12. Avery #2
Near the end of the day, I find a tenant name spelled two ways across a guaranty and the lease it supposedly secures.
The addresses match, but the middle initial doesn’t.
I take both documents to the supervising paralegal rather than correcting the index.
She checks the original file, finds a second guarantor with the same first and last name, and sends the conflict to Nadia.
Nobody throws confetti. Nadia nods once through the office window and returns to her call.
I like that better than praise. I did the work, and the work was useful.
At home, I put the trial schedule beneath my certificate and leave my temporary badge on the desk where I can see it.
June’s dumpling container is in the refrigerator, the navy blouse hangs over the guest-room door, and rain taps the kitchen window where Declan once stood opening jars I overtightened on purpose.
I heat soup, answer two onboarding emails, and let the unknown number ring while I finish a sentence.
It calls again before I set down the spoon.
The surveillance agreement has changed what I do with unwanted contact. I photograph the number, start the recording app, send June a screenshot with one word—unknown—and answer without giving my name. “What do you want?”
Sasha laughs. She sounds farther away than she did in the safehouse bedroom, but the intimacy is worse through the phone, her voice slipping into my kitchen without a key. “Declan said you always answered the second call. The first could be anybody. The second meant somebody needed you.”
My eyes go to the locked office door. The original burner has been in police evidence since October, and my copies sit in three places Sasha cannot reach through me. “Who gave you this number?”
“I want what is mine.” A car door shuts on Sasha’s end. She ignores my question and speaks as if we are discussing something Declan accidentally carried out of her apartment.
“The burner belongs to the man who paid for it, the messages belong to the people stupid enough to send them, and the copies now belong to several attorneys.” I open my notebook to the page where I recorded every transfer, write my own unanswered question at the top of a clean line, and leave the space beneath it where the answer belongs. “Which part is yours?”
“You were always good with papers.” She draws out always as though the word came from Declan’s mouth. “He told me you used a ruler under the lines when he was tired. He didn’t need one with me. I could tell where he lost the word before he put his finger down.”
The soup burns the roof of my mouth because I forgot to stop eating.
I set the spoon beside the bowl and make myself stay seated.
I knew she read for him. Declan confessed it at the table and again inside the affair timeline.
Hearing Sasha describe the moment before he asked for help is worse.
That pause belonged to Tuesday nights in our kitchen, to the husband who trusted me enough to shove a contract across the table and curse at the page.
She watched for the same pause and believed recognizing it made her me.
“What did you read?” I ask.
“Whatever he put in front of me. Manifests. Visitor sheets. Route changes.” Sasha shifts in her seat, leather creaking through the call, and lets the next memory take its time reaching me.
“He liked that I didn’t make a whole ritual out of it.
No ruler. No tea. No Tuesday appointment with his own wife so she could feel necessary. ”
The insult finds its target because part of it is true.
I made tea. I marked Tuesdays on the calendar.
I told myself the routine protected his pride when it also gave me one evening a week he could not hand to the club.
Then the papers and the evening went to her.
I check the app again to confirm the red timer is moving. “He put route changes in front of you?”
“He put everything in front of me. Sometimes he went to shower and left it there. Sometimes he slept.” A car passes on her end, tires hissing over wet pavement. “It was easy. He didn’t have to ask. I already knew what he needed.”
“You read the safehouse paperwork while he slept.” I write the sentence beneath the route-change note and wait for her vanity to correct me.
“I read it whenever I wanted.” The tires hiss again, louder now, and she gives me no reason to think she regrets how easily Declan left her alone with it.
The admission is clean enough for Cruz, and Sasha gives it because she still expects to buy the original phone back with whatever she knows.
A woman who believes she can trade her way out of a recording will let the recording happen.
I open my notebook and write the time beside route changes. “Did you know I was pregnant?”
“Not until you threw the test at him. I knew you were trying.” Sasha turns on a blinker and waits through the steady click before giving me the cruelty she called to deliver.
