Wrong Number

by Carys Jones

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But we’ll get to the bottom of it, Amanda. Don’t worry.’ He said her name so softly, with such tenderness, as though he’d taken the time to repeat it over and over until he could say it just right.

  ‘I just can’t believe that he’d lie to me like he has.’ Amanda ceased walking. She faced the horizon where the sun was dipping towards the shoreline. Tiny boats bobbed up and down in the distance, preparing for a night out on the waves. Amanda envied the distance they could put between their lives and themselves, how disconnected from the world they must be out on the open water when night fell. They had only the tug of the ocean to lull them to sleep, only a canopy of stars for light. Shane used to talk about hiring a boat and spending a summer exploring the coast together. But like so many of his grand dreams, nothing ever came of it.

  ‘Look, I know things are looking really bad right now but you can’t let this shake the foundations of what you guys have. There might be a reasonable explanation for it all.’

  Amanda spun round. Was Shane trying to repair her broken marriage? Defending Will? But why?

  ‘You’re always so quick to judge, Amanda,’ he looked down at his feet, kicking at the sand.

  ‘So quick to judge?’ Amanda could scarcely repeat his words to him. ‘Shane, my husband ran out on me and lied about who he is.’

  ‘It’s what you’ve always done with guys,’ Shane continued, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. ‘You place these unrealistic expectations upon them. You think that every guy should be this perfect hero who can do nothing wrong.’

  ‘Every guy?’ Amanda stared at him, pretty sure that they were no longer discussing her and Will. Or Jake. Or whatever name her husband actually went by.

  ‘I get that you lost your dad when you were young.’

  Amanda unwillingly let her gaze trail along the coastline, towards the cliff where her father had pulled her back from oblivion that fateful day.

  ‘He was such a hero to you. Like that day when you were looking for bird’s nests and tumbled over the cliff edge,’ Shane was still talking. ‘He became larger than life, he became something of a fantasy to you. And when he died four years later, that fantasy became myth. And now you expect all men to live up to this ideal. This ideal you crafted in your mind due to tragic circumstances.’

  Amanda’s cheeks were slick with tears. Was Shane actually berating her for having worshipped her father?

  ‘And no one is going to live up to it,’ Shane’s voice was rising, each word electrified with pent-up emotion. ‘If your dad hadn’t died you’d have grown up and realized he was human, fallible. You’d have seen his imperfections, seen him as just a guy rather than this Greek god you have in your head.’

  ‘What?’ Amanda wiped at her cheeks. ‘What are you even getting at? Because to me it sure as hell sounds like you’re kicking me when I’m down!’

  ‘No one will ever be good enough for you, will they?’

  Amanda was stunned. She wanted to yell that Will was good enough. That when she’d met him he was the perfect guy; he’d open doors and pull out chairs for her. She didn’t have to moan at him to mow the lawn or repair a broken shelf. Will was a man of strength, of his word. But what if he’d just been trying to live up to her fantasy? What if the real Will, this Jake Burton guy, was nothing like the man she’d known?

  ‘You need to let go of the past,’ Shane’s hands were now on her shoulders and his face was inches away from hers. Amanda tilted her head to look at the cliff edge in the distance, her hair tangling around her as the breeze picked up.

  ‘You still have the nightmares, don’t you?’

  Amanda could only numbly nod.

  ‘I never tried to be perfect for you,’ Shane’s words were almost stolen away by the wind but Amanda just caught them before they tumbled away down the beach. ‘I was only ever honest, because I thought that was enough.’

  ‘It was enough.’ Amanda looked into his green eyes, remembering how she used to love seeing herself reflected in them. She always thought she was the best version of herself through Shane’s eyes. But the lie left a bad taste in her mouth. She pushed him away and stepped back on to the damp sand, where she knew he couldn’t follow.

  ‘At least I wanted it to be enough,’ she admitted, her voice small. ‘But it wasn’t.’

