Chapter 4
David drove like the city had betrayed him.
Fast.
Silent.
Both hands tight on the wheel.
Detective Alvarez told us not to go to my apartment alone, but the police were twenty minutes away, and I could not sit in a hotel room imagining someone walking through my life.
My books.
My clothes.
My mother’s framed photo.
My keys trembled in my hand when we reached the building.
The front door lock had not been broken.
That frightened me more.
David stepped in first.
“Stay behind me.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No,” he said. “You’re the person they’re targeting.”
I hated that he was right.
My apartment looked untouched at first.
Then I saw the kitchen drawer open.
The one with my spare checks.
The closet door cracked.
The bathroom light on.
And on my bedroom mirror, written in red lipstick:
HE WAS MINE FIRST.
My knees weakened.
David grabbed me before I hit the doorframe.
Police arrived moments later.
Detective Alvarez photographed everything.
A crime scene tech dusted the window latch.
Another checked the hallway cameras.
The building manager swore no one had entered without a key.
Then the locksmith arrived and said the sentence that made my blood go cold.
“This wasn’t forced. Whoever came in used a copy.”
I stared at David.
Only three people had ever had a key.
Me.
David.
And my old roommate Jenna.
Jenna had moved to Portland six months earlier.
She had mailed the key back.
Or said she did.
I called her with shaking fingers.
She answered on the fourth ring, groggy.
“Claire?”
“Did you send my apartment key back?”
“What? Yes.”
“Did anyone ask you for it before you mailed it?”
Silence.
“Jenna.”
Her voice became small.
“A woman called me. She said she was your cousin and you were locked out. She knew your birthday. Your old address. Your cat’s name from college. I thought—”
“What woman?”
“I don’t know. She sounded normal.”
I closed my eyes.
Tiffany had not just followed us.
She had studied me.
Collected pieces of me.
Built a map.
Detective Alvarez took the phone gently.
“Jenna, this is Detective Alvarez. I need you to tell me everything.”
By noon, we had more.
Tiffany’s sister Marissa worked for a private investigation company.
Not licensed for police work.
But licensed enough to pull addresses, relatives, employers, habits.
Marissa had accessed my information illegally.
She had helped Tiffany get my key.
Helped her find the restaurant.
Maybe helped her break in.
David paced the hall outside my apartment.
“I want them both charged.”
“They will be,” Nathan said over speaker. “But we need to move smart.”
I looked at the mirror again.
The red words seemed to pulse.
“What does smart mean?”
“It means we don’t wait for them to choose the next move,” Nathan said. “We file emergency protections for both of you. We sue for civil damages. We force discovery. We pull every record.”
David stopped pacing.
“And tonight?”
“Tonight you stay somewhere they cannot find.”
I packed a bag under police supervision.
When I opened my nightstand drawer, I found an envelope.
It had not been there before.
Inside was a photo of David and Tiffany from years ago.
May you like
On the back, in Tiffany’s handwriting:
Ask him what happened the night I lost the baby.
