Page 48 of Tiger on the Prowl

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Olivia was getting more and more anxious. Smith was in her house, installing surveillance equipment, and she couldn’t get inside to retrieve her most prized possessions: her manuscript and all that went with it. This was her worst nightmare coming to pass. She was nothing without her work, without her stories. She’d always known that, but she’d never imagined that it would come to this one day.

“But why can’t I just go in once Smith leaves, get my stuff and leave? You don’t have to go with me,” she said.

“If you go in there, and all you do is retrieve your computer, and leave again immediately, he might suspect that we’re onto him. He’s no dummy. We’re lucky if he doesn’t discover that your place is already bugged,” Jay said, and took her hand. “We’ll figure something out.”

“But how can I even live there knowing that Smith is filming everything? I can’t do that. I have to move.”

“One step at a time, okay? First, we’ll wait for Fox to figure out how we can bypass Smith’s cameras.”

“This Fox, he’s one of the agents who saved you, right?”

Jay nodded.

“So he’s a precognitive like you. How is that gonna help us get my computer?”

“He’s a master when it comes to IT, and his girlfriend is an ex-hacker. She was part of Anonymous, until she got caught and Smith blackmailed her into sniffing out Fox. Long story short, she fell in love with Fox, and turned on Smith. Now they both work on anything IT related that can help us find Smith.”

“It’s been an hour already. What if neither he nor his girlfriend come up with a solution?”

“Both of them are the best of the best. And together, they’re unbeatable. The two of them were able to hack into Langley, and trust me, getting behind the CIA’s firewalls is no small feat.” He leaned over to her, and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Trust me, Olivia.”

She nodded, and put one hand on his nape, pulling him closer. “I do.”

She brushed her lips to his as an invitation, and Jay accepted it, and kissed her, his lips firm, his tongue tender and gentle. She knew he would do everything he could to rectify the situation they were in.

Jay’s cell phone suddenly rang. He severed the kiss and looked at the display. “That’s Fox.” He put the call on speaker.

“What have you got for us, Fox?” Jay asked.

“Okay, there is a way for me to take the signal from the surveillance equipment you planted and reverse it so that I can scramble the signal of Smith’s bugs. But I can only do it for forty-five seconds, a minute max, or I’ll fry his equipment, and he’ll know that we’re onto him.”

Jay tossed her a questioning look. “Can you get your computer out in forty-five seconds?”

Olivia nodded. “It’s gonna be tight. The safe is behind a panel in the office closet.”

“I’ll give you as much time as I can,” Fox promised, “but you’ve gotta hurry. And don’t move anything else. When the feed is back, everything has to look exactly like it did before I interrupted his feed. Got it?”

Olivia understood. “I can do it.”

“Okay. I’ll stay on the line. Tell me when you’re at the door to your house, key at the ready.”

“And Smith?” Jay asked quickly.

“He left half an hour ago.”

“Good,” Jay said and started the car’s engine. They were only a five-minute drive from her house.

At first, Jay drove right past it, and Olivia said, “You passed it.”

“I know. I just want to make sure that nobody is lying in wait. Unfortunately we don’t have any cameras on the outside of your house.”

Now she understood. Even though Smith had left half an hour earlier, he could be sitting in a parked car. Olivia let her eyes roam.

“All clear,” Jay said and drove around the block, then parked the car on Olivia’s block.

As they got out of the car, Jay took his phone from Olivia’s hand and spoke into it. “We’re almost at the door.”