Chương 5
“Can Daniel get it?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“Can his mother?”
“No.”
“Can someone delete it remotely?”
Ortiz looked at the phone.
“Possibly, depending on accounts and settings.”
My pulse jumped.
She stood.
“We can address that now.”
She called someone from the hallway and asked for a digital evidence technician.
I stared at the phone.
Daniel’s messages continued arriving.
Don’t let them twist this.
You know Mom panicked because you stopped eating.
Please remember how this actually started.
The last message made my stomach turn.
How this actually started.
For months, they had built that phrase around me.
It had started with nausea.
Then dehydration.
Then a fainting spell in the bathroom.
Then Marlene arriving with soup and opinions.
Then Daniel saying I should rest upstairs because the attic room was quieter than the bedroom near the street.
Then one day the lock.
Then explanations.
Temporary.
For your safety.
Until you stop fighting us.
I looked at Detective Ortiz.
“He’s trying to create a story.”
She followed my gaze.
“Don’t delete the messages.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t reply unless you choose to.”
“What if replying makes him talk?”
“It might.”
“Would that help?”
“It might also alert him to what matters.”
I looked away.
She had refused to turn me into bait.
That made me trust her a little more.
Not much.
A little.
A woman from obstetrics entered and interrupted before either of us could say more.
Dr. Nguyen introduced her as Dr. Feld.
They spoke quietly near the monitor.
I caught words like tracing, contractions, labs pending.
Then Dr. Feld came to the bedside.
“Rachel, I’d like to talk about what your body is doing right now.”
I nodded.
“You’re having contractions.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“How bad?”
“We’re not calling it labor yet.”
“Yet?”
“We need more information.”
Detective Ortiz stood.
“I can come back.”
“No.”
Everyone looked at me.
I hated how desperate the word sounded.
“Please stay.”
Ortiz sat again.
Dr. Feld continued.
“We’re also concerned about dehydration and possible exposure to unknown substances.”
“Can that hurt the baby?”
“It can create risks, but we don’t know what you were exposed to or in what amounts.”
I swallowed.
“Can you test for everything?”
“No.”
The honesty came again.
No promises.
No miracle machine.
Dr. Feld pulled the rolling stool closer.
“We can test for many common substances, monitor you, and treat what we can identify.”
I stared at the ceiling.
Somewhere beyond the curtain, a machine beeped three times.
A nurse laughed softly at something another nurse said.
Life continued at normal volume.
“I recorded them talking about it,” I said.
Ortiz leaned forward slightly.
“About the substances?”
“They never used names most of the time.”
“Most of the time?”
I turned my head.
“There was a bottle once.”
The memory came with the smell of artificial cherry.
Marlene had complained that Daniel bought the wrong kind.
I had seen part of a label before she turned it away.
My mind had stored the color and shape because there had been nothing else to do.
“I saw letters.”
Ortiz opened her notebook.
“Tell me exactly what you remember, and tell me what you’re unsure about.”
I did.
No guessing.
No filling gaps.
Only what I had actually seen.
She wrote slowly.
Then her phone rang.
She checked the screen and stood.
“Excuse me.”
She stepped into the hallway.
I watched through the narrow gap in the curtain.
Her expression changed while she listened.
Not surprise.
Concentration.
She asked one short question, then another.
When she returned, she closed the curtain fully.
“They found recording equipment in the attic.”
I stopped breathing.
“His?”
“It appears so.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t have a complete inventory yet.”
My hands began shaking again.
“There’s more than his phone.”
“Yes.”
The room tilted.
All those nights I had watched Daniel position his camera.
All those times I had believed I knew where the recording was coming from.
“What else did they find?”
Ortiz hesitated.
“There appears to be a fixed camera.”
I stared at her.
“Where?”
“In the attic.”
“Where?”
She understood what I meant.
“I don’t know the exact placement yet.”
A pressure colder than fear moved through me.
The hidden phone had been my secret because I thought I understood what they could see.
I pictured every moment I had taken it out.
Every whisper.
Every date.
Every time I had checked the screen beneath a blanket or behind my hip.
“What if they saw me recording?”
Ortiz looked toward my phone.
“Then we need to assume they may know more than we hoped.”
At that exact moment, Daniel’s messages stopped.
Ortiz watched the screen with me for several seconds.
Nothing came.
No apology.
No accusation.
No frantic explanation.
The silence felt more deliberate than the messages had.
“Could he be deleting things?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“From his phone?”
“Possibly from accounts or devices he controls.”
“Then why are we sitting here?”
Her expression hardened, not at me.
“We aren’t.”
She stepped into the hall again and made another call.
I could hear only pieces of it through the curtain.
Preservation request.
Cloud account.
Search team.
Do not power down anything.
Photograph connections first.
The words were technical and calm, but they did something violence never had.
They made Daniel smaller.
Not harmless.
Not yet.
Just smaller.
He was no longer the person who controlled every door.
He was a man whose electronics could be bagged and labeled.
Dr. Feld returned to the monitor and adjusted one of the bands around my abdomen.
Another contraction tightened through me.
I closed my eyes.
“Breathe normally,” she said.
“I am breathing normally.”
“You’re holding it.”
I let the air out.
She gave me a look that was almost amused.
“Better.”
“I don’t like being told how to breathe.”
“Fair.”
The contraction eased.
She wrote something on the chart.
“We’re going to keep watching.”
“How long?”
“As long as we need to.”
May you like
That answer should have frightened me.
Instead it made me tired.
