For two seconds, nobody moved.
Then Detective Ortiz stood so fast her chair rolled backward into the wall.
“Get me the originating number.”
Bell was already on his phone.
Rachel locked the office door.
Daniel stood beside the table, pale and rigid.
“That was him.”
Ortiz pointed at him.
“You are done speculating. Address for Sophia Cross.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Home address.”
He gave it.
Bell relayed the information.
Ortiz asked, “Other properties?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Sophia kept a condo downtown, but she said she wasn’t staying there.”
“Friends?”
“I don’t know.”
“Family?”
“Sister in Portland.”
“Name.”
He provided it.
I sat frozen.
The call replayed in my head.
Adrian’s voice, faint but unmistakable.
Sophia?
Not angry.
Almost normal.
That frightened me most.
Matthew crouched slightly beside my chair.
“You with me?”
I nodded.
It was a lie.
Rachel placed a bottle of water in front of me.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Ortiz ended one call and began another.
She moved through the room with efficient intensity.
No raised voice.
No dramatic orders.
Just names, addresses, vehicle information, possible locations.
I realized suddenly that Adrian had become the subject of a search.
Not my boyfriend.
Not my ex.
Not the man friends described as complicated.
A person law enforcement was actively trying to locate because a frightened witness had gone silent when he arrived.
The transformation happened faster in official language than it had in my heart.
Twenty minutes passed.
No update.
Thirty.
Bell pulled recent registration information for Adrian’s car.
Rachel contacted the lender and requested immediate preservation of account-access logs.
Daniel paced until Ortiz told him to sit.
I watched the clock.
12:47.
12:52.
1:03.
At 1:11, Ortiz’s phone rang.
She answered.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Condition?”
Another pause.
“Alone?”
Her expression changed slightly.
“Good.”
She hung up.
“Sophia’s alive.”
Air left my lungs.
Daniel pressed both hands against his face.
Ortiz continued.
“Officers located her at the registered condo. She’s shaken. No obvious serious injury. Adrian is not there.”
“What happened?” Rachel asked.
“We’ll know more after she’s interviewed.”
“Did he hurt her?” I asked.
Ortiz looked at me.
“She reported that he grabbed her.”
The answer struck me with unexpected force.
I had been angry at Sophia for months without knowing her name for what she was to me.
The other woman.
The accomplice.
The person whose hand had rested on Adrian’s chest.
Now an image replaced all of that.
Sophia inside a room.
Adrian at the door.
Fear in her voice.
People can be guilty and endangered at the same time.
The realization was uncomfortable.
Necessary.
“Is she being arrested?” Daniel asked.
Ortiz gave him a flat look.
“That is not information you need right now.”
Daniel sat back.
Bell ended another call.
“Adrian’s phone is off.”
“Vehicle?”
“No hit yet.”
Rachel asked the question everyone was avoiding.
“Do we believe he’s looking for Paula?”
Ortiz answered carefully.
“We treat that possibility seriously.”
My mouth went dry.
“Meaning?”
“You don’t return to your apartment alone.”
“I have work tomorrow.”
“No.”
I looked at her.
“I can’t just stop living.”
“You can for twenty-four hours.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“Yes.”
No defensiveness.
No attempt to soothe.
Just yes.
I almost respected her more for it.
Rachel said, “Paula, do what she says.”
Matthew added nothing.
I turned to him.
“You agree?”
“Yes.”
I hated that everyone agreed.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Ortiz said, “Stay somewhere Adrian doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t know my apartment.”
“As far as we know.”
“That phrase is becoming unbearable.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I understand that uncertainty is unbearable. I deal with people whose lives have just become uncertain every day.”
That silenced me.
She softened.
“I’m not asking you to disappear forever. I’m asking you to give us a short window to determine what Adrian knows.”
Daniel said, “She can stay with me.”
“No,” I said immediately.
He looked hurt.
I did not care.
Matthew said, “She can stay at my sister’s place.”
I turned.
“Your sister?”
“She’s out of town.”
“How far?”
“Forty minutes.”
Ortiz asked, “Does Adrian know you exist?”
“Unknown.”
“Then not ideal.”
Rachel said, “Hotel under my assistant’s name.”
Ortiz considered.
“That’s better.”
Everything about the conversation made me feel less like a person and more like cargo.
Move Paula.
Hide Paula.
Protect Paula.
I stood.
“I need five minutes.”
Nobody argued.
I walked into Rachel’s smaller office and shut the door.
There was no lock.
I sat behind the desk and stared at a framed photograph of Rachel with two teenagers.
