Chapter 3: The Voice in the Background
I didn't sleep that night.
I sat at the kitchen table with Jeremy's phone in front of me and read every message thread I could find.
Most of them were normal — school stuff, memes, a group chat with his soccer teammates.
But the thread with Caleb was different.
It started six weeks before the accident.
The first message from Jeremy read: *"Are you sure about this?
What if someone finds out?"*
Caleb's reply: *"Nobody will.
Just do what I told you and it's over."*
My stomach turned.
I kept scrolling.
Three weeks later, Jeremy again: *"I don't feel right about this, Caleb.
This isn't something small."*
Caleb: *"You already said you'd help.
It's too late to back out now."*
Then, four days before the accident, Jeremy sent one final message: *"I made a copy.
If anything happens, she'll find it."*
I read that line three times.
*She'll find it.*
He meant me.
I pressed my hand flat against the table to stop it from shaking.
My son had been scared.
He had been scared enough to plan ahead, to make sure I would have something to find.
And four days later, he was g*ne.
I picked up the phone and called my sister, Dana.
She answered on the first ring.
"It's two in the morning, Lynn."
"I know.
I need you to come over."
A pause.
"What happened?"
"I found Jeremy's phone.
There are messages, Dana.
Messages that — I don't know what they mean yet, but I need someone here."
She arrived twenty minutes later, still in her coat over her pajamas.
I handed her the phone without saying a word.
I watched her read.
I watched her expression change.
She set the phone down slowly.
"Who's the man in the background?" she said.
"The one who told Caleb to hang up."
"I don't know."
"Do you know Caleb's father?"
I thought about it.
I had seen him once, maybe twice, at school pickup in the early days.
A tall man.
Quiet.
He never came to any of the school events.
Jeremy had mentioned him only once, something offhand — *Caleb's dad travels a lot for work.*
"Not really," I said.
"Why?"
Dana turned the phone over in her hands.
"Because that voice didn't sound like a teenager's father telling his kid to get off the phone.
It sounded like someone giving an order."
She was right.
I had replayed it in my head a hundred times since the call ended.
The voice was controlled.
Deliberate.
It wasn't panic.
It was authority.
"I want to go to the police," I said.
Dana looked at me carefully.
"With what?
Two messages and a phone call where someone said hang up?"
"Jeremy left this for me on purpose.
He said so himself — *I made a copy.
If anything happens.*"
"I know." She reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"I know.
But we need to understand what we have before we walk into a police station.
If there's someone behind Caleb — someone with real power — and we go in with nothing solid, they'll dismiss it in five minutes."
I hated that she was right.
"Then what do I do?"
"You find out what Jeremy copied," Dana said.
"Because he didn't just say he made a copy.
He said *she'll find it.* He planned for you to find it, Lynn.
Which means it's somewhere you'd look."
I stared at her.
Then I stood up and walked to Jeremy's room.
His desk was exactly as he'd left it.
Homework in a folder.
A half-finished drawing of a car he'd been working on for months.
Two library books.
A charger.
And taped to the inside back panel of his desk drawer — a folded piece of paper and a small USB drive.
My hands were shaking so badly I could barely unfold the paper.
It was a printed photograph.
Two men standing outside a building I didn't recognize.
One of them was Caleb's father.
The other man I had never seen before.
On the back of the photograph, in Jeremy's handwriting, were four words:
*Hartley Road.
May you like
October 3rd.*
October 3rd was the night of the accident.
