Chapter 6: The Text from Nowhere
I pulled over two blocks from the campus and looked at the message again.
*You should have stayed in your lane.
This isn't over.*
No name.
No contact saved.
The number had a local area code but nothing else I recognized.
I took a photograph of the screen, then forwarded the message to Daniel with a single line: *Do you know this number?*
His reply came in under a minute.
*No.
But I can find out.
Don't delete it.*
I set the phone down and sat for a moment with the engine running.
The message could have come from Nathan.
It had the right tone — controlled, warning, just vague enough to deny later.
But it could also have come from Cassandra.
Or from someone acting on behalf of one of them.
Either way, someone had my number and had been watching closely enough to send that message within minutes of me leaving the parking lot.
I drove home.
The apartment Nathan and I shared was a two-bedroom on the fourth floor of a building that had seemed temporary when we first moved in and had somehow become permanent.
I had painted the kitchen myself.
I had hung the curtains.
I had arranged the bookshelves.
I walked through the door and stood in the hallway for a moment, looking at it all.
Then I went to the desk in the second bedroom, the room Nathan had used as a study, and I started opening drawers.
I wasn't sure what I was looking for.
I told myself I was looking for anything that confirmed what Daniel had shown me, anything that added to the picture.
But the truth was simpler than that.
I was looking for the version of my life that had been running parallel to the one I thought I was living.
I found it in the bottom drawer, beneath a folder of old lecture notes.
A second phone.
Prepaid.
Fully charged.
I turned it on.
It was password protected, but the screen lit up with a notification before it locked — a missed call from a contact listed only as C.
I set it on the desk.
I called Daniel.
"He has a second phone," I said when he picked up.
A pause.
"Where did you find it?"
"Bottom desk drawer.
It's locked but there's a missed call from someone listed as C."
"Cassandra."
"Most likely." I looked at the phone on the desk.
"Daniel, I need a lawyer.
Not Monday.
Tomorrow."
"It's Saturday tomorrow."
"Then I need one who works Saturdays."
Another pause.
"My sister is a family law attorney.
She's good.
She's handled cases like this before."
"Can you call her tonight?"
"Yes." He hesitated.
"There's something else you should probably know before you speak with her."
"Tell me."
"I spoke with Mia after you left.
She said there's more to the placement situation than I told you.
She said Cassandra's father didn't just make a call on Nathan's behalf.
He made a financial contribution to the hospital foundation.
A significant one.
Timed with the placement approval."
I sat down in Nathan's desk chair.
"That's not just a favor," I said.
"No," Daniel said.
"If it can be documented, it could be a serious problem for Nathan's license.
Before he even starts."
I looked around the study.
The lecture notes.
The framed copy of Nathan's acceptance letter to medical school, the one I had framed myself and given to him as a gift.
The small plant on the windowsill that I watered every Thursday.
"Tell your sister I'll call her at nine tomorrow morning," I said.
"I'll let her know."
I hung up.
I looked at the prepaid phone again.
Then I looked at the acceptance letter on the wall.
I had been so proud of him.
The front door opened.
Nathan's key in the lock.
His footsteps in the hallway.
He stopped in the doorway of the study and looked at me.
Then he looked at the prepaid phone on the desk between us.
His face went very still.
May you like
"Sit down, Nathan," I said.
"We need to talk."
