Chapter 3: What Was On That Phone
Tyler was still staring at the door.
"How does he know your name?"
"I don't know," I said.
But that was a lie.
I had a feeling I didn't want to say out loud yet.
I pulled up my photos.
I had to scroll back almost two years, past Tyler's graduation pictures, past Christmas, past a birthday dinner I barely remembered.
My hands weren't steady.
Tyler watched me scroll without speaking.
Then I found it.
A news article I had screenshotted and saved because it had frightened me when I read it.
A case out of Portland.
A man in his late twenties who had befriended college students online, built relationships over months, and then used those relationships to gain access to family homes.
Three families.
Two of them had reported items missing.
One had reported something worse.
The photo in the article was taken from a distance, slightly blurred, a man walking out of a courthouse.
But the jawline, the way he held his shoulders, the particular angle of his nose — I had looked at that photo enough times that the face had stayed with me without me knowing why.
Until I saw it walk into my kitchen.
I turned the phone toward Tyler.
He read the headline.
Then he read it again.
"That's not him," he said.
But his voice had gone flat.
"Tyler."
"Mom, that is not him.
Marcus is twenty-two.
He's a student.
He's in my program."
"Is he?" I said.
"Have you been to his campus?
Have you met anyone who knows him there?"
Tyler opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
From behind the door, Marcus spoke again.
His voice was perfectly level, the way someone sounds when they have practiced staying calm.
"Tyler, she's confused.
Whatever she thinks she saw, she's made a mistake.
This happens sometimes with older people when they're under stress."
My jaw tightened.
Tyler looked at the door, then at me, then at the phone still in my hand.
"Mom, just — let me talk to him.
Let me open the door and we'll all sit down and—"
"We are not opening that door."
"You can't just lock someone in our basement—"
"I already have," I said.
"And until the police get here, that's where he stays."
Tyler took a step toward the door.
I moved in front of him.
"Tyler.
Listen to me.
He knew my name.
You didn't tell him my name."
"Maybe I did and I forgot—"
"Did you tell him what I look like?"
Tyler stopped.
"Because when he walked in," I said, "he looked at me for exactly one second before he looked at the kitchen.
Not at the room.
At me.
Like he was confirming something."
The silence between us was the kind that meant Tyler was replaying something in his head.
Then his phone buzzed.
He looked down at it.
His face changed.
"What is it?" I asked.
He turned the screen toward me slowly, like he wasn't sure he wanted me to see it.
It was a message from a number saved only as M.
It said: *Don't let her call anyone.
I can explain everything when I'm out.
Trust me more than her.*
May you like
The message had been sent forty seconds ago.
From inside the locked basement.
