PART 4 – SOMEONE WAS WATCHING ME BEFORE I KNEW I WAS WATCHING THEM
The blinking red light above the security camera refused to let me look away.
It had seen everything.
Me hiding behind the concrete column.
Me taking photographs.
Me watching my husband place his hand on another woman’s stomach.
I pulled my sunglasses lower and forced myself to walk—not run—to the elevator.
Running would only make me memorable.
When the doors closed, I finally exhaled.
By the time I reached the ground floor, my heart was still pounding hard enough to make my chest ache.
I climbed into my car and locked the doors.
Only then did I open the photographs again.
Felix’s car.
His conference badge.
His hand on the pregnant woman’s stomach.
The timestamp.
I backed every image up to cloud storage before sending copies to a new email account I created that morning.
If Felix somehow got hold of my phone, I wasn’t losing a single piece of evidence.
Then another thought struck me.
If the security camera had recorded me…
It had also recorded Felix.
And the woman.
I started my engine.
Instead of driving home, I headed toward the bookstore where Caroline had asked to meet me the following afternoon.
I wanted to know exactly where it was.
The bookstore sat on a quiet corner between an antique shop and a florist.
Its faded sign read:
Hawthorne Books
Nothing about it stood out.
No busy crowds.
No obvious reason to choose it.
Maybe that was the point.
I stayed only long enough to memorize the entrance before driving away.
…
When I arrived home, Felix’s car wasn’t there.
His text had been truthful for once.
He really wasn’t home.
I unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
The house was silent.
Too silent.
I walked upstairs toward our bedroom.
Halfway down the hallway, something caught my attention.
The closet door was open.
I always closed it.
Inside, Felix’s largest suitcase sat on the floor.
He had supposedly taken it on his business trip.
Yet here it was.
I slowly unzipped it.
Inside were neatly folded clothes.
Exactly as they had been before his “conference.”
No wrinkles.
No hotel toiletries.
No laundry.
Nothing.
It had never left the house.
A chill ran through me.
How many of those eleven business trips had been fake?
I searched the inside pocket.
Receipts.
Business cards.
A small envelope.
I opened it carefully.
Inside was a receipt from a jewelry store.
Not recent.
Dated four months earlier.
One item purchased.
Diamond necklace.
Price:
$4,860.
I had never received a diamond necklace.
I checked the payment method.
Joint account.
He had bought another woman a gift using our money.
I photographed the receipt and returned everything exactly as I found it.
No mistakes.
No missing papers.
No signs anyone had touched the suitcase.
Just as I finished zipping it closed, I heard the front door downstairs.
Felix.
His voice floated through the hallway.
“Nora?”
“I’m upstairs,” I answered.
His footsteps came closer.
I quickly sat on the edge of the bed, pretending to scroll through my phone.
He entered smiling, carrying a white bakery box.
“Mom insisted I bring you more cake.”
“That was nice of her.”
He leaned down and kissed my forehead.
I almost flinched.
“Feeling better?”
“Much.”
“I’m glad.”
His eyes drifted toward the closet for a fraction of a second.
Just one glance.
So quick that most people would never notice.
But I noticed.
Was he checking whether I had opened it?
“I’ve got another conference next week,” he said casually while hanging his jacket.
“Three days this time.”
I smiled.
“Which city?”
“Philadelphia.”
The lie came so easily.
I nodded as if I believed him.
After dinner, Felix fell asleep on the couch while watching television.
Around nine o’clock, his phone buzzed.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He didn’t wake up.
The screen lit up just enough for me to read the preview.
E: She asked if I wanted chocolate ice cream again. 
A second message appeared.
E: She’s kicking so much tonight. I wish you were here.
I looked at Felix.
Still asleep.
Then back at the phone.
Before I could decide what to do, another notification appeared.
This one wasn’t from “E.”
It simply read:
Unknown Number
She was at the garage today.
Every drop of blood drained from my face.
A second message arrived almost instantly.
Tell your wife to stop asking questions… before someone gets hurt.
PART 5 – SOMEONE KNEW I HAD BEEN FOLLOWING THEM
I stared at the message until the screen went dark.
She was at the garage today.
Tell your wife to stop asking questions… before someone gets hurt.
