Page 51 of Stay Scared

“What about Salem?”

Owen looks at me before he answers. “She’s in surveillance with me.”

Silence follows from the other side.

Owen holds my gaze through it until the radio crackles and Cade disappears into the route.

One of the monitors shows Mark inside Trailer Six, seated in front of a laptop displaying the false ride-tunnel footage. His surrendered phone sits sealed inside a clear pouch on the shelf behind him, and the technician’s chair beside him is empty.

Mark looks toward the locked trailer door before returning to the screen.

“He thinks Evan is fine.”

“He does.”

“He thinks I’m still running from Cade.”

“That’s the sequence they’re feeding him.”

My nails press into my palms.

Owen sees it. “You press your nails in when you want to hit something.”

“Do not start cataloging me now.”

His eyes lift slowly to mine.

We stay there for several seconds before he presses another control, and a narrow door opens behind the equipment racks.

“You said this room had answers.”

“It does.”

“About the breach?”

“And about what I kept on you.”

I follow him through.

The next room is small enough that the open door hides part of one wall. Metal cabinets line the back. A desk sits beneath a corkboard covered in maps and printed schedules, while shelves hold labeled drives beside notebooks.

Photographs cover the wall to my left.

There are pictures of me leaving my apartment, entering Halden Coffee, and sitting in my car outside a haunt while Mark adjusts equipment near the trunk. Some were taken from across streets. Others are close enough to catch the writing on my coffee cup.

Dates and arrows crawl across them in Owen’s narrow handwriting, cataloging my apartment, my routes, my clothes, what I ate, where I parked, and how far I stood from an entrance before going inside.

He has turned months of my life into a wall.

I face him.

Owen offers no apology.

A photograph near the center shows me asleep at my desk. The angle is wrong because my apartment window appears behind me.

Whoever took it was inside.

I tear it from the wall.