  ‘But if you let go of the past you could stop chasing this perfect ideal. You could finally have something real, something true.’ Shane stepped towards her, his polished shoes sinking into the soft, wet sand, but he didn’t seem to care. He cupped her face with his hands. Amanda drew in a salt-laced breath.

  She remembered standing on the beach, probably in the exact same spot, when she and Shane had flirtatiously decided to act out the infamous beach scene in From Here to Eternity. He’d grabbed her waist, drew her in close and then pulled her down onto the sand, kissed her so deeply that the butterflies in her stomach escaped out of her and flew off towards the late afternoon sun. It was a kiss that would linger on her lips long after they’d untangled their limbs from one another.

  ‘You were always perfect to me,’ Shane was drawing himself towards her, lowering his head. Amanda knew what came next. Their lips would meet and magically they’d turn back the hands of time and be two love-struck teenagers again. But Amanda was no longer sixteen. And despite Will’s web of lies, he was still her husband, he still deserved her loyalty, at least until he’d proven otherwise.

  Shane was right that she needed to accept that Will wasn’t perfect. That no man was. She’d save her judgement for her husband until she’d heard his excuses first-hand, delivered directly from his own lips. Stepping away from Shane, Amanda shook her head, raising a hand to her mouth.

  ‘We can’t,’ she uttered. Shane was crestfallen. His green eyes shimmered with gathering tears as the setting sun filled the sky with blood. Amanda reached back towards him, leaning up to leave a kiss upon his cheek. A promise of sorts.

  ‘Thank you for being there for me.’ She was preparing to take off down the beach, to ascend the cliff-side path two steps at a time. There was something she had to do. Will was out there somewhere and she was suddenly determined to find him, to not give up on him just because he’d shown himself to be less than perfect.

  ‘I always will be,’ Shane clasped her fingertips in his as Amanda pulled away. There was longing in his eyes. ‘Always.’

  14

  It’d taken less than half an hour to grab her stuff and head back home. The only source of light in the dark room was the screen of the open laptop. It’s soft blue glow made Amanda appear pale and haunted as she leaned over it, her fingers dancing across the keyboard.

  She ignored the way her skin tingled from the memory of Shane’s touch. All that mattered was finding Will. Jake. Her husband.

  Time had lost all relevance. All Amanda knew was that when she’d sat down at her computer it was still dusk outside. Now there was only darkness beyond her windows, darkness which had infected her home since she hadn’t even bothered to get up and turn on any lights. But Amanda welcomed the darkness. It felt like any extra layer of protection against what she was currently doing. It provided shadows that she could hide within.

  Her laptop whirred as it accessed more data. Chewing on her lip, Amanda studied the screen. She was back on the darknet. Back operating as Lambchop. It was going against Shane’s wishes but what choice did she have? She had to find her husband and this was the only way she knew how. She raised one hand to rub at her tired eyes. How long had she been staring at the screen? It was hours, but how many? How far away was the dawn of a new day?

  Amanda had tracked people before. Or rather, Lambchop had. She’d hacked her way into bank records, passport control. She’d been able to extract the most slender needle from a stack of hay. At university she’d loved the thrill of the chase, how sat behind her laptop she could almost feel like some sort of superhero. The darknet provided a space for her and others like her to operate beyond the boundarie
s of the law as unseen as ghosts. Amanda and her fellow hackers haunted websites, extracted the information they wanted by any means. Sometimes they even made the news.

  She ceased typing to lean back and drink from her mug of coffee. The contents had cooled long ago, but she didn’t care. She just needed the caffeine rush. The brief pause made her reflective. From behind her computer screen she’d been privy to so much, to a world that people fought to keep hidden. She’d watched confidential military videos, helped aid the people who decided to leak them to the world. Amanda always felt like a digital vigilante, using her skills on the computer for the greater good. She never once imagined that she’d be using such skills to find her own husband.

  ‘You can’t be doing this!’ Shane, fresh into the police force, had raged when he discovered Amanda’s activity on the darknet. She’d just received a neat lump sum for aiding an illegal transfer of money and Shane was demanding she tell him how she’d come by the cash. She’d watched him pale when she explained how the hacking she used to do for fun as a teenager had now become a lucrative form of income.

