“Natalie,” Ethan said in the elevator, “look at me. It’s me.”
He even remembered exactly where we had kissed for the first time: behind the university library, right after I had eaten garlic bread and spent the entire moment mortified that my breath smelled terrible.
Nobody else knew that story.
I wanted to relax.
Then I watched him press our floor button with his left hand.
Ethan did almost everything with his right.
I told myself I was becoming paranoid.
At nine that morning, the police called again.
Ethan’s SUV had left the parking garage at 10:22 the previous night.
The driver wore a cap, and the surveillance footage didn’t clearly show his face.
But that wasn’t the strangest thing.
The smart lock on our apartment showed no record of Ethan leaving.
According to the system, he had been home the entire night.
After I hung up, another memory surfaced.
Before we went to sleep, Ethan had brought me a glass of milk and insisted I take my insomnia medication.
I fell asleep much faster than normal.
And when the police call woke me, he was wearing gray pajamas.
I could have sworn he had gone to bed wearing black ones.
After Ethan left for work, I opened the smart-lock app.
Three fingerprints were registered.
Mine.
Ethan’s.
And a third one with no name attached.
It had been added eight months earlier.
My hands shook as I opened its access history.
That fingerprint had entered my apartment forty-seven times.
Almost always at night.
And on many of those nights…
Ethan had already been home with me.
At that moment, I realized the dead man might not be the most frightening part of the story.
The terrifying part was wondering who had been sleeping next to me during all those months.
And I still had no idea what I was about to uncover.
I searched the entire bedroom, desperate to find something that made sense.
Eventually, I picked up the gray pajama pants.
Inside the lining, I found an old phone I had never seen before.
There was no passcode.
Only two apps were installed.
Camera.
Gallery.
I opened the first picture.
It was me buying coffee near my office.
The next showed me picking avocados at a grocery store.
Then there was one of me asleep on our couch.
I kept scrolling.
There were photos taken inside my own home.
Me after getting out of the shower.
Me working at the dining table.
Me walking into the kitchen for water after midnight.
In one photograph, I was deeply asleep.
The person who took it had been standing right beside my bed.
My stomach turned.
The most recent video had been recorded at 10:16 the previous night.
