Detective Morales answered on the second ring.
Anna did not bother with hello.
“They found us.”
Clare was already pulling the curtains shut while Anna held the phone with both hands. Rain tapped against the hotel window, soft and ordinary, while the photograph on her screen showed that exact window from the parking lot below.
Morales's voice changed immediately. “What happened?”
Anna read the message aloud.
You should have stayed asleep, Anna.
For several seconds, Morales said nothing.
Then: “Do not leave that room.”
“We weren't planning to.”
“Is the door locked?”
Clare checked it again, throwing the dead bolt and security latch.
“Yes.”
“Windows?”
“Fourth floor.”
“Stay away from them anyway.”
Anna heard movement on Morales's end. A door closing. Keys.
“I'm coming to you. Local officers are closer. I'm contacting them now.”
Clare crossed the room and turned off the lamp beside the window.
Anna whispered, “What if whoever sent this is already inside the hotel?”
Morales did not dismiss the possibility.
“Don't open the door for anyone until I tell you who is outside. Not hotel staff. Not police unless I confirm them by phone.”
That instruction frightened Anna more than reassurance would have.
Morales believed somebody might be capable of impersonating help.
“How long?”
“I'll call when I'm downstairs.”
The line disconnected.
Anna stared at the screen.
Clare positioned a chair beneath the door handle despite the dead bolt.
“It won't stop anyone serious,” Anna said.
“It might slow them down.”
They switched off every light except the bathroom fixture and left that door almost closed. A narrow stripe illuminated the carpet.
Anna sat on the floor between the beds.
Clare remained standing.
“You need to breathe normally.”
“I am.”
“No, you're not.”
Anna forced air into her lungs.
The phone vibrated.
She almost dropped it.
Another unknown message.
No photograph this time.
Just three words.
Wrong people, Anna.
Clare leaned over her shoulder.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
Anna thought of Morales.
Maria.
Peterson.
Her sister.
Perhaps the sender meant she had trusted the wrong people.
Or perhaps they meant Dererick had.
A car door slammed below.
Clare raised one finger for silence.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Slow.
Approaching.
They stopped outside the room.
Anna's pulse became so loud she could hear it.
Someone knocked.
Three soft taps.
Neither woman moved.
“Hotel security,” a male voice called.
Anna looked at Clare.
Clare shook her head.
The man knocked again.
“We've had a report about a possible disturbance.”
There had been no disturbance.
Anna's phone remained silent.
Morales had told them he would call.
Clare backed toward the bathroom and picked up the heavy ceramic soap dish.
The absurdity of it would have been funny anywhere else.
The man outside tried the handle.
The lock held.
Anna covered her mouth.
Another knock.
More forceful.
“Ma'am, we need you to open the door.”
Clare whispered, “Don't.”
“I wasn't going to.”
The handle moved again.
Then stopped.
Footsteps retreated.
Anna waited for the elevator sound.
None came.
Instead, there was silence.
She crawled toward the door and looked beneath it.
No shadow.
A minute later her phone rang.
Morales.
“I'm downstairs.”
Anna closed her eyes.
“Someone was just here.”
“Did you open the door?”
“No.”
“What did they say?”
She explained.
Morales swore quietly.
“There is no security officer assigned to your floor.”
Clare crouched beside Anna.
“Then who was it?”
“We'll find out. Stay inside.”
Within minutes, heavier footsteps filled the corridor.
Morales called again and gave Anna the names of the two officers with him.
Only then did Clare remove the chair.
Morales entered first.
He was a broad-shouldered man in his forties, rain beading on his jacket. Anna had met him only hours earlier, but the sight of him produced such relief that her knees weakened.
Two uniformed officers checked the room and hallway.
Morales examined the messages.
“Don't delete anything.”
“I haven't.”
He studied the photograph of the hotel.
“When did this arrive?”
Anna gave him the exact time.
Morales stepped into the hallway and spoke with one officer.
Clare stood beside the window but kept away from the glass.
“What happens now?”
“We move you.”
Anna laughed once, bitterly.
“We already moved.”
“And whoever this is found you.”
“So where exactly is safe?”
Morales met her eyes.
“Somewhere they don't know you're going.”
The hotel manager provided surveillance footage.
They watched it in a cramped back office smelling of printer toner and old coffee.
At 9:42 p.m., a man wearing a dark rain jacket entered through the side lobby.
His cap concealed most of his face.
He never approached the desk.
He walked directly toward the elevators.
At 9:47, the same man appeared in the fourth-floor corridor.
Anna's stomach tightened.
“That was him.”
The camera had no audio, but his posture matched the person who had stood outside their door.
He remained there for less than two minutes.
Then he descended by the stairs.
The exterior camera caught him entering a dark sedan.
Clare pointed at the screen.
“The same car.”
Morales leaned closer.
“Maybe.”
“You don't think so?”
“I don't guess when I can verify.”
They tried to enlarge the license plate.
Rain blurred most of it.
Only three characters were readable.
Morales wrote them down.
Anna noticed something else.
“Back up.”
The manager rewound.
“There.”
Before the man entered the sedan, he turned toward the hotel.
His face briefly angled toward the camera.
Not enough for recognition.
But enough for Anna to notice a scar running from beneath his left ear toward his collar.
“I've seen him.”
Clare turned.
“Where?”
Anna could not place it.
