…come back. The statute of limitations is up. See you at the rendezvous.”
The glowing screen blurred as all the air rushed out of my lungs. My hands began to shake so violently that the small, cheap device clattered onto the concrete floor of the storage unit.
It wasn’t just the text that sent a shockwave of nausea through me; it was the logistics. A nine-year-old burner phone doesn’t just hold a charge. Kneeling down, I traced the inside of the hollowed-out book. There was a small, custom-cut slit in the binding, and a thin black wire snaking out the back, plugged directly into an outlet hidden behind a towering stack of winter tires.
Someone had been maintaining this. Someone had been coming here.
For a terrifying minute, the walls of the windowless unit closed in on me. I thought of the three years I spent drowning in grief, the agonizing therapy sessions, the guilt of going on my first date with Mark, and the tears of joy we cried last week when we heard our baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound. My “dead” husband hadn’t been swallowed by the ocean; he had orchestrated his own vanishing act to escape something—or someone—leaving me to absorb the absolute destruction of his absence.
The phone buzzed again against the concrete.
“Did you get the wire transfer? I’m boarding the flight tonight.”
He wasn’t texting me. He thought this phone was in the hands of an accomplice, someone he’d paid to keep the device active and waiting.
A younger version of me would have collapsed into a puddle of tears. She would have demanded answers, begged for an explanation, or let the ghost of her past tear down the walls of her present. But as I rested a hand over my slightly rounded belly, a fierce, protective ice flooded my veins. I was no longer a victim waiting for a ship that was never coming back.
I picked up the burner phone, careful not to smudge the screen. I didn’t type a reply. I didn’t scream or cry. I packed the hollowed-out book, the charging cable, and a stack of financial documents I’d found in the adjacent boxes into my tote bag.
I pulled down the rolling metal door of the storage unit and locked it for the last time.
Then, I got into my car and drove straight to the FBI field office downtown. He was right about one thing—it was time to come back. But the welcoming committee waiting at his rendezvous point wasn’t going to be holding a bag of cash; they were going to be holding handcuffs.
