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“I’m aware.”

“Just making sure you are.” He leaves it there and lets himself out, and I stand in the kitchen a moment longer than I need to before heading down the hall to the room where she’s still restrained.

She’s awake when I open the door, sitting up straighter than she was last night, watching me come in with an expression that’s already braced for whatever I’m about to say.

“Your story checked out,” I tell her.

Her shoulders drop half an inch, the tension in them easing before she catches herself and pulls it back. “So I can go.”

“No.”

Her face shifts fast, disbelief chasing out whatever relief had started to settle in. “You just said I checked out clean. What else is there to check?”

“Nothing else to check. That’s not the problem.” I pull the second chair over and sit down across from her, closer than I need to be, close enough she can’t mistake this for a suggestion. “You walked through my home, saw things that don’t have an easy explanation, and if you walk out of here today, that story goes with you whether you mean any harm by it or not. Anyone who hears it and knows how to connect it to me becomes a problem for both of us.”

“So what, I just disappear? I have a job. People will notice if I don’t show up.”

“That’s exactly why you’re going to text your employer today and resign.” I hold out my hand, waiting. “Your phone.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

She stares at me for a long moment, jaw tight.

Whatever fight she had left in her last night has burned down to something quieter now, more resigned, though I can tell by the set of her mouth it hasn’t gone out completely.

I loosen the restraint on her right wrist enough to free her hand and place her phone in it, watching her fingers curl around it like she’s not sure she’s actually holding it or just imagining she is.

“What do I even say?”

“Something simple. Family emergency. You’re leaving the city. Whatever gets you out clean without anyone asking follow-up questions.” I keep my eyes on the screen while she types, not because I don’t trust her, but because I need to know exactly what goes out under her name.

Her thumbs move slowly, deleting and retyping twice before she settles on something short. She turns the screen toward me before sending it, waiting for a nod she clearly hates having to wait for.

I give it, and she hits send. Her thumb hovers over the screen a second after the message goes out, like she’s tracking exactly where those words are headed and who’s about to read them.

“Happy?” she says, voice flat.

I take the phone from her hand before she can lock the screen, and she lets it go without a fight this time, like she already knew that part was coming.

“I need to keep this,” I tell her. “It stays on, in case anyone tries to reach you. But it stays with me.”

“Of course it does.”

I don’t answer that. I secure the restraint back over her wrist, gentler than the fit requires, and stand there a second with her phone in my hand, screen still lit from the message she just sent into a life she doesn’t get to go back to yet.

She watches me the whole time, jaw set, eyes tracking my every move like she’s already cataloging which of my habits she can use against me later.

“For what it’s worth,” I say, halfway to the door, “the front desk made the mistake. Not you.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. It’s just true.”

She doesn’t answer that, just watches me leave with the same flat expression she’s had since I told her she wasn’t going anywhere. I close the door behind me and stand in the hallway a moment, her phone heavy in my pocket, the screen still glowing faintly through the fabric until it finally dims on its own.

I find a drawer in the study downstairs, empty except for a charging cable I keep for exactly this kind of situation, and I set the phone inside it, screen up, power still on. Close enough that a message would light it up the second it landed. Far enough from her that it might as well be in another building entirely.