it impossible for me to show them to anyone—and the fake messages that looked like they’d come from my boss and Max.
Oliver reached for my phone. “Yeah, let me take a look.”
I followed him to a high-top table in the corner of the store and watched as he scrolled through my phone. After a few minutes, he turned to me and said, “I’d like to hook your phone up to my computer and run some security scans on it, if you don’t mind?”
“Sure. Whatever you need to do.”
“This could take a few minutes,” he said. “If you have other errands to run …”
“Sure, yeah. Maybe I’ll grab something to drink at the caféacross the street and come back.”
Ten minutes later, I was back, blowing on a hot cup of tea. Oliver was no longer working alone—one of his coworkers,whose name tag saidCONNOR, was bending over his shoulder, peering at the screen in fascination.
“Did you find anything?” I said.
“Ohh, yeah,” said Oliver. Connor stepped back so I could join him at the table. “Someone installed a spy app on your phone. It didn’t show up in your phone’s settings, but I found it buried pretty deep.”
“Aspyapp? What?”
