10. Avery #3
“He leaves when I tell him.” My voice rises before Trigger can move.
Declan’s head turns back toward me, every old command in his face fighting the fact that I have the phone, the evidence, and the right to make this hurt.
“Trigger, one more car behind me, one more man near my house, one more woman inside my clinic waiting to call him, and I leave Indiana before this baby is born. Declan gets the address and contact a court requires, and nothing else. Do you understand me?”
Trigger swallows. “Yes.”
“Say what you understand.” I keep my attention on Trigger, not Declan, because the prospect needs to learn that an order from my husband doesn’t erase one from me.
“No tail, no tracker, no hidden watch, no clinic contact. If somebody approaches you, it goes through Cruz and you get told first.” Trigger recites each limit with his eyes on me the whole way through, and that is the first useful thing he has done since I saw the sedan.
“Go to the diner. Wait for Cruz. Do not follow me from here.” I point across the road, and Trigger moves before Declan can reclaim the order.
Trigger picks up his phone and walks across the road. Declan lets him go because I already gave the order he came here expecting to give. His anger follows Trigger. When he looks back at me, he is terrified, and I no longer mistake his terror for care.
“The threat is real,” Declan says. “The family file had your old address, your car, the clinic you used before we separated, June’s number, and the routes you drove most. Sasha searched the old house through a property service two days ago.”
“Then why didn’t anyone tell me?” I step closer despite myself, fury burning through the fear that Sasha has reached toward June and the clinic where my child is being watched.
“Cruz learned about the search this morning. Gage was trying to confirm the company before the briefing. I learned about it after I had already put Trigger behind you.” He sets the tracker on the sedan rather than pocketing it.
“I should have brought every fact to you and asked what you wanted. I thought asking meant giving you the chance to say no. I could not stand the answer being no.”
Hearing him admit it doesn’t make me trust him. Worse, some part of me still wants the man I married to exist somewhere inside the one who followed me, and wanting that is dangerous enough without pretending it is hope.
“A real threat does not make your lie less of a lie,” I say. “Sasha used a stolen file to find me. You used Trigger, a tracker, my electric account, and a woman at my doctor’s office. Both of you decided what you wanted mattered more than what I said.”
He takes the blow with his boots planted where they are. “I know what I looked at.”
“Do not say that unless you are prepared to prove it.” I take out my phone and open the message thread with Cruz so Declan can watch me set the terms with the man who now controls security.
“I want the complete threat briefing tonight. Not the part you think I can handle. I want every page Sasha took, every search attached to my name, and every option I can choose from. You will be there only if I say you can be.”
“All right.” Declan releases the tracker and leaves it on the sedan. Relief touches his face for half a second before he understands I invited him to one briefing and nothing beyond it.
“Tomorrow, you bring me a written list of every man, woman, plate, phone number, tracker, favor, clinic contact, account search, and order you used.” I add the appointment to my phone while speaking, making a record before he can turn tonight’s fear into another hidden exception.
“You will cancel each one while I listen. My attorney will add a no-surveillance agreement to the temporary order, and you will sign it.”
“I will.” He watches my damaged fingers move over the screen and keeps his hands at his sides, finally understanding that he cannot take the phone and make the task easier.
“If you leave one thing out, I will find it.” I open my car door and stop when Trigger runs back from the diner with his phone in one hand and Cruz still on the line.
His face has lost the embarrassment it carried when I trapped him.
What replaces it is fear that has nothing to do with Declan’s anger.
“The family-file search wasn’t only the old house,” he says, offering me the phone rather than Declan. “They searched your mother’s address too. The request came through a property company tied to the missing route sheet.”
My mother has been dead for fourteen years, but the little white house where I sat beside her bed belongs to a cousin now, along with two children who have never met Declan or Sasha.
They searched for a woman I buried and found another family living in her house.
I take the phone and ask Cruz for the company name, the date, and the full report while Declan stands across the hood with the tracker between us.
When Cruz finishes, I set the briefing time and tell him Declan may attend because I want him there while every order is read back. Then I face my husband. “You come with Cruz. You do not follow my car.”
Declan’s truck stays in the abandoned lot when I turn onto the county road alone. In my mirror, he picks up the tracker and closes his hand around the thing he used to find me, but he does not move until I am gone.