Chapter 10 - SIX MONTHS EARLIER
Marissa never came farther than Derek's entryway.
She left the box on the floor, gave me Detective Kim's number back as if returning something dangerous, and walked to her car without looking behind her.
Derek watched until her taillights disappeared.
Then he locked the door.
Neither of us touched the box.
I called Kim.
She answered on the third ring.
"Tell me you did not open anything."
"We didn't."
"Good."
"Marissa brought a notebook."
"She told me she might."
"Did she tell you what's in it?"
"Some."
"My address is beside Lena's name six months before Lena says they met."
Kim was silent for a moment.
"Where is the box now?"
"Derek's entryway."
"Leave it there. An officer will pick it up."
Twenty-eight minutes later, a patrol officer photographed the box where it sat, had Marissa confirm by phone that she had delivered it, and sealed the contents for transfer.
The process felt absurdly formal until I understood why.
If the evidence mattered later, every hand that touched it would matter too.
There would be no room for Lena or Travis to say Derek and I had planted anything.
At 10:30 that night, Noah was asleep in Derek's guest room.
I sat on the floor outside the door.
I had started doing that without noticing.
Every time he slept, I found myself close enough to hear him breathe.
Anna came down the hall and sat beside me.
"You don't have to guard the door all night."
"I know."
Neither of us moved.
After a while she said, "You know what scares me most?"
"What?"
"How normal Lena looked."
I knew exactly what she meant.
Eight months of separation had taught me to expect tension from Lena.
It had not taught me to expect this.
She could argue about preschool pickups at noon and apparently delete security footage at 1:52.
She could send me a smiling photo of Noah eating cereal and, according to that old phone, discuss hiding bruises days later.
The gap between the woman I thought I knew and the woman investigators were describing felt impossible to cross.
At 7:15 the next morning, Detective Kim called.
"We processed the notebook overnight."
I stepped outside onto Derek's back patio.
"And?"
"Marissa's description was accurate."
"Why did Travis have my address?"
"We don't know yet."
"But he had it."
"Yes."
I leaned against the railing.
"What else is in the notebook?"
"I'm limited in what I can disclose."
"I understand."
I did not, but I had learned the sentence.
"There are names, dates, phone numbers, fragments of addresses, and what appear to be personal notes about several women."
"Like what?"
"Things they were afraid of. People they depended on. Places they worked."
A chill moved across my shoulders despite the morning heat.
"He kept leverage."
"That's one possible interpretation."
Kim would not give me conclusions she could not prove.
That restraint made me trust her more.
"What did he write about Lena?"
A pause.
"Your address. Your employer. Derek's first name. Noah's preschool."
My stomach dropped.
"Before Lena says they met?"
"Some entries are dated before the date she gave us."
"How far before?"
"The earliest reference to your family is approximately seven months before your separation."
I closed my eyes.
Lena had told me she met Travis two months after moving into the guest room.
She had insisted there had been no affair.
At the time I had believed her because our marriage was already failing and because I wanted at least one part of the collapse to be simple.
Nothing was simple anymore.
"Did they know each other while we were married?"
"We're looking at communications records."
"Sarah."
"Daniel."
Her tone stopped me.
"Don't make the affair the center of this."
The word hit anyway.
Affair.
"I'm not."
"Good. Because Noah is the case."
She was right.
Whether Lena betrayed me mattered emotionally.
Whether she endangered our son mattered legally and permanently.
I went back inside.
Noah was awake at the kitchen table eating toast.
He held the crust in his right hand and stared suspiciously at the eggs Anna had made.
"Too yellow," he said.
Anna looked at me with a straight face.
"I apologize for the eggs being egg-colored."
Noah giggled.
The sound stopped me in the doorway.
For the first time since the phone call, he sounded like himself.
I sat beside him.
"How's the arm?"
"Itches."
"That means we keep fingers out of the splint."
He gave me a look suggesting this was an unreasonable policy.
My phone buzzed.
Rachel.
Lena's attorney had filed a request to accelerate the custody review.
They wanted an independent medical evaluation and a second forensic interview.
"Why?"
I asked.
"They say the first process was contaminated by your presence."
"I wasn't in the room."
"They know."
"Then how was it contaminated?"
"They're alleging you influenced Noah before he went in."
My jaw tightened.
"I did exactly what Melissa told me."
"And we have people who can testify to that."
Rachel sounded almost bored.
"This is what litigation looks like when the facts are bad for one side. They attack the process producing the facts."
"What about the old phone?"
"Not in family court yet. Let the investigators authenticate it."
She paused.
"There's another issue."
I waited.
"Keene says Lena wants to begin supervised visits tomorrow."
I looked at Noah.
He was dipping toast into egg yolk after declaring the eggs unacceptable.
"Does she have to?"
"The current order permits it."
"What if Noah refuses?"
"The supervisor will handle that. We do not force, bribe, threaten, or coach him."
"Obviously."
"I'm saying it because parents make terrible decisions when they're scared."
I knew that now better than ever.
The first supervised visit was scheduled for 4:00 PM the next day at a family visitation center.
That afternoon, Kim called again.
This time, her voice had an edge.
"We got preliminary carrier records."
I stepped into Derek's garage.
"And?"
"Lena and Travis were communicating months before your separation."
I stared at a shelf of paint cans.
"How long?"
"At least nine months before."
Nine months.
I did the math.
That meant they had been talking while Lena and I were still attending counseling.
While she was telling me she needed space.
While she was accusing me of being emotionally absent because I worked too much.
"Were they together?"
"Phone records don't prove what kind of relationship they had."
"But they knew each other."
"Yes."
"And she lied."
"About when contact began, yes."
I leaned against the workbench.
"How did they meet?"
"We found something interesting there too."
My stomach tightened.
"What?"
"Travis did contract work for the security company that installed the cameras at your house."
I stopped moving.
"What?"
"Two years ago. He was a subcontractor for about four months."
I saw the front door in my head.
The camera.
The control panel.
The installer who came while I was at work.
Lena had handled the appointment.
"Was he at my house?"
"We have an invoice with a technician ID associated with his crew. We don't know yet whether he personally entered the residence."
My skin went cold.
"So he may have known our address before he knew Lena socially."
"Correct."
"Could he access the camera account?"
"We're asking the company."
Suddenly the deletion log felt different.
Maybe Lena had erased it.
Maybe Travis knew more about the system than we realized.
Maybe both were true.
Kim continued.
"Daniel, change every password connected to that house. Wi-Fi, alarm, cameras, garage, everything."
"Already changed some."
"Change all of them."
I did.
That evening, while changing the garage account, I found something I had never noticed.
A list of authorized devices.
My phone.
Lena's phone.
My old tablet.
And a fourth device labeled SERVICE-TEST.
Last active three days ago.
I took screenshots and sent them to Kim.
She called within two minutes.
"Do not remove it yet."
"Why?"
"We may want the company to preserve logs first."
"Can whoever owns it still get into my garage?"
"Disable remote opening if you can without deleting the device history."
I did.
Then I stared at the last-active timestamp.
Three days ago.
The day before Noah called me.
At 9:42 PM, the security company finally called Kim back.
She called me afterward.
"SERVICE-TEST was created during installation. It should have been deleted when the job closed."
"Who created it?"
"The technician account was assigned to Travis Walker."
I looked toward the dark windows of Derek's kitchen.
"So he could open my garage?"
"Potentially."
"For two years?"
"Potentially."
My mouth went dry.
Then Kim said the part that turned a bad discovery into something much worse.
"The company log shows that device did not just connect three days ago."
May you like
"What did it do?"
"It opened your garage door at 3:18 in the morning."
