Chapter 8 - The Red Permit.
Dana refused to guess who owned the red parking permit.
She sent the image to an investigator and told Nora to do the hardest thing possible.
Wait.
Nora hated waiting.
Waiting had defined her marriage.
Wait until Marcus calmed down.
Wait until after the fundraiser.
Wait until after the quarterly report.
Wait until the baby was born.
Wait until leaving became less embarrassing.
That evening she stayed in a small furnished apartment arranged through a domestic-abuse legal program.
Elias did not know the address.
Nora insisted on that.
She wanted no one to claim her father had orchestrated her movements.
At nine fifteen, her phone rang.
Marcus.
She let it go to voicemail.
His message arrived seconds later.
“Nora, this has gotten out of control.”
His voice sounded warm.
Almost tender.
“You’re pregnant and frightened, and people around you are feeding that fear because they want access to my name.”
Nora closed her eyes.
This was the Marcus strangers loved.
“I’m willing to forgive yesterday.”
She opened her eyes again.
Forgive.
Vanessa had pushed her.
Marcus was offering forgiveness.
“Come home before your father destroys what’s left of us.”
The voicemail ended.
Nora forwarded it to Dana.
A minute later, another call arrived.
This one was from Elias.
She answered.
“Hi.”
There was a pause.
“Hi, Nora.”
Neither seemed to know what came after seven lost years.
Finally Elias said, “Your attorney told me only that you are somewhere safe.”
“I am.”
“I will not ask where.”
Nora looked around the anonymous apartment.
The couch was gray.
The walls were beige.
Nothing belonged to Marcus.
For the first time in years, she could sit in a room without wondering whether a camera was reporting her movements to him.
“I used to think you stopped loving me,” she said.
Elias was silent long enough that she wondered if the call had dropped.
“I never stopped.”
“Then why didn’t you come after me?”
“Because you were an adult who told me to stay away.”
His voice tightened.
“And because I was proud enough to tell myself respecting your decision was the same as doing everything I could.”
Nora wiped her eyes.
“We both made pride sound noble.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer broke something open in her chest.
Before she could respond, Dana called on the other line.
Nora ended the conversation with Elias and answered.
“We identified the permit,” Dana said.
Nora sat up.
“Who?”
“It was assigned to Aaron Pike.”
The name meant nothing to Nora.
“Court IT contractor.”
Nora frowned.
“What would a court contractor be doing at my house?”
“That’s not the interesting part.”
Dana’s voice became quieter.
“Pike also did private cybersecurity work for Hale Communities.”
Nora felt cold.
“Is that legal?”
“Having two clients is not automatically illegal.”
Dana paused.
“But he had administrative access to portions of the courthouse network.”
Nora looked at Marcus’s voicemail transcript on the screen.
“What does this have to do with my divorce?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Another message came through from Dana’s investigator while they spoke.
Dana stopped mid-sentence.
“What?” Nora asked.
“The security office checked historical access records.”
“And?”
“Aaron Pike accessed the family-court case management system six times before your petition became publicly searchable.”
Nora’s stomach tightened.
Marcus had known details from her sealed emergency filings before he should have known they existed.
May you like
The question was no longer whether he had been watching her.
It was how far his reach had gone.
