Chapter 14
Cove
It was approximately twenty minutes after Ben dropped me off that night when I realized I didn’t have my phone.
During the drive, I’d been too focused on talking with him to notice its absence, which was honestly pretty typical for me by then. Unless I heard a notification go off, my phone usually stayed buried in my bag all the way home.
It usually stayed there for a while after I got in too, at least until I’d taken a long shower to rinse off the salt and the faint, clinging smell of aquarium work, because no, I still hadn’t gathered the nerve to use the ridiculously fancy shower attached to my office.
Maybe that could be next month’s goal.
So it wasn’t until I had wet hair dripping down my back and a towel slung low around my hips that I finally went to the kitchen table, where I’d dumped my bag the second I got home, and reached inside.
My hand found lip balm, three pens, my broken comb, emergency pretzels, and the backup security chip for Tobias’s estate, but no phone.
I checked the side pockets next, just in case my phone had somehow shrunk and wedged itself into one of the little coin-sized compartments, but it was one empty pocket after another.
Fuuuuuuuuuck.
I turned the bag upside down and dumped everything onto the table, then searched through the mess as if sheer desperation might cause my phone to reappear.
It did not.
What appeared instead was a receipt from a coffee shop I hadn’t been to in over a month, a hair tie tangled with strands of copper hair, a crumpled sticky note with “check nitrate drift in lower reef” written across it in my own increasingly unstable handwriting, and a granola bar that had suffered enough trauma at the bottom of my bag to qualify as powder.
“Okay,” I said, far too calmly. Which usually meant I was about thirty seconds away from not being calm at all.
It was probably still at the estate.
That was the obvious answer. The only reasonable answer, really. Even if I’d had it in the car and somehow left it there, Ben’s car was technically Tobias’s car, which meant the phone would still end up at the estate anyway.
I forced myself to think through the day.
I remembered having it during lunch because I’d taken a photo of Puff Daddy pressed against the glass, staring at me with his adorably stupid little judgmental face. After that, I must have set it down somewhere.
Somewhere safe.
Somewhere retrievable.
The problem was that I could not retrieve it using the thing that had been left behind.
My laptop seemed like a possibility for approximately forty-five seconds before I remembered that two-factor authentication existed, which meant that every attempt to log in to anything useful required sending a code to my phone.
My missing phone.
I groaned and dragged my hands down my face before remembering that I was still mostly naked and dripping onto the kitchen floor.
I could call Ben using a neighbor’s phone.
Except I couldn’t.
Because I didn’t know his number.
I didn’t know Tobias’s either.
That realization landed harder than it should have, considering both numbers were technically saved somewhere. Both of them had become part of the architecture of my life, and yet without one small rectangle of glass, I couldn’t reach either of them.
God, I bet Tobias knows my number.
I considered waiting until morning.
I really did.
For maybe an entire minute, I stood there and tried to convince myself that sleeping without my phone would not kill me. People had survived without phones for thousands of years. People had crossed oceans without alarms, maps, group chats, or the internet.
Those people had also probably been better at remembering things.
My alarm was on my phone.
My messages were on my phone.
Ben would text me in the morning when he arrived, and I wouldn’t answer, and then he might tell Tobias, and Tobias might—
I stopped there.
That thought opened too many doors.
The point was, I needed to go back.
I dressed quickly, tugging on a clean shirt that immediately started soaking through where my hair rested against the fabric.
I shoved my feet into shoes without socks, regretted it instantly because wet ankles in sneakers felt like a sensory crime, then wasted another thirty seconds finding two socks that didn’t match and deciding I no longer cared.
By the time I finished, my apartment looked like I’d been robbed.
I gave the mess one last look, delegated cleanup to Future Cove, grabbed my bag, my badge, and the backup security chip, and headed for the door.
The next problem was getting there.
I couldn’t order a rideshare without a phone.
After locking my apartment behind me, I crossed the hallway and knocked softly on Mrs. Alvaro’s door.
She opened it a moment later in a robe the color of lavender soap, her silver hair clipped on top of her head, and an expression already suggesting that whatever I needed was going to be both inconvenient and entertaining.
“Cove. How ya goin’?”
“Hi. I’m so sorry—”
“You always start with that.”
