Chapter 3: Don't Move
"Take your hand out of your pocket," I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
Every muscle in my body had gone rigid.
Melissa stopped walking.
Her eyes moved from my face to the phone in my hand.
"Sarah." She said it the way you'd talk to someone standing too close to the edge of something.
"You don't understand what's happening here."
"Then explain it."
"I can't do that out here."
"You're going to have to."
She pulled her hand slowly from her pocket.
Empty.
She held both palms up, and for one second she almost looked reasonable.
Almost looked like the woman who had packed Ethan's lunch every morning for eleven months.
Who had learned he liked his sandwiches cut diagonally, not straight across.
Then her eyes moved to the back door, and the reasonableness was gone.
"Ethan," she called out.
"Come here, sweetheart."
"Don't." I stepped between her and the door.
"Don't you say his name."
Something shifted in her face.
Not anger.
Something colder than anger.
"You're making this so much harder than it needs to be," she said.
"Who is R?" I held up the phone.
"Who are you sending messages to about my son?"
She didn't answer.
She looked at the phone the way you look at something you've already decided you're going to take back.
"The police are on their way," I said.
"I called them before I came outside.
Whatever you're planning — it's already over."
That landed.
I watched it land.
Her jaw tightened and she glanced toward the front of the house, calculating something.
"You called them before you even knew what was in there," she said.
"The bus driver told me enough."
Her head came around slowly.
"Marcus."
It wasn't a question.
It was the sound of someone crossing a name off a list.
"What did he tell you?" she asked.
"Four words.
They were enough."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then something in her posture changed — a loosening, like a decision being made.
"Sit down, Sarah."
"I'm not sitting down."
"I'm not who you think I am." She said it quietly.
"And this is not what you think it is.
But I need you to be calm, because there are people watching this house right now who are not the police, and if you keep standing in the middle of this yard holding that phone, you are going to put Ethan in danger."
The yard seemed to tilt slightly.
"What people?" I said.
She glanced toward the back fence.
Just once.
Just for a second.
I didn't look.
I couldn't make myself look away from her.
"Who is watching my house?" I said.
Before she could answer, a siren cut through the neighborhood.
Close.
Getting closer.
Melissa closed her eyes.
When she opened them, something was gone from her face that I couldn't name.
"When they get here," she said carefully, "tell them you found the phone.
Show them the messages.
But do not — do not — mention the name R to anyone until you've spoken to someone from the FBI field office.
Not the local officers.
The field office."
"Why would I—"
"Because R is not a person," she said.
"R is a case file.
And Ethan has been part of it for six weeks."
The sirens were in front of the house now.
I heard car doors.
May you like
I heard Ethan call for me again from the back step.
And I stood in the middle of my own backyard holding a stranger's phone, realizing I had no idea what had been happening inside my own home.
