The place we met.
I knew exactly where that was.
A small coffee shop near Northwestern University.
But why?
What was hidden there?
I turned the page.
Nothing.
I checked the folder again.
Nothing.
Then I noticed something tucked into the back pocket.
A photograph.
David and me.
Nine years earlier.
The day we met.
I smiled through my tears.
He had been wearing the same ridiculous gray sweater he refused to throw away.
I had been holding a coffee.
And behind us was the old coffee shop.
I turned the photograph over.
There was another message.
Ask for Daniel.
My heart stopped.
Daniel.
David’s closest friend from college.
But Daniel had died six years earlier.
I remembered attending his funeral.
So who was I supposed to ask?
I turned the photograph over again.
At the very bottom, almost invisible beneath David’s handwriting, was a second line.
Not the Daniel you remember.
I felt a chill move down my arms.
Then my phone vibrated again.
A new message.
Unknown number.
Only four words.
They are watching you.
I stared at the screen.
Then another message appeared.
Do not go alone.
I looked toward the windows.
The city lights flickered beyond the glass.
Somewhere below, traffic moved through Lincoln Park.
People were living ordinary lives.
People were going home.
People were having dinner.
And yet, suddenly, my entire world felt different.
Someone knew David’s secret.
Someone knew I had the message.
And someone was watching me.
I grabbed the blue folder.
Then I looked at the locked door.
For the first time since David died, I wasn’t thinking about how much I missed him.
I was thinking about why he had been so afraid.
And why he had trusted me to uncover the truth after he was gone.
I whispered into the empty room:
“What did you leave me, David?”
My phone buzzed one more time.
This time, the message contained an address.
And beneath it were seven words:
Come before they find what you are looking for.
PART 4
I stared at the address for almost a full minute.
It was not the coffee shop where David and I had met.
It wasn’t his office.
It wasn’t a bank.
It wasn’t anywhere I recognized.
It was an old building on the south side of Chicago, nearly an hour away.
At the bottom of the message was another sentence.
Come alone. Trust no one from the Hayes family.
I should have been terrified.
Instead, I felt strangely calm.
Because underneath the fear, something else had begun to grow.
Determination.
For eleven months, cancer had taken pieces of my husband from me.
First his appetite.
Then his strength.
Then his ability to work.
