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"The messages."

Rhett joins us.

"Show me."

Morrow turns the phone toward us. The message I saw earlier⁠—

I FOUND HER.

—is gone.

Not deleted. Gone. The conversation has closed around the missing text as though it never existed.

Rhett frowns.

"When did this change?"

"I have no idea."

"I checked it before breakfast."

"I know."

He takes the phone.

"Mind if I look?"

Morrow shakes his head.

Rhett scrolls methodically. Settings. Call logs. Message metadata. Cloud backup. He's looking for patterns instead of conclusions.

It's one of the things he was always good at.

He stops.

"Interesting."

"What?"

"The timestamps."

I lean closer.

"What about them?"

"They're out of sequence."

"They looked normal yesterday."

"They aren't now."

He points at the screen. A text sent at 8:17 somehow appears before one sent at 7:52. A voicemail from two days ago carries tomorrow's date. The phone insists it hasn't connected to Wi-Fi in six weeks. It's currently connected to my network.

None of it is possible.

"I've seen corrupted databases," Rhett says quietly.

"I've seen damaged hard drives."