Behind Your Back by Chelsea M. Cameron

snap my fingers.
    “Are you seriously doing this right now?” I say. Normally, I’d let them have their fun, but my patience is thin tonight.
    They all look at me like I’m a fucking killjoy.
    “Fine, do whatever the fuck you want.” I close my eyes again to wait for Cash’s victory dance. He has to crack this phone. He just has to.
    Finally, I ask Cash if he’s got anything. He shakes his head slowly.
    “I have no idea what this is, but it might be some military grade shit. It’s confounding every single thing I try. I’m sorry, man, but I don’t know what else to do.” Well, fuck.
    “Okay, but you can still contact your hacker friends, right?” Cash’s network is a surprisingly trustworthy lot. They look out for their own.
    “Yeah, I’ll have them give it a shot.” He types some more as the others discuss who could be doing this.
    The problem with what we do is that we have a long list of enemies and those enemies have means to get back at us.
    “We’re just going to have to step up security,” I say and some of the guys groan.
    “Hey, don’t blame me. I think we need to start doing stuff off the grid.” That means using our cell phones and computers less and doing things the old-fashioned way. The way people did before technology. With paper that could be destroyed.
    “I keep saying we should all learn Morse code,” Cash says, not looking up from his keyboard where his fingers are flying so fast they blur.
    “Morse code would be nearly useless because it’s easy to crack. Too big a risk,” Hardy says. He has a point, but that doesn’t deter Cash. Yet another facet of his obsession with antiquities.
    After the bust with the phone, we got back to our regular business.
    “So, haven’t seen the girl yet, huh?” Baz says. “Might be time to call in the big guns.”
    “Oh yeah, who’s that?” Row asks. Baz pops him on the arm and I swear to God, if they break my fucking coffee table, they’re all dead.
    “I’m going to meet her at a bar this weekend. It’ll be fine. I’ve done this before.” I sound almost depressed but I tell myself it’s just the headache.
    “How long you think we can stay here?” Track says. He hates that we have to move nearly every year, but he signed up for this. In case of emergency, we all have several fake identities on file. Passports, documents, etc. in case we need to flee the country and hide out for a while.
    “I don’t know, but I have a feeling that after Mr. B, we’re going to have to move on again.” We choose our cities very carefully, and have a list of the next three. Location is always a topic of much discussion and debate and usually ends in blows. I hoped it wouldn’t this time.
    Cash tells us that a few of his friends are working on the phone and they finally come up with a name.
    “John Smith,” he says, chuckling a little. “You have to admit, it’s kind of hilarious.” I’m not amused. Not a little bit.
    “Okay, is that all you’ve got?” He shakes his head.
    “No, there’s a bunch of other information, but it’s all useless. The phone only has your number in it and the only messages sent have been to your phone. I can’t get a ping on the location because the phone is off. They’ve also got some fancy schmancy stuff on it that scrambles the information when you try to hack it so for all we know this phone is now at the bottom of a river somewhere. Unless they turn it on again, we’re basically fucked.” Just fucking great. I yank my hand through my hair and pull a few dark strands out. I’m not very good at handling stress all that well, and now that I don’t smoke, it’s even worse.
    I give Row the phone to dispose of and make Cash put in an order for more burner phones. We’re going to start going through them like tissues if whoever this hacker is doesn’t cut the shit and stop trying to stalk me.
    “I’ll also up the security on those things. A buddy of mine just worked something up for me,” Cash says