Chapter Seven: Static

Elena

He told him you know about the accident.

I stared at that message until the bathroom tile went cold under me. My legs had gone numb and I hadn't even noticed.

Not Damian. Not Sophia. Not Varner, unless he'd lied to me, and my gut said he hadn't. Someone else was in this. Someone who had reached Marcus before I'd said a single word about it out loud to a living soul.

I tried the number back. It rang twice, then a flat recorded voice told me it was no longer in service.

Gone. Whoever warned me had disappeared the second the warning left their hands.

I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and let myself have exactly one minute of falling apart, quiet, controlled, the kind you can wash off your face in under sixty seconds. Then I stood up. There was no one coming to carry me through this. There never had been.

Marcus came home early that evening, and something soft in his face when the door opened made my stomach drop before he'd even spoken.

"Hey." He kissed my temple like it was any other Tuesday. "Good day?"

"Fine." The lie came out easier than it should have.

"You're home early."

"Wanted to see you."

I searched his face for a lie in that and found nothing. Somehow that was worse than if I had.

"What did you get up to today?"

"Errands. Nothing exciting."

"Did anyone call?"

The question closed around my throat, not tight enough to hurt yet. Just enough to remind me it could.

"Just my sister. Checking in."

"Everything alright?"

"Everything's fine, Marcus." I made myself smile at him the way I used to when I meant it. "Why do you keep asking?"

"No reason." He smiled back, warm, and it told me nothing at all.

He wasn't accusing me of anything. A man who suspects you and says nothing has already decided he doesn't need your confession. He's watching to see what you do next.

I went upstairs before dinner and stood with my back against the closed door for a moment, breathing. Some small stubborn part of me still wished, standing there, that the man downstairs was the one I married. I hated that part of myself. I let it have its moment and then I put it away, the way I'd been learning to put everything away lately.

I didn't see what happened after I left the room. I learned it later, in pieces, the way I learned most things about him.

He stood at the window with his phone against his ear, his voice low.

"Pull her phone records," was all he said. "Everything. Calls, messages, going back two weeks."

No explanation. No hesitation. An order, given the way he'd order a car brought round.

I only knew, lying in bed that night, that something in the house had shifted. Some pressure behind my ribs that had nothing to do with the tumor.

It was past eleven when my phone lit up on its own.

No sound. No banner. The screen just woke up, glowing in the dark, and for three seconds I lay there watching it like it was deciding whether to say something to me. Then it went dark again, the same way it had come on. I sat up fast, my heart slamming, and grabbed it off the nightstand.

Nothing on the lock screen. No missed call. No message. Just heat coming off the glass, real heat, like it had been working hard the whole time it sat there doing nothing.

I opened the battery settings with my thumb shaking so badly it took two tries to hit the right icon.

There was an app I didn't recognize. A small grey square, no name I could place, sitting near the top of the list of things draining power while I slept.

I remembered the kitchen three weeks ago. Marcus with my phone in his hand, frowning at it, telling me it wasn't updating properly, that he'd take it in himself so I wouldn't have to deal with something so tedious.

I had felt grateful watching him carry it off. I had thought, foolishly, that this was tenderness.

My throat tightened around that memory and I didn't try to explain it away. I just sat there with the phone glowing in my hand and let the weight of it settle.

The screen buzzed once, sudden enough that I nearly dropped it.

One line. No name attached. No number I recognized.

Careful what you say in this house. I already know most of it.

I stared at those words until they blurred. It hadn't come from the number that warned me before. This was someone else, or the same person using a different door, and either way it meant one thing I couldn't argue myself out of.

Whoever this was had been listening. Maybe for a while.

I looked at the small grey icon still sitting there in my battery settings, patient, silent, and I understood I hadn't found an answer tonight. I'd found a second question standing right behind the first one, waiting its turn.

"What are you," I whispered, and my voice barely made it out of my chest.

The phone buzzed again in my hand before I could set it down.