Tony rubbed a hand over his face as he sat down in the booth inside "Joey's Coffee Shop," opposite Chloe. He looked around out of habit but at 5 in the morning, the place was almost empty. A burly man with curly hair wearing a stained white apron came over to take the order but Chloe quickly and rudely shooed him away with the shake of her head and a snarl.
Despite his exhaustion Tony smiled at her attitude as he shook his head slightly with disbelief. "He's just trying to make a living," Tony said gently, knowing it would only provoke her more.
"Yeah well if he didn't hound his customers I'm sure he'd do a lot better."
Tony nodded as he saw Chloe's hand snake down into her bag as she began to search through it. Seconds later she pulled out a cream paper folder and slapped it down on the table. Tony reached out to grab it but Chloe quickly clamped her hands down on it.
Tony stared at Chloe puzzled, but she only glared back at him.
"I thought it was for me," he said, slightly unnerved by her stare, partly embarrassed by his mistake.
"It is."
"Oh," he replied, trying not to roll his eyes, "then may I please see it?"
"This isn't a social call Tony!" She snapped, a frown forming on her face, she almost looked hurt.
"I know that," he said calmly, confused by the whirlwind of emotions Chloe was displaying. "So what's up?"
Chloe stayed silent again before sighing deeply, as though annoyed, before pulling out her PDA and turning the device on. She didn't take her eyes from the screen as she spoke, but Tony had already grown accustomed to her ignorance of manners.
"You received a phone call last night, late, and were on the line way too long."
Tony began to speak but she interrupted him. "How is he?"
Tony shook his head and felt his patience begin to fade. He ignored her question, knowing she had listened to the call. "You monitor the phone, Chloe, so it doesn't matter how long we stay on the line."
"I know that."
"Then what's the problem?"
"The problem is that I can't monitor this 24-7! I need to be kept in the loop - if communications are going to be made I need to know before hand so I can set up extra firewalls."
"How am I supposed to know if he's gonna call me?" Tony snapped in a harsh whisper, "I'm as out of the loop as you are when it comes to him!"
"Yeah well we need to work on it, you need to devise some kind of schedule-"
"What's wrong, Chloe? If you were simply annoyed about keeping you in the dark you'd have blown of your steam already, something else is up."
"You're right," she said as she slid the folder across to him, "somebody monitored the call."
Tony quickly paled. "What?" He asked, in a state of semi-shock. "How is that possible? Who could-"
"Everything I know is in the folder. When I retraced the call to double up the cells invisibility I noticed something. Sloppy really, but somebody tried to hack into the call."
"They didn't?"
"Of course not, but they were close. I added a lot of useless code to the database so if they try again they will be sent of track."
"You know who did it, where it came from?"
"Everything I found is in the file. There's nothing specific."
Tony paused, "what does this mean?"
"It means," Chloe said carefully, "that Jack could, potentially, be in risk of having his cover blown."
"Shit," Tony said, "SHIT! What the hell do we do?"
"He has to dump the phone. I'm gonna go through everything and make it fool proof, we can't risk a break in of the servers relating to him. But more importantly, he needs to leave."
Tony shook his head, "that's not an option. Jack won't leave."
Chloe knew why, she had re-played the conversation. "Then we have to retrace our tracks, find this person and keep everything hidden to make sure Jack stays dead."
Tony dropped his head into his hands and began to massage his forehead. "Can we do that?"
Chloe frowned again as she carefully placed her PDA back into her shoulder bag. "I guess were gonna find out," she said as she pulled the bag over her shoulder and stalked out of the dim coffee house, not giving Tony a second glance as she strode away.