Chapter 3
The diner sat just outside town where the county road widened and the fields gave way to gas stations, tire shops, and a strip mall with half its signs burned out. I chose a booth near the window because I could see the parking lot without turning around.
Titus arrived ten minutes late and stopped beside the table instead of sliding in. His eyes moved over my face, then to the empty chair across from me.
“Is anyone with you?”
“No.”
He nodded once and sat down. He didn’t ask where I’d been. He didn’t reach for my phone, which lay facedown beside my coffee. He only rested both hands on the table, palms visible, as if making the distance between us part of the conversation.
A waitress brought him coffee. He thanked her and waited until she walked away.
“Are you in danger?” he asked.
The question was quiet enough that I almost missed it beneath the hiss of the coffee machine.
I looked through the window. A pickup rolled past the diner, slow but ordinary, its tires sending a thin spray of gravel toward the curb. I had spent the afternoon trying to decide whether every moving vehicle meant something. Fear had made the whole world look deliberate.
“I don't know.”
“That isn't the same as no.”
“No.”
He took that in without changing his expression. His thumb moved once against the side of his coffee cup, then stopped.
“Do you want me to leave?”
I looked back at him. “Why would I ask you to leave?”
“Because you asked me not to come looking for you.”
“I didn’t ask that.”
“You didn't have to.” His voice stayed even. “You disappeared after the video went around. You stopped answering. Then you showed up here alone.”
“I needed to go somewhere.”
“I know.”
He didn’t say it like an accusation. That made it harder to defend myself.
I lifted my phone and turned it over. The promotional link was still open in the browser. The same static frame filled the screen, text layered over an image that had no living faces, no location I could identify, nothing that should have felt personal. The call to action sat beneath it, bright and clean, asking people to watch the drama series.
I pushed the phone across the table.
“This is all I can give you.”
Titus didn’t touch it right away. “The link?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the warning named you.”
His eyes settled on the screen. “What warning?”
I swallowed. “The audio from the video.”
I pressed play.
The diner noises fell around us: silverware, low conversations, the scrape of a chair over tile. From my phone came the recorded voice, flat and urgent at once.
“she'll do anything. No, she said alone. If she sees you, she'll kill Titus. You think you're safe going by yourself? She hates you, Sophia. You'll be walking into a trap. I know.”
The audio ended. A spoon struck a saucer at the counter.
Titus looked at the screen, not at me. “You heard this before you went out?”
“Yes.”
“And you still went alone.”
“I didn’t know who else to trust.”
His jaw tightened, but he kept his voice controlled. “You could have told me.”
“I couldn't.”
“Because you thought I'd stop you?”
“Because I thought you'd make it about yourself.”
That landed. He leaned back slightly, giving the words room instead of crowding me with an answer.
“I am in it,” he said. “They said my name.”
“I know.”
“That doesn't mean I get to decide what you do.”
The admission loosened something in my chest, though not enough to let me breathe easily.
He finally picked up the phone. He didn’t scroll through it. He only tapped the link.
The screen went white.
For a second, nothing happened. Then a small message appeared beneath the campaign logo.
ACCESS CONFIRMED. CONTINUE ALONE.
My stomach dropped.
Titus looked up. “Was that there before?”
“No.”
He turned the phone toward me. A second line appeared while we watched.
NEW VIEWER PATH CREATED.
No name. No address. No accusation. Just those words, clean and impersonal, as if the campaign were recording a routine customer action.
Titus set the phone down between us.
“I didn’t authorize anything,” he said.
“I know.”
“Did it show this when you opened it?”
“No. It showed the meeting point.”
“Only the meeting point?”
“And a time. Nothing else.”
He nodded slowly. “So it changes when someone else opens it.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” he repeated, careful not to make a conclusion out of a possibility.
The waitress returned with a plate of fries I hadn’t ordered. I told her we didn’t want them. She glanced at the phone, then at us, and carried the plate away without asking questions.
Titus watched the door until it swung shut.
“I won't follow you,” he said. “I won't contact the woman behind this. I won't ask anyone to track you down. If you want to go somewhere, you tell me, and I stay out of it unless you ask me in.”
I stared at the dark edge of the phone.
“You're agreeing too fast.”
“No. I'm agreeing specifically.”
That almost made me smile. Almost.
“And if I don't tell you?”
“Then I don't go.”
The words were simple. They still frightened me. I had spent too long believing that anyone who knew enough to help would eventually use that knowledge as a leash.
Titus picked up his coffee, but he didn’t drink it.
“Can we examine the link together?” he asked. “Here. With you deciding what I see.”
I looked at the message again. ACCESS CONFIRMED. CONTINUE ALONE.
The campaign had wanted separate stories. Separate movements. Separate fears. For the first time, the evidence sat between us instead of inside my hands.
“Not my phone history,” I said.
“Not your phone history.”
“And you don't save anything without telling me.”
“I won't.”
I pulled the phone back toward me and opened the link again. The message remained, waiting.
Titus leaned forward only when I nodded.
May you like
Neither of us touched the screen.
Outside, another car slowed near the diner entrance, then continued down the road. I watched it disappear, while Titus sat across from me and kept his promise not to move.
