Chapter 6: The Only Time We'll Ask Nicely
I showed Danny the message.
He read it twice.
His jaw set.
"They're watching you," he said.
"That car you saw outside your house this morning — they knew Harold came to you.
They knew about the phone."
"Which means someone at the cafe told them," I said.
"Someone who knew Harold found it."
We looked at each other.
"The manager," Danny said.
"He called me within an hour of Harold leaving my house," I said.
"Don't talk to anyone.
He wasn't warning me out of kindness.
He was warning me because he knew what Harold had found, and he needed me quiet before I figured out what it meant."
Danny stood up and went to his window, looked down at the street.
"The car is gone," he said.
"That doesn't mean they are."
I thought about my grandchildren.
They were at school.
They were safe for now.
But the thought of them — small, trusting, completely unaware — made something harden in my chest.
I picked up my phone and typed back to the unknown number: *I don't know what you're talking about.*
"Buy us time," I said to Danny.
"Act like I'm scared and confused.
Which I was, yesterday.
I'm not anymore."
He nodded.
"My aunt's name is Patricia.
Judge Patricia Owens, retired.
I'm calling her right now."
He stepped into the hallway.
I could hear him talking — low, urgent, the way you talk when you need someone to understand that this is serious without making them panic.
I looked at the prepaid phone on the table.
The cracked screen.
The messages that someone had been careful enough to send from a burner, but not careful enough to notice they'd connected to their own home Wi-Fi network.
Arrogance, I thought.
The kind that comes from never being questioned.
Never being held accountable.
The kind that assumes a sixty-eight-year-old waitress won't know what metadata is.
Danny came back in.
"She'll see you today," he said.
"Two o'clock.
I'll drive you."
"Thank you, Danny."
"Don't thank me yet." He sat down.
"She said to bring everything.
Every screenshot, every message, the phone itself, Robert Yates's contact information, and anything you have in writing about the estate."
"I have letters," I said.
"Robert sent me paperwork months ago.
I have it at home in a folder.
I didn't understand most of it at the time."
"Bring all of it."
I nodded and stood to go.
"Mrs.
Susie," Danny said.
"One more thing.
That message they sent you — *the only time we'll ask nicely* — that's a threat.
Patricia is going to want to know about it.
And so will the police, eventually."
"I know," I said.
"Are you ready for this to get bigger?"
I thought about the night I came home and held my grandchildren and cried, not knowing how I was going to feed them.
I thought about the girl shouting across the cafe.
I thought about the manager's face — not angry, not concerned, just careful.
Managed.
The face of a man who already knew the outcome.
"They made it big," I said.
"I'm just catching up."
I walked home along the back street, away from where the car had been parked.
I moved quickly, kept my head down.
When I turned onto my block, I stopped.
There was a woman standing at my front door.
Not the manager.
Not anyone I recognized from the cafe.
She was well-dressed, somewhere in her fifties, and she was holding a manila envelope.
May you like
She saw me and didn't move.
She just waited.
