Chapter 1 - THE SECOND TRACKER
At 12:57 A.M., Ryan Carter turned the key to his new apartment and almost walked straight into his mother.
Linda stood three feet from his door.
She wasn't knocking.
She wasn't calling him.
She was simply standing there beneath the weak hallway light, handbag over one shoulder, looking as calm as if she had been waiting outside a grocery store instead of her twenty-four-year-old son's apartment at nearly one in the morning.
Ryan stumbled backward.
“Jesus, Mom.”
Linda glanced at the watch on her wrist.
“Downtown till one A.M.?”
For several seconds, Ryan could only stare at her.
He had moved out eleven days ago.
Eleven days.
That was how long it had taken him to get his own apartment, move his clothes out of his childhood bedroom, sign his first lease without Linda reading every paragraph over his shoulder, and disable the location sharing she had insisted on keeping active since he was sixteen.
He pulled his phone from his pocket.
“No.”
Linda raised an eyebrow.
Ryan opened Find My.
He turned the screen toward her.
Her name was right there.
Location Sharing: OFF.
“I turned tracking off when I moved out.”
Linda looked at the screen.
Then at him.
She said nothing.
That silence bothered Ryan more than an argument would have.
“Mom.”
“I wanted to make sure you got home.”
“How did you know where home was?”
“I have your address.”
“How did you know I wasn't home?”
Linda's mouth tightened.
Ryan waited.
She didn't answer.
Finally he stepped inside and closed the door between them.
He didn't sleep much.
By seven-thirty the next morning, suspicion had replaced exhaustion.
Ryan went downstairs to the apartment garage and searched his car.
Glove box.
Trunk.
Under the floor mats.
Center console.
Nothing.
Then he pushed the driver's seat all the way forward.
There it was.
A small white AirTag had been taped beneath the seat frame with a strip of black adhesive.
Ryan stared at it.
For one strange moment, he felt more relieved than angry.
Of course.
Linda.
It was exactly the kind of thing she would do.
He ripped the tracker loose.
Twenty minutes later, he was driving toward the suburban house he had spent most of his life trying to escape.
Linda was drinking coffee at the kitchen table when Ryan walked inside.
He didn't say hello.
He slapped the AirTag onto the table.
“You put this in my car?”
The little white disc spun once before settling beside her mug.
Linda's expression changed.
She picked it up.
Turned it over.
Ryan folded his arms.
“Don't pretend.”
Linda slowly raised her eyes.
“That one isn't mine.”
Ryan laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Seriously?”
Linda's gaze moved past him.
Toward his shoulder.
Toward the backpack hanging there.
She pointed.
“Mine is in your backpack.”
Ryan stopped breathing.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then Ryan slowly slid the backpack from his shoulder.
Linda reached for it.
Ryan jerked it away.
“No.”
He unzipped the front pocket himself.
His fingers searched beneath a notebook, two charging cables and a pack of gum.
Something small clicked against his fingernail.
Ryan pulled out another AirTag.
He placed it on the table beside the first.
Two identical white discs.
Two trackers.
Linda calmly lifted one finger.
She pointed to the tracker from the backpack.
“That one's mine.”
Then she pointed to the AirTag Ryan had found beneath his car.
“I've never seen that one before.”
Ryan looked from his mother to the two trackers.
Until that moment, he'd thought he understood the problem.
He had a controlling mother.
Now he understood something worse.
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His mother wasn't the only person watching him.
And whoever had hidden the second tracker had been close enough to crawl beneath his driver's seat.
