Chapter 5: The Woman in the Parking Garage
Daniel stepped out of the garage to take the call.
I could hear his voice through the wall — low, controlled, the tone of a man who had been holding himself together by pure discipline and was starting to feel the seams.
Ethan tried again.
"Lauren, if you'll just let me—"
"Sit down."
He blinked.
"There is a stool behind you.
Sit down and don't say another word until I tell you to."
He sat down.
I looked at the photograph again.
Gray coat.
Parking garage.
The angle was slightly elevated — whoever took it had been on a higher level, or standing on a car.
It was clear and deliberate.
This wasn't an accidental shot.
Someone had waited for the right moment.
I flipped it over.
On the back, in handwriting I didn't recognize: *11/14.
Confirmed.
6:18 PM.*
"She was watching me," I said.
Ethan didn't answer, which was its own kind of answer.
"Vanessa was watching me."
"It wasn't — it was only once.
She wanted to know what you looked like."
"She wanted to know what I looked like." I set the photograph face-down on the workbench.
"Your girlfriend hired herself to surveil me so she could confirm I was real."
"She wasn't — we weren't—"
"Stop managing your words.
Just tell me.
How long?"
He looked at the floor.
"Ethan.
How long."
"Four years."
The garage was very quiet.
Four years.
Brooke had moved in next door three years ago.
Which meant this had been happening before Brooke.
Before the briefcase.
Before the apartment on Calloway Street.
Four years ago, we had taken a vacation to Portugal for our anniversary.
I had a photograph of us in Lisbon on the kitchen windowsill.
I had thought we were happy.
"Does she know you're married?"
"Yes."
"Did she know about me?
Specifically?"
"Yes."
"And she still sent someone to photograph me."
"She was — she has anxiety.
She needed to see that you were—" He stopped.
"That I was what?"
"That you were normal."
I let that land.
"She needed to confirm that your wife was normal," I said.
"Before she felt comfortable continuing."
Daniel came back into the garage.
His face had settled into something hard and flat.
"Brooke is at her sister's house," he said.
"She took the car." He looked at Ethan.
"She took some other things too.
From what her sister is saying, she's been keeping a bag packed for about two weeks."
Ethan stood up from the stool.
"What does that mean?" he said.
"What things?"
Daniel's expression didn't change.
"She took the joint account card.
She cleared it about an hour ago.
She must have done it the moment she got in the car."
Ethan went pale.
"How much—"
"Enough," Daniel said.
"It was our emergency fund.
Thirty-eight thousand dollars."
There was a silence.
Then Ethan said the thing that should have surprised me but didn't.
"She had access to my secondary account too," he said.
"She knew the passwords."
I looked at him.
"Vanessa's account?
The Crestline account?"
He didn't answer.
I looked at the briefcase.
I looked at the ledger.
I looked at the man sitting on a stool in my garage, and I thought: there is still more.
There is always more.
My phone buzzed.
The same unknown number.
*She didn't go to her sister's house.
Check the flight apps on his personal laptop.
Second drawer, home office.*
I showed Daniel the screen.
He read it.
Then he looked at Ethan with something that wasn't anger anymore.
It was colder than that.
"Who else knows about all of this?" Daniel said quietly.
Ethan's mouth opened.
"Who is sending her these messages?" Daniel said.
"Who knows enough to tell her exactly where to look?"
The overhead light in the garage hummed.
Ethan's eyes moved to the briefcase, then to the floor, then to the door behind Daniel — the only exit.
And that was when I understood.
Whoever was sending me these messages wasn't a stranger at all.
They knew this house.
They knew Ethan's habits.
May you like
They knew about the laptop in the second drawer.
They had been inside these walls.
