DO NOT LOOK AT HER PHONE. DO NOT LET HER SEE YOU READING THIS.
The woman in your car is not Sarah Williams Chen. Sarah Chen died in an unregistered clinic in Zurich four years ago. The social security number on that license belongs to a federal witness under a scrubbed identity, but the facial recognition flag that just hit my terminal is classified tier-one domestic espionage. She isn’t hiding from a criminal. She is the asset.
Look at her left shoulder blade. If the three-inch surgical scar from her 2022 ‘skiing accident’ isn’t there, get out. Run. She is armed.
The text swam before my eyes. I read it once. Twice. A third time until the words burned into my retinas.
Not Sarah?
We had been married for five years. I knew the way she took her coffee (black, two ice cubes so she could drink it instantly). I knew the exact pitch of her laugh when she was genuinely amused versus when she was just being polite. I knew the small, jagged scar on her left shoulder blade from when she supposedly wiped out on a black diamond run in Aspen back in the winter of 2022. I had rubbed heating gel into that exact shoulder a hundred times.
Four years ago? Zurich?
My mind spun backward through our timeline. In 2022, she had taken a solo three-week sabbatical to Europe to “clear her head” after her father passed away. When she came back, she was quieter, more deliberate, but I had chalked it up to grief.
“David?”
I jumped, nearly tearing the note. Sarah was standing at the passenger window, tapping her manicured fingernail against the glass. A soft, questioning smile played on her lips, but her eyes—usually a warm, expressive hazel—looked completely hollow.
“You’ve been sitting out here for ten minutes,” she said through the cracked window. “Mom’s asking for you.”
“Just… checking an email from the office,” I lied, shoving the note deep into my pocket as I unbuckled my seatbelt. “Be right there.”