“He complained about the app every time your phone lit up. I thought it was funny that you could make a calendar for conception while your husband made appointments with me.”
My hand stops. Declan told me she mocked the app.
I have already heard the cruelty in his voice, but Sasha enjoys it.
She wants me imagining every notification while she watched him ignore me.
I refuse to give her that. “So Declan didn’t tell you about the baby, didn’t plan to leave me, and didn’t trust you enough to admit he couldn’t read every page you handed him.
You saw a weakness, made yourself useful, and searched the safehouse while he slept. ”
“Do not turn this into one of your files.” Her amusement disappears. “He came to me because I could handle the man you kept trying to clean up. I drank from his mother’s mug while he watched. Do you know how many people he let touch that thing after she died?”
“At least one too many.” I picture her lipstick on the blue rim and keep my voice level enough that she has to wonder whether the mug hurt as much as she wanted.
“Bring me the burner, Avery. The original.” Sasha gives the command with the confidence of a woman who once watched my husband cancel dinner for her. “I’ll tell you which family file they copied and which one they sold.”
“No.” I put the pen down and touch the locked desk drawer with the toe of my shoe, reminding myself that the copies exist. She can’t threaten them out of existence.
“You should think about the child before you answer.” Sasha laughs when I inhale, pleased that she has finally made me react.
“I am.” I place my free hand over the place where my stomach has begun to feel firmer, refusing to let her use my child to lead me toward her.
“That’s why I won’t meet the woman who helped put my address in a criminal file.
The phone is copied, the route sheet is copied, and neither is in my house.
If you have something to trade, call the police. ”
“The family file contains more than an address.” Sasha starts the car again, satisfied enough with my pause to keep talking.
“It has June’s number. The clinic. Your mother’s old house.
The roads you take when you’re frightened and the one you take when you’re angry.
Declan watched you for years, and men write down more than wives notice. ”
I look toward the front window from where I sit.
Cruz told me about every item except the claim that the routes came from years of watching me.
Sasha may be lying. She may also have pages the club hasn’t identified.
Either way, she has given me one thing I need Cruz to answer.
“You knew all of that and came to the safehouse the morning I was expected to be home. You didn’t know I was pregnant until I walked through the door.
You weren’t trying to take my baby. You were trying to take the burner before Declan learned what you copied. ”
“You keep telling yourself you walked in before I finished.” Her voice drops, and the road noise vanishes as if she has pulled over. “You walked in after I had everything I needed.”
The call ends. I save the recording in two places, email it to my attorney, and forward the file to Cruz with the time, number, and notes. Then I call him rather than wait for the club to arrange another private meeting about a threat aimed at me.
“I have Sasha admitting she read route changes and safehouse papers whenever Declan left her alone,” I say when Cruz answers.
“She also says there are family pages you haven’t identified.
She called a number that is on no page of that file and would not say who gave it to her, and I want that question answered before anything else. I’m bringing you the recording.”
“Send it. Gage and I will review it before you come near the clubhouse.” Papers scrape across Cruz’s table. He is already turning the call into a club investigation without me.
“You will review it with me.” I close the soup container, take my temporary work badge from the desk, and put it beside the notebook filled with Sasha’s words.
“The evidence is mine. The call came to me. The file names my mother, my doctor, my friend, and my child. I want a chair at the table, Cruz, not another man coming to my gate after he has chosen what I can handle.”
He breathes out, and I wait for him to argue. He doesn’t. “Gage will meet you at the road. You sit beside me. Declan sits at the far end and speaks only if you ask him a question.”
“Keep Declan out of the room tonight. You can play it for him when I’m gone.” I lock my office, check the front window, and carry the recording out beneath the navy coat June chose for me. “This happened to me. He doesn’t get to hear it first.”
Cruz agrees. I leave for the clubhouse with my paid trial badge in one pocket, Sasha’s recorded admission in the other, and an empty road behind me the whole way.