“Travis,” Uncle Brutus answers on the second ring. “What’s going on?”
I run down what I just encountered to him.
“Send me a picture of them both,” he tells me, his voice immediately taking on a dark tone. Which is exactly what I need right now.
“I need to get back home now,” I say, pacing my hotel room, feeling useless.
“The next flight out of Montreal isn’t until morning,” Uncle Brutus reminds me as if I don’t know.
“I need to call her … but it’s the middle of the night in France. Fuck!” My mind spirals with what I could possibly do from this distance.
The person who took that picture was within feet of me and Alyssia. Within mere fucking feet of ourbabyand I missed it. I should’ve known better.
“How would you have known?” Uncle Brutus asks, making me realize I’ve been rambling out loud.
“I should’ve considered whoever was going after me on the track could be dangerous off of it.”
He makes a sound that I can’t decipher the meaning of. Neither do I try since my mind goes right back to figuring out how best to keep Alyssia safe.
“What if … what if someone’s gotten to her already?” The last I heard from Alyssia was right after the race.
“I need to call her,” I tell my uncle.
“It’s close to midnight in her time zone right now.”
“We had a call scheduled already.” Alyssia promised to stay up late in order to be there for my call tonight once I finished my post-race work.
I’d felt guilty about her waiting up so late for me, but she insisted she didn’t mind and wanted to talk before going to bed.
“Okay. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do about getting into the hotel’s security surveillance system.”
My uncle has access to some high-quality hackers who could do shit I couldn’t even think of.
“Wait,” I say, suddenly remembering something. “Something similar happened in Vegas last year.” I think about the two teen boys who knew where my hotel was and had known which floor I would be on.
I hadn’t put it together before but the mentioning of hotel security brought the memory back to mind.
I convey this information to my uncle.
“They somehow knew I which suite I was in,” I say out loud for the first time. The information of my hotel suite is never given out to the public for obvious reasons.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?” He sounds pissed.
“Didn’t seem like a big issue. Two kids who almost shitted themselves when threatened with a call from the police.”
“Travis …”
“It wasn’t a big deal then,” I say tersely. “Now someone is threatening my family. That’s a different thing entirely.”
“I’m on it. Already contacted my guy to see if we can get more information on those kids.”
“You don’t think…” I cut myself off.
“They may have nothing to do with any of this but I want to know how they found out which hotel and room you were staying in.”
I nod in agreement.
“In the meantime, I need you to think of any more people who might have an issue with you. This is someone closer than you think.”