One had braces.
The other was holding a soccer trophy.
Ordinary life.
Again.
I wondered whether ordinary life existed or whether it was simply what people called the intervals between disasters.
A soft knock.
“Who is it?”
“Matthew.”
I opened the door.
He stepped in and closed it behind him.
“I’m going to say something annoying.”
“That narrows nothing.”
“Good.”
He sat in the chair opposite me.
“You are allowed to hate being told what to do and still listen when the advice is good.”
I looked away.
“I spent three years being told I was irrational.”
“This isn’t that.”
“How do I know?”
“Because Ortiz is giving you reasons.”
“She’s also making decisions.”
“She’s recommending actions because there’s a credible risk.”
“I hate feeling afraid.”
“I know.”
“No, I hate what it does to me.”
My voice cracked.
“I left Adrian because I wanted one decision to belong to me. Now every decision is about him again.”
Matthew was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Then make this one about you.”
I looked at him.
“Don’t stay somewhere else because Adrian scares you. Stay somewhere else because you’ve decided he doesn’t get easy access to you.”
The distinction was small.
It changed everything.
I nodded once.
“Okay.”
We returned to the conference room.
“I’ll go to the hotel.”
Ortiz nodded.
“Good.”
I disliked how relieved everyone looked.
By midafternoon, Sophia had agreed to a formal interview.
Ortiz left to attend.
Bell remained with us.
Rachel spent the next hours identifying corporate entities linked to Adrian.
There were more than Daniel remembered.
Mercer-Shaw Development Group.
Apex Advisory Partners.
Stonefield Capital Services.
Linden Property Holdings.
Harlow Management Solutions.
Some were dissolved.
Some active.
Two had addresses that led to mailbox centers.
One listed Adrian’s apartment.
Another listed Sophia’s office.
And one listed my former apartment.
I stared at the screen.
“He used my address.”
Rachel nodded.
“For Harlow Management.”
“I never received business mail.”
“Maybe he intercepted it.”
“How?”
“You said he had a key.”
Of course.
Adrian had a key.
He had stayed at my apartment whenever he wanted.
He could have checked mail before I got home.
I remembered once finding the mailbox door slightly open.
I blamed the postal carrier.
Another memory changed shape.
Bell asked, “Did he ever collect packages for you?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“A lot.”
He wrote it down.
By five, my understanding of the relationship had inverted.
I had thought I spent three years struggling to get closer to a man who kept parts of himself private.
The truth was the opposite.
Adrian had moved deeply into my life.
My apartment.
My records.
My passwords.
My mail.
My finances.
My habits.
While keeping his own life deliberately opaque.
He had not been distant.
He had been one-sided.
Near six, Ortiz called.
Sophia had given a statement.
She had also agreed to surrender a laptop and two external drives.
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Thank God.”
Ortiz’s voice came through speakerphone.
“She says the drives contain spreadsheets tracking transfers across multiple companies.”
Rachel asked, “Paula’s name?”
“Yes.”
I felt cold.
“How?”
“According to Sophia, Adrian used Paula’s identity primarily to secure financing and to make certain entities appear more stable.”
Bell asked, “Anything else?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Ortiz’s voice changed.
“There are emails.”
Rachel leaned forward.
“Between Adrian and Sophia?”
“Yes.”
“About Paula?”
“Yes.”
I did not want to ask.
I asked anyway.
“What do they say?”
Ortiz hesitated.
“Some are personal.”
“I don’t care.”
“Some discuss financial documents.”
“Read one.”
“Paula—”
“Please.”
Silence.
Then paper movement.
Ortiz read without emotion.
“He wrote, ‘She signs anything I put in front of her if I tell her it’s routine.’”
The room disappeared.
I stared at nothing.
No one spoke.
Ortiz continued quietly.
“There’s another message from Sophia telling him he’s taking too many risks.”
“What did he say?”
“He wrote that you don’t check accounts and that you trust him.”
The word trust hurt worse than fool.
Trust.
I had given something decent.
He had translated it into weakness.
I pressed my fingernails into my palm.
“Anything about the party?”
Ortiz paused longer.
“Yes.”
Daniel leaned toward the phone.
“What?”
“Three days before the party, Sophia wrote that she was going to tell Paula everything.”
My chest tightened.
“And Adrian?”
“He wrote, ‘Then I’ll handle Paula.’”
Nobody moved.
“How?”
“That’s all the message says.”
I pictured the party.
The hand on his chest.
The people watching.
His annoyance when I asked a question.
