Chapter 4: The Message text
Nathan’s text arrived on Alex’s phone at 4:17 p.m. the day after the wedding, routed through another disposable path that still managed to land like a stone.
Don’t believe everything your wife says. Ask her how she knew exactly where to hide and listen.
Alex read it once and handed me the screen. The room—now a hotel suite across town, paid for by a company card and watched by a uniform in the hall—seemed to shrink.
I had never told anyone I planned to hide under the bed. Not Lena, my maid of honor. Not my mother. Not Alex. The joke had lived between us as a possibility, not a scheduled act. Nathan’s question implied knowledge he should not have had unless someone had told him, or unless he had been watching longer than one locked-door phone call.
Alex’s eyes lifted to mine with a new fracture in them. “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone who might have told him?”
May you like
“No.”
The detective in charge, a woman named Ruiz, took possession of the message and the phone. She did not accuse me. She also did not dismiss the line. Doubt, once invited into a room, did not require a full invitation to stay.
