Page 37 of You, Only You

I started monitoring the battery usage. Screen time was normal. Apps were minimal. But buried in the system processes was something called "Device Management Framework," a generic, innocuous name that was burning through backgrounddata and location services at a rate that made no sense for a simple system function.

My stomach did something slow and unpleasant. Not a drop, not a lurch. A gradual tightening, like a fist closing around something fragile.

I told myself I was being paranoid. Told myself Will wouldn't. Not after the apartment fight. Not after the promises.

But I'd told myself a lot of things about my father, too. For twenty-four years.

On day four, I waited until I heard the shower running in his ensuite bathroom. Then I connected the phone to my laptop, bypassed the standard settings, and dove into the device logs.

It took me almost thirty minutes to find it.

The "framework" was a beautifully coded tracking application, nearly invisible, deeply embedded, running silently since the moment he'd handed me the phone. It logged my location in real-time, creating a precise timeline of my every movement. It had access to my microphone and camera, though the logs showed those had only been activated once, for a "diagnostic test." The location tracking, however, was constant. Continuous.

I sat there with the data on my screen and didn't move for a long time.

The shower was still running. I could hear the water through the wall, steady and rhythmic, and I thought about how he'd changed my bandages that morning. How his fingers had been gentle. How he'd said "hold still" in that low voice. How I'd felt safe.

I thought about my mother. Sitting at our kitchen table, four months after the arrest, going through bank statements she'd never been shown. Finding accounts she'd never known about. The look on her face wasn't shock. It was something quieter. Thelook of a woman realizing the foundation she'd been standing on was sand.

I knew that look. I'd watched it happen. And now I was sitting in a guest room with a phone full of tracking software and a bandage that a liar had put on my head, and the feeling that was spreading through my chest wasn't anger.

It was the other thing. The one underneath anger. The one that's there when someone you trusted turns out to be exactly what you were afraid of.

The shower shut off.

I didn't move. Didn't close the laptop. Let the evidence glow on the screen.

He emerged a few minutes later, dressed in dark jeans and a gray Henley, his hair still damp. He was heading for the coffee machine when he saw my face. He stopped.

"What's wrong?"

I held up the phone. Turned the laptop so he could see the screen. Didn't say anything.

The silence lasted three seconds. I counted them. Three seconds while his eyes moved from the phone to the laptop to my face, and I watched the blood leave his expression like water running out of a glass.

"Lindsey." His voice was careful. Measured. The voice of a man selecting his words like ammunition.

"How long?" My own voice surprised me. It was calm. Terrifyingly calm. The kind of calm I recognized from my mother, from the kitchen table, from the bank statements. The calm that comes when you've already processed the worst of it in silence and what's left is just... procedure.

"Since the hospital. It's a security..."

"How long did you think it would take me to find it?" I set the phone down on the bed. Precisely. The way I set evidence on a conference table. "I'm a forensic accountant, Will. I find thingsthat are hidden. It's literally all I do. Did you think I wouldn't check? Or did you just think I wouldn't care?"

"It's not what you..."

"It's exactly what I think it is. Location tracking. Real-time. Continuous since the moment you handed me this phone." I tapped the laptop screen. "Your microphone permissions are in here too. You turned them on once. For a 'diagnostic test.'" I looked at him. "What were you diagnosing?"

"I wasn't listening to you. The activation was automatic, part of the setup protocol, I deactivated it immediately..."

"That's not the point and you know it."

He was standing in the middle of the room, hands at his sides, and his face was doing something I hadn't seen before. Not the mask. Not the controlled neutrality. Something underneath all of it, something that looked like a man watching a building collapse and knowing he lit the match.

"I'm keeping you alive," he said. And the control cracked on the word 'alive.' Just a hairline fracture, but I heard it.

"You're tracking me like cargo." My voice was still calm. I wished it weren't. Anger would have been easier. Anger was hot and bright and it moved through you and left. This was cold. This was the cold that comes from recognizing a pattern you've seen before.

"Do you have any idea what they're capable of?" His voice rose. Not shouting. Will didn't shout. He got quiet and intense, and this was the loud version of that, which meant something had broken loose. "They cut your brakes, Lindsey. They could have killed you with a three-ton vehicle. The only reason you're standing here is luck, and I will not..." His voice fractured. "I can't just sit here and hope. I can't just... trust that luck holds. I needed thirty seconds. If something happened, thirty seconds of warning to get to you, to send help, to do something besides..."