Chapter 2 - The Digital Footprint
The sun did not rise so much as it bled through the heavy, charcoal clouds hanging over Boston Harbor the next morning. By 6:00 A.M., I was already in the commercial-grade stainless steel kitchen, grinding Ethiopian beans for Leo’s espresso. My ankles were swollen from the previous night's abuse, and my mind felt like it had been scrubbed with steel wool.
Giani walked in through the courtyard service entrance without knocking.
He was a mountain of a man in a rumpled gray overcoat, smelling faintly of cold asphalt and cheap tobacco. He set a thick manila envelope on the marble island next to my coffee grinder.
“Morning, Maeve,” he grunted, pulling a paper cup of black coffee toward himself.
“Don't ‘morning’ me, Giani,” I said without looking up, tamping down the grounds with fierce concentration. “Did you enjoy watching me eat linguine last night?”
Giani paused, his mug halfway to his mouth. He looked over at the doorway, checking to make sure Leo wasn't within earshot, before leaning across the counter.
“The boss was right to be jumpy,” Giani said in a low, gravelly rumble. “The Bratva aren't just rattling sabers anymore. They’re shifting assets. We caught chatter on an encrypted frequency late last night. They’re looking for leverage.”
“Leverage is a person in a silk suit downtown, Giani. Not a woman who carries a feather duster for a living.”
“Leverage is anyone close to the center of gravity,” Giani corrected gently. He tapped the manila envelope. “Leo had me pull the traffic logs and the cell tower pings for your phone from last night. He wanted to make sure the tow truck driver wasn't a spotter.”
I stopped tamping. The coffee tamper slipped from my fingers, clattering against the stainless steel. “He pulled my cell tower data?”
“Standard precaution—”
“Without my consent? That’s a federal privacy violation, Giani, mob boss or no mob boss!”
“Maeve,” a cold, flat voice interrupted from the doorway.
Leo stood there, wearing a fresh charcoal suit, his shirt buttoned all the way to the top, his silk tie pulled into a perfect Windsor knot. He looked like an executive ready for a hostile corporate takeover. Not a trace of the exhausted, frantic man from the hallway at two in the morning remained.
“Leave us, Giani,” Leo ordered.
The big man nodded, grabbed his coffee, and ambled out toward the garages without a word.
I turned to face Leo, my hands planted firmly on the edge of the marble island. “You hacked my phone records?”
“I verified your safety,” Leo said smoothly, walking over to pour his espresso. He didn't look at me, though I could see the tension in his shoulders. “And in doing so, I found something interesting.”
“Oh, goody. Did you find out I bought too many romance novels on Kindle?”
“I found out that the black Lincoln parked outside the restaurant wasn't Russian,” Leo said, setting his cup down. He slid the manila envelope across the marble toward me. “And it wasn't scouting me.”
My breath hitched. I looked down at the envelope, my fingers hesitating before I pulled the flap open. Inside were two glossy 8x10 surveillance photographs and a printed digital tracking log.
The first photograph showed my friend Dana and me laughing as we walked out of the North End restaurant into the mist.
The second photograph was a close-up. Not of me.
Of my purse. Specifically, the small leather pocket on the side where I kept my spare house keys.
“What is this?” I whispered, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of my neck.
“Three days ago,” Leo said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy cadence, “someone slipped an active RFID micro-tracker into the lining of your handbag while you were changing shifts at the back entrance.”
I stared at him, the kitchen spinning slightly. “An RFID tracker? In my bag?”
“It broadcasts on a localized UHF frequency,” Leo continued, walking closer, his eyes locked on mine. “That’s how the Lincoln found you at the restaurant. They weren't following you, Maeve. They were tracking the house keys in your bag. Because those keys open the side gate to this estate.”
The illusion of safety I had built over three years—the quiet routine, the isolation, the belief that I was invisible because I was insignificant—shattered in a single heartbeat.
“Who did it?” I whispered, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady.
“That,” Leo said, picking up the second piece of paper from the envelope—a detailed digital log showing every ping, every GPS coordinate, and every handoff point between the tracker and an unknown receiver in downtown Boston, “is what we are going to find out today. Because whoever put that tracker in your bag thought you were an easy backdoor into my life.”
May you like
He paused, his gaze darkening as he stepped close enough that I could smell the faint scent of cedarwood and Turkish tobacco on his skin.
“They made a very expensive mistake.”
