I hang up quickly and pick up the incoming call.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Jones.”

“Yeah?”

“Hello, it’s Adam Gottfried from Gottfried, Fry, Pierce. Do you have a moment to talk?”

“Sure. What do you have for me?”

“We have an update on the whereabouts of Ms. Harloe, and another key development in the case.”

“Okay, so shoot.”

“Mr. Simons, our private investigator, has just traced Ms. Harloe to a property on Long Island, registered in the name of one Mrs. Cathleen Gardiner.” Marnie’s grandmother. Thinking back, I have a very vague memory of her spending a summer or two with her grandmother on Long Island when we were kids.

“So you’re going to serve the papers now?”

“We can, but we are now in possession of further information that will affect our next steps. In addition to locating her, we have also been trying to trace the origin of the message sent to Miss Llwellyn’s telephone the day the video first appeared in the press in order to establish a link between Ms. Harloe and the video being circulated. This is fairly crucial to the case in terms of suing for what essentially amounts to ‘revenge porn,’ in layman’s terms.

“In short, and without going into too much unnecessary detail, Mr. Simons’s technical team uses complex software, allowing them to extract the metadata from an image or a video, which can yield some very detailed and informative results. On this occasion, they have analyzed the data associated with the video to help pin down some of the specifics of the case.”

Without getting too technical. Right.

“The first news is that the information retrieved indicates with about 99 percent certainty that the video was recorded with Ms. Harloe’s cell phone. Each device has a set of markers that embeds code into the photographs or videos shot on it. This code is almost as unique as fingerprints, so the chances of the data originating from a different device are slim to none.”

Motherfucker.

Although I knew it in my gut, it still smarts to have it officially confirmed. I had already had my security team sweep the house several times for bugs or any kind of recording devices, and as anticipated, each search came up empty. So then the only other logical explanations were that a third party had physically been present in the room, or Marnie shot the video.

The two of us have never had a threesome—she doesn’t play well with others, or like sharing her toys, so I ruled that out instantly. A review of the CCTV from outside Rosemond House over the past few years confirmed that she had been alone every time she visited. Therefore, all roads led back to Marnie as the shooter. Still, part of me had hoped for some other unforeseen explanation, even though I had no idea of what that could even be.

“Additionally, the origin of the message received by Miss Llwellyn has been traced to a web-based SMS client via an IP address in China.” I have no idea what he is talking about, but figure if I listen long enough, something will start to make some kind of sense.

“This address is known to authorities both in China and here in the US to have been involved in illegal spamming and click farm activity, as well as celebrity phishing and hacking scams in the past.”

Fucking lawyers. They charge by the minute, then spend hours spitting out hot air before they get to the goddamn point. Not that money’s the issue—I just don’t have the patience for long-winded bullshit.

“So what are you saying?”

“Essentially, although she more than likely shot the video, it is highly unlikely that the video was distributed by Ms. Harloe herself, either to Miss Llwellyn or to the press. In order to be categorically sure, we would need to subpoena Ms. Harloe’s phone records for further analysis as part of the legal proceedings. However, Mr. Simons’s opinion at this stage is that the most likely explanation for the chain of events is that the video was obtained unlawfully from Ms. Harloe’s phone and then distributed to the press and to Miss Llwellyn by this third party. I tend to agree with him.”

“In other words, Marnie’s phone was hacked?”

“Put simply, yes. The video was therefore most likely distributed without her knowledge or consent. Being known in her own right and having a longstanding and well-publicized relationship with you is plausibly enough to make her a target, especially if she is less than guarded with her cell phone and computer security. That being the case, it is highly unlikely that a case related to ‘revenge pornography’ would have legs.”

What. The. Fuck? This seems to be a theme at the moment. Just as I think things can’t possibly get more complicated or more fucked up, they do.

Gottfried carries on in the face of my silence. “However, there is still the matter of her recording the video without your knowledge or consent, without which none of the ensuing events would have been possible.”

I hardly know what to be most pissed off about, Marnie or the hacker. The whole thing is a giant mindfuck. Marnie knows the no-photos rule better than anyone—she’s pretty much the only person I’ve slept with on more than one occasion. Except London. I won’t even let chicks take selfies.

In fact, I have been known to make them turn their phones off, or leave them in a drawer. Of course, I never bothered with those precautions with Marnie because she’s a friend and I can trust her. Or at least that’s what I thought.

When I think about it, I don’t even know why I’m so adamant on this rule. I’ve done a lot worse things than screw in public, and not given even half a damn, but this was one of the few things I was totally anal about from day one—at least I thought I was. Now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe I’d gotten totally loose and let my guard down on other occasions? I guess I won’t know until some other video surfaces. Why do I even care? Maybe it was just one aspect of my life I thought I could keep away from prying eyes and own for myself. One of the few things I could completely control. Until now.

Now I have so many questions. How had she done it without me noticing? Had she done it before or since? But my biggest question was why? Why did she do it? My guesses ran from the benign to the truly vindictive. Maybe she had been bored and looking to amuse herself. Maybe she had wanted an addition to her trophy cabinet. Maybe she had been high—we’d fucked while completely off our faces enough times for that to be a possibility also.

But then maybe the answer was more sinister than that. Maybe she had been planning to release it to the press herself—I guess she could have made a whole bunch of cash, but she was a high-end model, so it’s not like she was struggling financially. Or was she? Maybe the idea was to use it to blackmail me—why, I couldn’t even begin to fathom—but right now anything seems plausible. Not having been able to trace her to this point, I had no fucking idea what was going through her mind then or now.

At the very least, she caused this mess, even if accidentally, which led to me possibly losing London and our baby forever. Even if she didn’t know it at the time, if she had never taken that video, none of this would have happened. That’s fucking major.

“Okay. So, what do you need from me?”

“Well, I wanted to update you on the new information and get your consent to proceed with the lesser case, should that be what you wish to do.” There’s an extended silence while my brain whirs at a million miles a minute. Is that what I want to do?

On one hand, regardless of Marnie’s motives, some other fucker had intentionally obtained that footage and distributed it far and wide, even sent it directly to London. Why, I couldn’t fathom. Selling it to the press, I kind of got. It was a low act, but it made some kind of economic sense, at least, if not morally. But to send it to my girl? That’s an extra level of sticking the knife in that made no sense to me. London would have found out about the video anyway; the special delivery just hastened the inevitable and ensured she couldn’t ignore it even if she had wanted to. Why had someone gone to the trouble, and who was that someone?

“Mr. Jones, how would you like to proceed?”

“Is there any way of tracing who is behind the Chinese IP address?”

“Mr. Simons and his team can try, but he’s already said that it’s potentially going to be like looking for the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow—time-consuming, costly, and unlikely to yield fruitful returns.”

“Time I can’t do anything about, but I have enough money to go for as long as he can. I want him to do that.”

“Okay, Mr. Jones. Leave it with me, and I’ll get back to him. In the meantime, what do you wish us to do regarding the case relating to Ms. Harloe?”

“Let me get back to you.” I have some shit to take care of before making any decisions, one way or the other.

“Of course. Take your time. We have a little while before we need to decide on the next move. I’ll await your instruction.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. You ha—”

I hang up. Cliché pleasantries have never been my bag.