“I know. Sorry.” I winced. “I mean—right. Um. I left my phone at work, and I need to get back there, but I can’t call anyone because I don’t know their numbers, and I can’t order a rideshare because, again, phone.”
She stared at me for a beat before practically cooing, “Oh, honey.”
That was not encouraging.
“I know,” I said miserably.
“You want to borrow mine?”
“Please.”
She stepped back and let me inside without another question.
Her apartment smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and cinnamon, warm in a way mine never quite managed to be.
The television murmured in the living room, paused on a crime documentary with a grainy image of a house that looked much less expensive than Tobias’s but somehow significantly more threatening.
She handed me her phone.
That almost made me emotional, which was deeply embarrassing, so I focused very hard on downloading and opening the rideshare app instead.
“You know the address?” she asked.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“It’s complicated.”
She leaned over my shoulder as I typed in the closest road name and adjusted the pin as far as the map would allow. When the price appeared, Mrs. Alvaro made a low sound in her throat.
“Where do you work, a Bond villain’s island?”
“Honestly?” I stared at the total. “Kind of. This is more than it usually is.”
She laughed and waved away my attempt to protest. “Put it through. You can pay me back later.”
“I can Venmo you once I get my phone.”
“You better.”
The car was twelve minutes away, which meant I spent twelve minutes standing awkwardly near her door while she pretended not to notice me vibrating out of my skin.
She asked if I wanted tea. I said no. Then yes.
Then no again because I was leaving soon.
She poured me half a mug anyway and told me to drink it before I floated off into the ceiling.
By the time the rideshare arrived, I had managed three scalding sips and given a sincere promise to pay her back as soon as possible.
As I opened the car door, Mrs. Alvaro called from behind me, “You’ll be right, Cove.”
I really hoped she was correct.
The driver was quiet, thank God.
The car smelled like coconut air freshener and old upholstery, and the seatbelt had a twist in it that kept pressing into my collarbone. I sat in the back, my bag hugged against my chest, and watched the city thin through the dark windows.
It felt wrong to go back this way.
During the day, the route to Tobias’s estate had become familiar through Ben’s car, Ben’s voice, and Ben’s easy presence in the front seat.
The morning drive had coffee, sunlight, and stories.
The evening version had exhaustion, quiet music, and Ben asking if I’d eaten enough because, apparently, everyone in Tobias’s orbit had decided I was one missed meal away from collapse.
This version had none of that.
Just an unfamiliar driver, a half-working radio, and the dark pressing close to the road.
By the time we reached the private turnoff, my stomach had tightened into something small and hard.
The driver slowed at the first gate and glanced back at me. “Uh. This right?”
“Yeah.” I leaned forward, already fishing my badge from my bag. “Can you roll the window down?”
He did, so I stretched awkwardly across the back seat and tapped the badge to the scanner.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then the gate began to open.
The driver muttered something under his breath that sounded like both a prayer and a curse, and I sank back into the seat with a nervous little laugh that did not make me sound at all like a competent adult.
The second gate opened too.
By then, Tobias and Ben had probably already received a dozen alerts about my entrance, and that helped calm some of my growing anxiety.
Maybe one of them would be waiting at the door by the time we pulled up, confused but not upset, and I’d explain the whole thing, grab my phone, apologize approximately twelve times, and go home.
Easy.
Normal.
Fine.
The house came into view, all glass and dark stone against the night-black ocean, lit from within. After sunset, it looked less like a home and more like a foreboding piece of modern art.
The driver pulled up near the front steps. “You want me to wait?”
“No, it’s okay. I work here. I’ll have someone take me back.”
He seemed relieved not to have to sit in front of a billionaire’s cliffside mansion while the ocean roared somewhere below. “Righto. Have a good night.”
“You too. Thank you.”
I climbed out, shut the door, and watched his taillights disappear down the drive before turning toward the house with a lump in my throat.
It was fine.
I had my badge. I worked here. I was allowed to be here.
I tapped the badge to the reader beside the front door, and the lock clicked open.
Inside, the entry hall was dim and quiet, lit by faint lights along the hallways and the faint blue wash from the tanks deeper in the house. The door shut behind me with a soft sound.