  ‘This is illegal,’ he’d pushed his hands through his hair and paced around the small flat they shared. ‘You could go to prison for this,’ he gestured wildly at her laptop which hummed innocently in the background. ‘We both could.’

  ‘I’m not getting caught,’ Amanda insisted. ‘I operate on a fake DNS on an IP address which is registered to Florida. And after every big job, I drill through my hard drive and fry it in the microwave before getting a new one.’

  ‘Are you listening to yourself?’ Shane threw his hands up in frustration. ‘This is madness, Amanda. And bloody dangerous!’

  ‘You didn’t used to think it was madness,’ Amanda had scowled at him. ‘You used to think it was fun, exciting.’

  ‘Yeah, back when we were kids. Things were different then. It was just a bit of innocent fun.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amanda agreed, her shoulders slumping when she looked at the man in the freshly pressed uniform. The man who had become a stranger to her. ‘Things really were different then.’

  Two weeks later, Shane moved out. The pressure cooker that had become their relationship was too much for either of them to bear. There was no blame placed, just sad looks exchanged as Shane placed down his key, slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and walked out of Amanda’s life.

  ‘It’s me or this darknet crap,’ he’d threatened in the days leading up to their end. He’d come in from a late shift at the station and woken Amanda up, seemingly with the sole purpose of arguing with her. Tired and disorientated, she was in no mood to fight.

  ‘Why would you make me choose?’ she’d demanded groggily. ‘I wouldn’t make you choose between me and being a cop. Besides, I know which you’d pick,’ she’d grumbled before dropping back down against her pillows.

  ‘I’m trying to make this world a better place,’ Shane had told her righteously.

  ‘So am I,’ Amanda turned on her side, keen to go back to sleep.

  ‘I’m trying to become the hero you want me to be,’ Shane said so softly that Amanda wasn’t sure if she’d dreamt the words.

  Her laptop groaned loudly. Amanda shook herself back into the moment, certain that for a few minutes she’d managed to drift off to sleep, coffee mug in hand. She traced her finger over the mouse pad and stared at the screen.

  Jackpot.

  Lambchop still retained enough goodwill within the darknet community to rustle up a handful of hackers willing to help her find Will. Of course, she wasn’t giving them the details of her request, just the name, or rather names, of who she was trying to find. She’d posted for help in numerous chat rooms but been met with radio silence. Until now.

  Identity fraud is tricky

  WikiPeakes89 had written.

  They could be operating under several names. The best way to locate them is to use against them the one thing they can’t change; their face. You want facial recognition tech. All the major security systems are using it, relatively easy d/l. Need help hit me up. Good to have you back Lambchop.

  Amanda had received several responses, all along the same lines. They suggested she use facial recognition technology. Then all she’d have to do is import a scan of a photo of Will and the internet would do the rest. She knew how to hack the system of CCTV cameras throughout the UK. It was something she’d done before, but it would take a lot of time. The systems weren’t all on a central server, she’d need to spend the hours hacking each individual system. It was time she wasn’t sure she had. With each passing second she risked getting caught or losing any trace of Will that lingered online. Hence her need for support from the darknet community.

  She was in the middle of quickly typing out a response when her doorbell rang. It was becoming something of a regular occurrence since Will left, along with the phone ringing.

  ‘Damn,’ Amanda exhaled sharply and locked her laptop screen before getting up, hiding her activity from any visitor. Leaving the study, she noticed that the sky outside was grey and growing lighter by the minute. She’d managed to work all through the night. Her mouth widened into a yawn as she pulled open her front door. Unsurprisingly she found Shane standing before it. He looked polished and fresh in a new suit, the citrusy odour of his shower gel still clinging to his skin. Clearly he was en route to work.

  ‘Sorry to wake you,’ he apologised sheepishly. Amanda wanted to laugh and point out that far from waking her he’d just disturbed her from her own work. But she knew that would make Shane suspicious.

