Chapter 1
The second set of headlights swept across the living room blinds at 9:13 p.m.
By then, I was already sitting in my truck across the street, parked under the old maple tree near our mailbox, watching everything through the small porch camera I had installed after a package went missing last Christmas. Funny how the smallest things end up becoming useful.
My name is Adam Whitfield. I had been married to Claire for six years.
The text had come in at 6:47 that evening while she was in the shower. I was sitting on the couch with her phone face-up on the cushion beside me, not snooping, just charging it, when the screen lit up.
I really miss your body.
I sat with that sentence for a long moment before I picked up the phone.
I am not, by nature, a man who improvises well. I plan things. I had spent the better part of three years as a project manager learning that the difference between a disaster and a resolution is almost always preparation, and something in me — some cold, methodical part I didn't entirely recognize — decided in that moment that I was not going to confront Claire with a single text message she could explain away as a misunderstanding or a coworker's joke gone wrong.
I wanted the full picture.
I typed back: Just texting me? Prove it. Tonight I'll be home alone, fresh out of the shower, and waiting for you.
He responded within ninety seconds. Excited. Specific about timing. I deleted the exchange before Claire turned off the water, and when she came downstairs in her robe, hair still damp, I told her I had to step out for a work emergency and would be back later.
May you like
I was not, of course, going anywhere.
What Claire did not know — what neither she nor Ryan Mercer knew, sitting in their respective corners of a deception they each believed they were managing alone — was that I had spent the preceding eleven days quietly building a complete picture of what had been happening at her office. I had found the first message three weeks earlier, an older one she'd forgotten to delete, and instead of confronting her immediately I had made the harder, colder choice to wait, watch, and gather everything before I said a single word.
