"Hey," Simon called over his shoulder, the water running. "Can you check that for me? If it's David or the office, tell them I'm offline for the weekend. If it's anyone else, just clear it."
"Sure," Audrey said, not looking up from her screen immediately. She reached over and flipped the phone right-side up.
She tapped the screen to wake it. The notification was just an automated alert from their alarm company about a low battery in a window sensor. She went to swipe it away, but the phone prompted her for a passcode.
Without thinking, Audrey's thumb flew over the keypad, typing 1989—her birth year. It was the code Simon had used since they bought their first smartphones a decade ago.
The screen vibrated with a sharp, negative haptic feedback. Incorrect Passcode.
Audrey paused. She blinked at the screen. Perhaps she had miskeyed it. She carefully typed 1989 again.
Incorrect Passcode.
A sudden, absolute stillness settled over her. She tried 0512—Lily’s birthday.
Incorrect Passcode.
"Who is it?" Simon asked, turning off the tap and reaching for a towel to dry his hands.
Audrey looked up. She kept her face completely blank, a mask of professional neutrality. "Just the alarm company. A low battery alert. I tried to clear it, but your passcode isn't working."
Simon froze. It was a micro-expression, lasting less than a second, but Audrey caught it. The towel stopped moving in his hands. His shoulders went rigid.
"Oh," Simon said. He let out a breathy, manufactured chuckle that sounded incredibly loud in the quiet kitchen. He walked over, wiping his hands, and took the phone from her. "Right. Sorry. I forgot to tell you."
He angled the phone slightly away from her, his thumb moving quickly over the screen to type in a six-digit string she couldn't track. He swiped away the notification and tossed the phone back onto the counter.
"Corporate IT mandate," Simon said smoothly, finally meeting her eyes. He leaned against the counter, crossing his arms in a defensive posture he probably didn't even realize he was taking. "They upgraded the security protocols for everyone above director level after the gala. We all had to switch to randomized six-digit codes. Pain in the ass, honestly. I've locked myself out twice already."
Audrey stared at him. It was a perfectly logical explanation. Corporate security updates happened all the time. It was a clean, rational excuse.
But Audrey didn't just study data; she studied timing. The probability of a mandatory security update occurring the exact day after she demanded to see his phone in their driveway was statistically improbable.
He was lying to her face.
She could feel the adrenaline beginning to flood her system, a cold, sharp spike of betrayal. She could call him out right now. She could demand the new six-digit code and watch the perfect-husband facade crumble into dust.
But she looked at Lily, who was sitting on the living room floor fifteen feet away, happily setting up a board game for the three of them.
Audrey looked back at Simon. He was waiting for her reaction, his eyes tight with suppressed panic.
She wasn't going to blow up her family on a Saturday afternoon over a locked phone. Not without absolute, undeniable proof. If Simon was going to play a strategic game of hide-and-seek, he was about to learn that he was married to a woman who literally built tracking algorithms for a living.
"A random code?" Audrey said mildly, offering him a sympathetic smile that didn't reach her eyes. "That does sound frustrating. You should write it down somewhere so you don't forget."
Simon's posture visibly deflated with relief. "Yeah. Good idea."
Audrey turned back to her laptop. The data set was corrupted. The baseline was destroyed. The experiment was officially compromised.
She just had to wait for him to make a real mistake.
Chapter 4
Audrey
The human brain is a pattern-recognition machine, but Audrey knew better than anyone that an algorithm fed on paranoia would eventually start producing false positives.
For two weeks, she had lived in a state of quiet, agonizing hyper-vigilance. Simon’s "perfect husband" routine hadn't wavered. He was home by six every night. He cooked. He planned weekend outings for the three of them. He even booked the time off for the cabin trip he had promised.
