Page 47 of Tiger on the Prowl

“Yeah?”

“Tell me you’re not at Olivia’s house yet,” Yankee said, his voice tense.

“We’re about ten minutes out.”

“Thank God. Divert immediately. Smith just showed up. He’s inside the cottage.”

“Fuck!” Jay hissed.

“What?” Olivia asked, and Jay put the call on speaker.

“Yankee, Olivia is listening in. What’s Smith doing?”

“He’s looking around every room. He’s not touching anything, but he’s checking the place out.”

“I have no connection to Smith,” Olivia said. “Why the hell would he go into my house?”

“He must have connected you with Tiger somehow.”

“Tiger?”

“That’s me,” Jay said quickly.

“He must have seen you two together. Maybe after you went back inside the hotel. Otherwise, there’s nothing that could tip him off that you two know each other.”

Jay took the freeway exit into Alexandria, but didn’t drive in the direction of Olivia’s house.

“Oh fuck!” Yankee suddenly hissed. “He’s installing bugs.”

“Crap!” Jay echoed, then looked at Olivia, as he stopped on a quiet side street. “We can’t go back to your house, not now while he’s still there, and not later either, or he’ll have us on camera.”

“But my computer!” Olivia protested.

“We won’t need it anymore, now that we have Smith on camera. Yankee, we have a good picture of his face, right?” Jay asked.

“Yep. As if he were posing at the DMV. He’s in the bag. Now we just need to run facial recognition, and we’ll find him.”

“Jay, you don’t understand,” Olivia interrupted, her voice pleading. “I need my computer and my backup hard drive from my safe. My manuscript is on there, my series bible, my outlines, my character resumes, everything. Jay, that’s my life. I need my computer.”

“You didn’t save your files in the cloud?”

“And have them hacked? Of course not.”

Jay took a breath. “Fuck!”

“Hold it, Tiger,” Fox suddenly joined the conversation. “I might have a way of scrambling Smith’s bugs for a short while to give you a window to go inside, but I’m not sure yet. I have to figure out what kind of bugs he’s installing first. Give me a little time. We’ll be in touch. In the meantime, stay away from the cottage. We’ll text you when he’s leaving. Sit tight.”

Fox disconnected the call.