  ‘Have you found something?’ Amanda thought of all the illegal activity being channelled through her laptop just a few feet above their heads. If Shane had found Will then perhaps she wouldn’t have to sink back into the murky mire of the darknet. Perhaps she could retain some semblance of innocence.

  ‘No,’ Shane stepped inside, not bothering to wait for an invitation.

  ‘Why can’t you find anything out?’ Amanda wondered tersely as she went to make herself some much needed fresh coffee.

  ‘It’s difficult. I don’t have the jurisdiction to just wade through all the files. I have to wait to get permission and follow due protocol.’

  ‘Tell them I’m his wife and that I have a right to know.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Well it should,’ Amanda switched on her percolator. ‘I’m his next of kin.’

  ‘You’re Will’s next of kin.’

  Amanda shivered as though Shane had just poured ice down her back. She sucked in a tense breath and turned away from him, grateful to have the preparation of the coffee to distract her from their conversation.

  ‘I’ve not come here to make you feel bad,’ Shane sighed.

  Amanda stridently dropped one hand to her hip as she turned to face him.

  ‘I’ve come here to warn you against doing anything stupid.’

  ‘Don’t worry; I’ve no intention of topping myself.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it,’ Shane’s voice was hard, all the former soft edges removed. He was completely different to the guy she’d stood on the beach with, making the memory start to feel false, like a dream.

  ‘Shane,’ she sighed as she said his name, thinking of her laptop whirring away, of all her old contacts offering their assistance. Together they’d hack every CCTV camera in the UK if they had to. If something was electrical they could access it. Wi-Fi had made the entire world a hacker’s paradise.

  ‘Don’t look for him, Amanda.’

  She pulled her eyebrows together, trying to suss out if Shane was somehow monitoring her online activity. But that was close to impossible; she hid behind a carefully constructed digital wall of smoke and mirrors. To catch her, you’d need to be as good as her, if not better. And Amanda doubted that anyone in Tremwell Bay was capable of that.

  ‘Don’t look for him, don’t try to seek him out. Just let me do my job.’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ lack of sleep had made Amanda
irritable. She felt like she was back in the stifling environment of her old flat, arguing with Shane after he’d tumbled in from a night shift his shirt spotted with someone else’s blood. ‘You’re not doing your job, Shane. It’s been over a week and my husband is still missing. All you’ve succeeded in doing is asking more questions, not providing any answers.’

  ‘I’ll get to the bottom of it. I promise,’

  ‘I’m sick of being in limbo all the time,’ The words sounded sharper than Amanda had intended. Shane took a step back from her, rubbing his neck.

  ‘Amanda—’

  ‘Will is my husband. I owe it to him to find him. He’d look for me. He wouldn’t stop looking for me.’

  ‘Don’t do this; don’t open up this can of worms.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because Will might be dangerous.’

  ‘What?’ Amanda spluttered on her question. She wanted to laugh hysterically at the implausibility of it. Will was many things, but he wasn’t dangerous. He was her gentle giant. He possessed so much physical power but he’d only ever shown kindness and care towards Amanda.

  In their first month of marriage a beautiful little chaffinch had flown into one of their upstairs windows and died instantly on impact. It dropped down to the ground causing Amanda to jump from where she was sat reading in the front room. She approached the French doors and looked down pitifully at the fallen little creature.

  ‘Oh, the poor thing,’ Will had come up behind her, sounding genuinely aggrieved. He’d placed a large hand on Amanda’s shoulder and peered down at the little bird.

  ‘It can’t have seen the windows.’ One minute the chaffinch had been flying around, full of life, perhaps heading back to its nest. The next, everything had gone dark for it. The fragility of it all had made Amanda gasp for breath.

  ‘I’ll go and clean it up,’ Will had squeezed Amanda’s shoulder. His strong touch bled through her body, blissfully seeping into every muscle like hot oil. Will held that rare sort of magic that just being around him made everything seem better. He went outside and his version of cleaning the bird up involved him giving it a proper burial at the back of the garden.