Leaves again at 3 PM. Drives to a location near the Chronicle building. Parks on Waverly Street, three blocks north, out of range of campus parking enforcement.
Walks to a bench with a sightline to the Chronicle's main entrance. Sits for approximately forty-five minutes.
Returns to vehicle. Drives back.
Every afternoon, he sits on a bench three blocks from the Chronicle, with a sightline to the entrance, for forty-five minutes.
He's watching her.
Every day, while the legal system schedules hearings and campus security monitors entrances he's learned to avoid, David Ashford watches her. He walks the arboretum path without a checkpoint. Parks on a street that isn't campus property. Sits on a public bench that violates no law. Finds the gaps between every system we built to stop him and settles inside them.
The information is on my screen, obtained through my father's illegal contacts.
Richard could use this in Wednesday's hearing to demonstrate ongoing surveillance and harassment. Maya doesn't know I have it.
Maya said:show me every text before you read it. Full visibility. No locked drawers.
I'm holding an encrypted message on my phone that I've already read.
The data waits on the screen. I can send it through Marco, have him strip out where it came from, and Maya never has to know.
I stare at the screen.
The phone presses into my palm. The walk down the hallway takes ten steps. Every one of them gets counted.
Maya is getting dressed. Cole is tying his shoes on the edge of the bed.
Both of them look up when I appear in the doorway.
"I need to tell you something," I say. "Both of you. Right now."
Maya's hands go still on the hem of her shirt. Cole's fingers freeze on his laces. Her eyes go to my hand around the phone. Cole's go to my face.
"I made a call," I say. "Wednesday night. 2 AM. Not to Marco. To someone worse. Someone outside anything you agreed to. I had a man I've never met surveil David Ashford for two days."
Cole's laces fall from his fingers.
I hold out the phone with the data on the screen.
"He sits on a bench three blocks from the Chronicle every afternoon. With a sightline to the entrance. He watches you leave. He's been doing it every day."
Maya crosses the room and takes the phone from my hand.
The second she starts reading, her jaw tightens. Her eyes narrow. Her thumb stops moving on the edge of the phone. Cole is behind her in two steps, reading over her shoulder with one hand braced against her back. His fingers spread against her shirt and stay there.
"You went below the terms," Maya says, looking at the screen.
"Yes."
"Below the men I agreed to. Below the rules I set."
"Yes."
She looks up from the phone. Her eyes lock on mine, the same eyes from the kitchen, from the morning she recited Marco's text from memory. For one breath, she holds me there before her gaze drops back to the screen. Her thumb moves once along the edge of the phone and stops.
The phone shifts in her grip until her knuckles go white. She opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again. The first version of the sentence dies before it reaches air.
Her gaze drops to the data on the screen.