The memory hovered just beyond reach.
Not a friend.
Not anyone she knew well.
Perhaps somebody beside Dererick once.
A restaurant.
A party.
A parking lot.
Morales paused the image.
“Think about it, but don't force it.”
Anna stared until the face became meaningless shapes.
“I know I've seen him.”
Morales photographed the screen.
“That may matter later.”
They left through the service entrance.
Two patrol vehicles escorted them.
Morales had arranged a temporary safe location through a local victim-assistance network, a small furnished apartment registered under an organization rather than an individual.
No hotel desk.
No public reservation.
No obvious connection to Anna.
Clare drove behind Morales while Anna watched the dark road.
She expected the sedan at every intersection.
It did not appear.
At the apartment, Morales checked each room before allowing them inside.
“You don't post anything,” he said. “You don't contact friends except through me or Maria until we understand how they tracked you.”
Anna held up her phone.
“This?”
“We'll preserve it, then replace it.”
Clare frowned. “Could they be tracking the phone itself?”
“Possibly. Or your car. Or someone followed you. We examine every option.”
Anna thought of the ease with which Dererick had tracked patterns in other people's lives.
“You should check the car first.”
Morales nodded.
“We will.”
Before leaving, he looked at Anna.
“One more thing. Don't attempt to access Dererick's accounts again.”
“But we found evidence.”
“You did. Now you're also telling whoever monitors those accounts that somebody has access.”
Anna understood.
The incoming email had appeared because they had opened a copied account session.
Maybe whoever wrote it could see that too.
Morales continued. “This needs to become an investigation, not a contest between you and him.”
“Him or them.”
Morales's expression hardened slightly.
“Yes.”
After he left, Clare showered while Anna sat at the tiny kitchen table.
The apartment was painfully anonymous.
Generic framed print.
Beige sofa.
Four mismatched mugs.
No memories attached to anything.
Anna had never expected anonymity to feel luxurious.
Her temporary phone rang.
Morales.
“We found something on Clare's car.”
Anna's grip tightened.
“What?”
“A tracker.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Clare emerged from the hallway, drying her hair.
Anna put the call on speaker.
Morales explained that the device had been magnetically attached beneath the rear bumper. It was commercially available, small enough to conceal quickly.
Clare went pale.
“When?”
“We don't know yet.”
Anna thought of Dererick's message.
Why was Clare here?
He had known Clare came to the house.
Maybe cameras covered the property.
Maybe the dark sedan had followed them from there.
Or perhaps Dererick had placed the tracker earlier because Clare herself was already one of the people being observed.
The possibility made Anna look at her sister differently.
“What if it wasn't attached today?”
Clare understood immediately.
“You think he's been tracking me too?”
“Your yoga student was in his notebook.”
Morales heard them.
“We'll determine what we can from the device.”
Anna asked, “Can it tell you who owns it?”
“Sometimes. Don't count on it.”
He ended the call with instructions to sleep.
Neither sister considered that realistic.
They sat together on the sofa.
For a long time, neither spoke.
Finally Clare said, “I keep thinking about Mom.”
Anna turned.
“If she'd met Dererick today, she'd love him.”
“She did love him.”
“That isn't what I mean.”
Clare rubbed her hands together.
“He knows how to make people trust him. That's what scares me. It isn't only that he fooled you.”
Anna stared at the blank television.
“He fooled everyone.”
She remembered birthdays.
Dererick carrying chairs into the yard before guests arrived.
Dererick fixing Peterson's porch light.
Dererick bringing soup to Clare when she had pneumonia.
The gestures might have been sincere.
That uncertainty was becoming its own form of torment.
Near midnight, Morales called again.
This time he had news from the copied archive.
One of the names had been identified.
Laura Reynolds.
L.R.
Anna remembered the initials.
Morales said Laura had died eighteen months earlier.
Official cause: accidental overdose.
Anna stopped breathing.
Clare sat upright.
“Overdose of what?”
Morales did not answer immediately.
“A sedative.”
Anna's fingers went cold.
“Was Dererick connected to her?”
“Not officially.”
“But?”
“She worked at a company where Dererick consulted for six months.”
Silence filled the apartment.
Anna looked toward the dark window.
“What about the other initials?”
“We're checking.”
“You think they're dead too?”
“I don't know.”
Anna pressed her fingers to her eyes.
The notebook had dozens of entries.
Dozens.
Morales's voice softened but did not become reassuring.
“This is why you stay where you are.”
After the call, Clare went to make coffee.
Anna remained seated.
Laura Reynolds.
The initials had become a person.
A woman with a job.
A life.
Maybe family.
Maybe someone who had once woken with the same unexplained heaviness Anna had dismissed.
Anna imagined Laura discovering nothing until there was no chance left to discover it.
Her temporary phone buzzed.
Not a call.
A message.
Unknown sender.
Impossible.
Nobody except Morales, Maria and Clare had the number.
Anna opened it.
A photograph appeared.
This one was old.
Anna and Dererick at their wedding.
Anna wearing white.
Dererick leaning toward her while they cut the cake.
Someone had drawn a small red circle around Anna's face.
Beneath the photograph was a sentence.
Laura asked questions too.
Anna stared at those words until they blurred.
Whatever had happened to Laura Reynolds had not been accidental.
And somebody wanted Anna to understand that curiosity had consequences.