Maybe the scene had not been accidental.
Maybe humiliation had been useful.
If Adrian needed me emotional, ashamed, easy to discredit, what better way than to provoke exactly the reaction he always accused me of?
I whispered, “He wanted me to leave.”
Rachel looked at me.
“What?”
“The party.”
My thoughts accelerated.
“He knew Sophia was going to tell me. He knew she had the envelope. If he could make me storm out first, then he could tell everyone I was unstable.”
Daniel’s face changed.
“That sounds like him.”
Bell asked, “Would he expect you to come back?”
“Yes.”
I remembered Adrian’s comment beneath the photograph.
She’ll probably panic and come crying back by my birthday.
Not just arrogance.
A timetable.
He believed I would return before I had time to investigate anything.
Sophia’s public relationship with him would keep her close.
My embarrassment would keep me confused.
Daniel had already been discredited as dramatic.
Everyone had a role.
I stood and began pacing.
“He didn’t expect me to disappear.”
Rachel shook her head.
“No.”
“He expected to punish me, then pull me back in.”
“Yes.”
“And once I came back, what?”
Nobody answered.
That was the most frightening part.
At seven, Rachel’s assistant arranged a room at a hotel fifteen minutes away under her own name.
No one posted anything.
No one used my card.
Matthew drove me.
We took his car, then changed routes twice at Ortiz’s suggestion.
It felt absurd.
Like a thriller written by someone who had never met me.
I was Paula Lane.
I misplaced grocery lists.
I hated confrontation.
I once apologized to a waiter because he brought me the wrong soup.
People like me were not supposed to take alternate routes to anonymous hotels.
We reached the underground parking garage without incident.
Inside the room, Matthew checked the connecting door, window lock, and hallway exit.
I watched him.
“You’ve done this before?”
“No.”
“You seem practiced.”
“My father was paranoid.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“It wasn’t.”
That honesty surprised me.
He stopped near the door.
“I’m going home unless you want me to stay in the lobby.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
There it was again.
I almost asked him to stay.
Then I stopped.
Not because I wanted distance.
Because I needed to learn that being alone did not automatically mean abandoned.
“I’ll be okay.”
He nodded.
“If you change your mind, call.”
After he left, I showered.
I ordered soup.
I watched television with the volume low.
At 10:42, Ortiz texted the prepaid number.
Adrian still not located. Officers checked known addresses. Continue precautions tonight.
I read it twice.
Then placed the phone on the bedside table.
At 11:08, the hotel room phone rang.
I stared at it.
Nobody knew the room number.
Rachel’s assistant.
The hotel staff.
Matthew knew the hotel but not the room.
My heartbeat changed.
The phone rang again.
I picked up.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then Adrian.
“You really are making this difficult.”
My blood went cold.
I could not speak.
He gave a quiet laugh.
“Paula.”
I hung up.
Immediately, the phone rang again.
I backed away.
Three rings.
Four.
Five.
Then silence.
I called Ortiz from the prepaid phone.
“He found the hotel.”
Her voice sharpened.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lock the door.”
“It’s locked.”
“Stay away from it.”
“I am.”
She began issuing instructions.
Security.
Police.
Do not leave.
Do not answer.
I followed every one.
Then, from the hallway outside, someone knocked.
Three quiet knocks.
My entire body froze.
“Paula?”
A man’s voice.
Not Adrian.
Hotel security.
Ortiz remained on the phone until officers arrived.
They checked the floor.
Stairwells.
Garage.
No Adrian.
No obvious watcher.
The hotel’s front desk eventually discovered the call had been transferred by an outside caller who knew my full name and convinced a new employee that he was my husband.
Husband.
The word made me sick.
Before leaving, one officer handed Ortiz’s instructions through the security supervisor.
I would be moved again.
Different hotel.
Different name.
At 1:30 in the morning, I packed my small overnight bag.
As I zipped it, the prepaid phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
No greeting.
No name.
Just a photograph.
My apartment building.
Taken that night.
Below it:
You can’t stay hidden forever.
I stared at the image.
Then noticed something in the bottom corner.
A reflection in a parked car window.
The photographer’s outline.
And behind him, across the street, another person.
A woman.
Watching him.
I enlarged the picture.
My heart began pounding for a different reason.
The woman was Sophia.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: Sophia Had Followed Adrian to My Building, and What She Recorded There Finally Revealed Why He Needed Me Back So Desperately
The Night Adrian Expected Me to Apologize Again, I Finally Saw How Easily He Had Learned to Lose Me
Part 7 of 18
