Wicked Games (Hartley Grace Featherstone Mysteries Book 3), Gemma Halliday [free ebooks romance novels txt] 📗

mine again, though some of the hardness had left his look. Finally he sighed. "No. You wouldn't."

Which should have made me feel better. But the hurt still lingered.

"But someone did tell her." Chase looked to a spot over my head. "Okay, tell me everything you did after we left the Marriot."

I closed my eyes, hating that he still suspected I'd messed up somewhere. However, he had a point—Phoebe had gotten the info somehow. "We went back to the con. Met up with Ellen and Kyle," I said, walking back through our movements. "Then we had dinner with my mom and you left."

"What did you do after I left?"

I licked my lips. "I played around on my phone a little."

"You didn't text anyone about what we did? Post anything on social media?"

"No! Come on, I'm not stupid. I did some homework, then I played that game Phoebe downloaded for me. Then I—"

"The game." Chase's whole demeanor changed, his eyes blinking rapidly. "Hartley, hand me your phone."

"Why?" I asked. Even though I was already unzipping my backpack to pull it out.

"She's been spying on us." He paused as I handed him my phone in its pink sparkly case. "Well, on you."

An involuntary shiver ran down my spine, and I felt distinctly violated. "Through my phone?" I asked as Chase scrolled to the app Phoebe had downloaded.

Chase nodded. "This isn't the official game." He pointed to the icon for the app. "Phoebe just accessed this from her own files, right?"

I shrugged. "I dunno." I thought back to what I'd seen her do when she'd put the game on my phone. "She got it from her website, not the app store. From some password protected part of it."

Chase shook his head. "She wasn't just showing us the game. She was putting something on your phone."

Again that violated feeling washed over me. "Like a virus?"

"Or some sort of mirroring program." He opened the game app, though it looked just as innocent as it had when I'd played it the night before. "Something that lets her see what's on your phone remotely."

A chill slithered down my back, turning into goosebumps along my arms. Phoebe had been "watching" me the whole time.

"Like screen sharing?" I asked, as he clicked around the game screens.

"Kind of." He shook his head and closed the app. "It's like a back door that lets her access everything on your phone. Hackers use it all the time to get people's passwords and credit card info. It's why you never click those links in spam emails."

He handed my phone back to me.

I gingerly took it, as if it were contaminated now. "Are you sure?"

He shook his head. "No. Her skills are obviously light years beyond mine. But it's the only thing that makes sense."

He was right. It made perfect sense. And I felt like an idiot for trusting her with my phone in the first place. "So she could see everything on here? Like texts, pictures…everything?" I mentally went through my photos. Like the ones of Raley's notebook. Okay, so they were in code, but it hadn't been hard for Sam and me to crack it. Had Phoebe seen them? I tried to remember if she'd been mentioned anywhere.

Chase nodded. "Yep, everything. Including your notes."

Which had not only led her straight to Tyler but had totally clued her in that she was on our suspect list too.

I held my phone in my hands like it was suddenly a ticking time bomb. "What do I do now?"

Chase was still frowning, looking deep in thought. "What else was in your notes?"

"I-I don't know!" I stammered. "I mean, just some of the theories we talked about. Jason Pruit, Phoebe, Tyler." I swiped my phone back on, going immediately to the game app.

"What are you doing?" Chase asked, leaning over my shoulder.

"Deleting this thing!"

"Wait!" Chase put his hand over mine, stilling my actions before I could send it off into the great app graveyard in the sky.

I froze. Both at the intensity in his words as well as the warmth of his hand suddenly touching mine.

"Don't delete it," he said, pulling my hand away from the screen.

"Why? You think it will do something bad to my phone? Like is the whole thing infected?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Great."

"But maybe we can use this to our advantage."

I cocked an eyebrow at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, if she's watching your every move on there"—he nodded toward my contaminated device—"she'll see whatever I text you."

I mentally went through what I had texted in the last few days. Luckily, nothing too embarrassing, but I still felt like I'd been the victim of a Peeping Tom. Or a Peeping Phoebe, as the case may be.

"So what is it we want her to see?"

Chase licked his lips. "Look, I think you've been right about her all along. That she's not innocent in all this."

"You think?" I held my phone up, not able to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. "Innocent people don't bug other people's phones!"

"I think she might have even had something to do with Connor's death," Chase admitted.

"So what do we do?" I asked.

He squared his jaw. "We set a trap for her."

I cocked the other eyebrow. "I'm listening."

But instead of explaining, Chase grabbed his phone and quickly shot off a text. A beat later, I felt my phone buzz in my hands and glanced down at the screen.

I know who killed Connor. I found evidence

I shot him a look. "Are you sure about this?"

He nodded. "No. Just play along."

I did, typing, what is it? into a text window and hitting Send. A moment later, I heard a muted ping from Chase's phone.

He typed