Queen of Blackmail

When Natasha persuaded Marion to take her in in exchange for her silence, she never expected to fall into such a comfortable routine. It was predictable yet full of surprises and new experiences. They spent the next few months traveling, attending and holding parties, chatting, and spending far more time together than Natasha would have bargained for. She realized, to her surprise, that Marion really seemed to like her. In fact, sometimes she even wondered if Marion did more than just like her, based on the way she would look at her at times, wink suggestively, and display other little telltale signs. Natasha didn’t think she wanted a relationship with Marion because, married or not, the woman still had some selfish, hypocritical and judgmental traits she didn’t care for. But she couldn’t deny that she was having fun and that Marion was a great distraction from her troubles back home. So much so that she thought less and less of Phillip, and whenever she realized this, a pang of guilt would stab her in the heart. They drove around various parts of Europe, providing Natasha with fun and new experiences to savor and explore. What she didn’t know was what Marion was doing behind her back. Natasha had been bluffing Marion all along—there was no seventy-two-hour timer waiting to expose her accidental killing of the crazy woman in Turkey if she wasn’t there to regularly stop it. But as they both knew, the video did exist. Marion had a friend named Rex who owed her a favor and was great at hacking. Part of his job at a financial company was to watch for potential hackers, which meant he had to acquire extensive knowledge of how hacking worked in the first place. Marion and the guy had had a couple of nights together over the last few years, but it was strictly physical. There was no emotional attachment at all, though the two got along well and remained somewhere between acquaintances and friends. She approached him one day, and he became the third person aware of what had happened in Turkey. “I need those videos destroyed,” she explained. “That way, the only one with leverage over the other is me.” She also went on to explain that Natasha was wanted in her own country. “I could go down a lot harder than she could, as I’m sure you can see. How do we locate and get rid of the video, and how do we know we can find all copies that exist?” “Well,” Rex explained, “there’s no way to know for sure that I can find every single copy out there, but I’d be willing to bet she wouldn’t take any risks by putting this on any server that could expose her whereabouts. If you can confiscate her phone and get ahold of all the devices she has that you know of, I can comb through them. More than likely, it only exists on her phone.” “Oh.” “What does she have?” “A phone and a laptop,” Marion replied. “You sure?” “Pretty sure.” “All we have to do is arrange a time for me to come over when she’s out of the apartment.” “The problem is, she’s home a lot,” Marion said. “She goes out for walks, and she’s down in the laundry room doing our laundry at times, but otherwise she’s with me whenever she’s out.” Marion told him when she expected Natasha to be out doing laundry next, and he agreed to slip into the apartment and check her laptop. “The only problem is that she’s practically glued to that damn cell phone of hers,” Marion added. “I don’t think she’ll leave it in the apartment. She feels safer having it on her whenever she steps out, even if she’s not going far.” “Let’s start with the laptop,” Rex said. “If I can’t get the phone at that time, we might have to figure something else out.” The only thing Marion could think of was to hope she could slip into Natasha’s room while she was sleeping and swipe the phone long enough for it to be inspected.