My hands began to shake.
Someone had seen me.
Not just the security camera.
A real person.
Someone who knew I was Felix’s wife.
Someone who had already reported me.
I looked at Felix.
He was still asleep on the couch, one arm hanging over the side, breathing slowly as if nothing in the world could disturb him.
His phone buzzed again.
This time he woke.
He rubbed his eyes, picked up the phone, and read the messages.
For the briefest moment, I saw something I hadn’t seen on his face in years.
Fear.
He glanced toward me.
I smiled.
“Everything okay?”
He locked the screen almost instantly.
“Just work.”
I nodded.
“You’ve been getting a lot of work messages lately.”
He laughed.
“Apparently they can’t survive without me.”
“I guess not.”
He stood and slipped the phone into his pocket.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
As soon as the bathroom door closed, I opened my notebook.
I wrote exactly what I had seen.
Unknown Number.
She was at the garage today.
Tell your wife to stop asking questions.
I didn’t know who had sent it.
But I knew one thing.
Felix hadn’t looked surprised.
He had looked worried.
…
The next afternoon, I arrived at Hawthorne Books fifteen minutes early.
The bookstore smelled of old paper and fresh coffee.
Only three customers wandered through the shelves.
A gray-haired man sat reading near the window.
A young mother browsed children’s books with her son.
In the back corner, a woman wearing a navy-blue coat closed a hardcover novel and looked directly at me.
“Nora?”
“Caroline?”
She smiled politely.
“Thank you for coming.”
She led me upstairs to a tiny reading room with two armchairs and a kettle sitting on a side table.
It looked more like someone’s living room than a bookstore.
“No cameras,” she said.
“No music.”
“No one listening.”
She waited until I sat down.
Then she slid a thick manila folder across the table.
“I think this belongs to you now.”
I hesitated.
“What is it?”
“Everything I found before someone tried to stop my investigation.”
I opened the folder.
The first page was a photograph.
Felix.
Standing outside the same gray apartment building I had seen yesterday.
The date printed beneath the picture was eight months earlier.
Eight months.
Not five.
I turned the page.
Another photograph.
Felix carrying grocery bags into the building.
Another date.
Seven months earlier.
Then another.
He was assembling a crib.
Another.
Painting a nursery.
Another.
Holding ultrasound pictures.
My vision blurred.
“This can’t be real.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
Caroline’s voice remained steady.
“I verified every photograph before including it.”
I looked through more pages.
Restaurant receipts.
Hotel invoices.
Copies of parking records.
There was even a utility bill.
The account holder’s name had been blacked out.
Only the address remained.
The same apartment.
The same building.
The same place Felix had claimed was hundreds of miles from his conference.
I swallowed hard.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Longer than you think.”
“What does that mean?”
Caroline folded her hands.
“I don’t believe Elise is your husband’s girlfriend.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“I think she’s been living with him.”
The room became perfectly silent.
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
“He lives with me.”
Caroline slowly pushed another document toward me.
“According to neighbors, your husband spends three or four nights a week at that apartment.”
“No…”
“They know him by another name.”
My heart skipped.
“What name?”
She turned over the paper.
Printed in black ink were two words.
Felix Hartmann.
Not Blake.
Hartmann.
Elise’s surname.
“He introduced himself as her husband.”
I felt every sound disappear.
Even my own breathing.
“He… what?”
“The neighbors believe they’ve been married for years.”
I shook my head over and over.
“No…”
“There’s more.”
“I don’t think I can hear more.”
“You need to.”
Caroline reached into the folder again.
“This was the reason I started looking for Elise.”
She placed a sealed envelope in front of me.
Across the front, written in neat blue handwriting, were four words.
If anything happens…
There was a pause.
Then I finished reading the sentence.
…give this to Nora.
I stared at the envelope.
My own name.
Written by someone I had never met.
Or thought I had never met.
Caroline looked at me carefully.
“I haven’t opened it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it wasn’t addressed to me.”
My fingers trembled as I reached for the envelope.
Just before I broke the seal…
Someone knocked on the reading room door.
Three slow knocks.
Caroline’s face immediately lost its color.
She whispered only two words.
“Don’t answer.”
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