Page 36 of What We Burn

“Someone dug him up.”

“Nobody dug him up, Eli. He’s under six feet of sand in the middle of fucking nowhere⁠—”

“Then explain how his phone is sending texts.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do if you’d all shut the fuck up for thirty seconds.” Milo’s voice is the sharpest I’ve heard it. He’s sitting on an overturned crate with his laptop balanced on a toolbox, fingers moving fast, face lit blue-white from the screen. He hasn’t cracked a joke since Holden dragged us out of bed twelve minutes ago, which is how I know exactly how bad this is.

Milo fills silence the way most people fill lungs. When he goes quiet, the air gets thin.

Holden’s garage smells like motor oil and cold concrete. There’s a single bare bulb overhead. Door is mostly shut, the house between us and a sleeping Sage.

Unknown

How’s the throat?

Bet it would have hurt less if you’d let me fuck it.

Then the contact card. Brock smiling. Beer in hand. Dead for weeks.

“It’s his number,” Milo says, still typing. “Same carrier, same SIM registration. Can’t be his actual phone. But it could be a clone. Which wouldn’t be easy. Ordinarily, you’d need physical access to the device . . . ” He trails off.

“You buried it with him, right?” Holden is pacing. Three steps, turn, three steps, turn. Jaw so tight I can see the muscle jumping from across the room. “Phone, wallet, everything. It all went in the hole with him?”

“Ah, not exactly,” Micah says.

Micah’s hands flatten against his thighs. His eyes flick up to mine, then back to the laptop screen. “We didn’t bury the phone with him,” he says, quiet but steady. “We did a factory reset and ditched it at the airport after withdrawing the last of his cash. Milo even microwaved the SIM at a 7-Eleven. The idea was if they figured out we were running a clone and faking his location, they’d chase the last known signal out west. Not to where we actually put⁠—”

“—the body,” Milo finishes. “Which was in the opposite direction, as planned. Holden’s protocol, not mine.”

“Bullshit.” Holden stops pacing and rounds on them, voice low and lethal. “I said cover your tracks, not walk the fucking phone into a goddamn convenience store.”

“Phone—airport. SIM card—convenience store.” Milo doesn’t flinch. “It’s forensics 101, boss. You move the device, you break the event chain. That’s spread. So if they do find a body, they don’t have all the evidence they need in a tidy package.” His eyes lock on Holden’s. “Like you wanted.”

Holden breathes through his nose but doesn’t argue—he just doesn’t like that the protocol left a loose thread someone else is now pulling.

“So the physical phone is wiped,” Eli says from his corner. Quiet. Careful. Testing whether he’s allowed to speak. When Holden doesn’t cut him off, he continues. “The SIM is fried. Which means whoever sent this text couldn’t have used Brock’s actual device.”

“No shit,” Holden mutters.

“Which means they spoofed it,” Milo says. His typing slows. Stops. He stares at the screen like he’s just confirmed something he was hoping to be wrong about. “I’ve got the clone running on a private server. The account’s still active—has to be, because I’m using it to run his socials and cycle his purchases.”

“Purchases?” Holden asks.

“Small transactions. Coffee shops, streaming services, gas stations along a route that makes it look like he’s road-tripping down the coast. But the best part—” Milo looks up and grins. “Is that the money gets rerouted through three shells before it lands in the accounts of several rape crisis charities. Seemed fitting.”

Nobody comments on that. Milo made the right choice.

“Point is,” Milo continues, “if someone sent a text through Brock’s actual number—through the carrier—it would show up on my clone. It’s a mirror. Everything that hits the account, I see.” He turns the laptop around so we can see the screen. Brock’s message log. Sage’s name isn’t in it. “There’s nothing here. No outgoing text to Sage. No contact card sent. Nothing.”

“So it didn’t go through the carrier,” Micah says.

“It went around it. Someone used a spoofing service to make a message look like it came from Brock’s number without actually routing through his account. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing. Costs about twelve bucks and a burner email.”

“Can you trace the spoof?” Holden asks.

“Maybe. Depends on the service. Some of them keep logs, some don’t. The good ones don’t. Stephen doesn’t strike me as someone who’d leave an easy trail.” He’s already typing again. “But here’s what’s interesting—the contact card. You can’t spoof a contact card the same way you spoof a text. That was crafted. Someone built it manually and attached it. Brock’s photo, his number, his email. It’s not pulled from a real phone—it’s a package. Designed to land in Sage’s chat and make her think the dead man she helped murder is texting her.”

“Psychological warfare,” I say.