The Stand-In Wife and His Only Obsession novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Two Phones

Jules catches Lucas tracking her phone and makes him even the score, then a photo of her on a callout arrives from inside the tape.

I watched Kitty float back to Aldous and take his arm.

He looked over her head at me and gave me a small, warm wave.

I waved back.

It's the first rule of my job. Be polite to everyone until you know who has the gun.

Lucas's penthouse took up the top floor of a building on Park Avenue in the Seventies.

It had a roof terrace, a doorman who called me Mrs. Thackeray with a straight face, and a kitchen nobody had ever cooked in.

Lucas had rules.

Shoes off at the door.

Blinds down after dark.

Every window locked, checked twice, by him.

I had rules too.

My guard was a retired detective my squad vouched for, sixty, built like a vending machine, who read paperback westerns in the car and called me "kid."

Lucas ran a background check on him anyway.

I let him.

On the third night I made grilled cheese at eleven because the fridge held mineral water and one lime.

Lucas came in from his study and stood in the doorway.

"You're using the stove."

"It came with the apartment."

"Nobody uses it."

"That's why it's so clean."

I cut the sandwich in half and slid one half across the counter.

He looked at it.

Then he ate it in four bites.

【Okay that was cute. I hate that that was cute.】

【It's a TACTIC. He feeds her, then he cages her.】

After, he insisted on doing the dishes.

He washed one plate.

Then he dried it for ten full minutes, turning it in the towel like it might still be wet somewhere.

"Lucas. It's dry."

"It has edges."

"Every plate has edges."

He set it down very carefully, and I laughed so hard I had to hold the counter.

The next morning I went looking for a photo of my old apartment lease and found an app on my phone I'd never installed.

No icon name. Just a gray square.

It had full access. My messages. My camera roll. My microphone.

I checked the install date.

The night of the rehearsal dinner. One in the morning.

The hour my phone sat charging on his desk while I signed.

【THERE it is. Chapter 3 of the book. He bugged Kitty's phone too.】

【I TOLD YOU. Possessive. Monster.】

I walked into his study without knocking and set the phone on his keyboard.

"Before I agreed," I said. "You put this on before I agreed."

He didn't lie.

I'll give him that.

"Yes."

"The contract says location. This reads my texts."

"I know what it reads."

"I talk suicidal men off bridges with that phone. Their names are in it. Their kids' names are in it."

He looked at the gray square for a long time.

Then he picked up my phone, opened the settings and deleted the app while I watched.

He wiped the profile it had installed.

He handed my phone back.

Then he took his own phone out of his jacket, unlocked it, and put it in my hand.

"Code's my grandmother's birthday. Zero four one one."

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Whatever you want. Read it. My location's on yours now. Both directions."

"That's not how this works."

"It's how I want it to work."

【...okay he never did THAT in the book.】

【Because Kitty never caught him. She just cried.】

That afternoon my phone lit up with a callout.

A man had locked himself in a laundromat on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx with the night clerk and a box cutter.

He was behind on child support and had just lost visitation.

I stood at the door with the window cracked and talked to him for two hours about his daughter's soccer team.

He liked the Yankees.

So do I, unfortunately.

At hour two he let the clerk walk out.

At two and a half he put the box cutter in a dryer and came out with his hands up, crying.

Marge squeezed the back of my neck once. "Nice work, Halsey."

I ducked under the tape with my hair stuck to my face.

Lucas was standing on the far side of it.

He was in his suit, coat open, next to my guard.

"You were tracking me," I said.

"You were tracking me too. Check your phone."

I checked.

The little blue dot said he'd left a board meeting forty minutes ago.

"You walked out of a board meeting?"

"There was a man with a blade in there with you."

"There's always a man with a blade."

"Then I'll always be outside the tape."

【Okay but that was... kind of romantic??】

【Don't fall for it. Kitty fell for it too.】

The next day there was an envelope waiting on my desk at the precinct.

To Mrs. Thackeray, typed.

No stamp. Hand-delivered.

Inside was one photograph.

Me, at the laundromat door, hair stuck to my face, talking.

It was taken from behind me.

From inside the tape.

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