Chapter 2 - THE MAN IN THE BLACK SUVI didn’t know who was inside the SUV.
One second, Ava was swinging her sneakers beneath the red cape and telling me she wanted her hair “exactly like the girl in the skating video.”
The next, Marisol went completely still.
Her scissors remained open between two fingers.
“Claire?”
Something in her voice made me sit straighter.
“What?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she carefully lifted the hair at the back of Ava’s neck.
Her face lost its color.
Then she looked at me through the mirror.
“Mom,” she whispered, “you need to see what someone did to her.”
I stood so fast my coffee tipped onto the little table beside me.
“Ava?”
My daughter’s smile disappeared.
Marisol moved aside.
At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
A narrow section of Ava’s blond hair had been cut almost to the scalp directly beneath the longer layers.
Someone had done it carefully enough that the missing patch remained invisible when her hair was down.
But that wasn’t what made my stomach turn.
There were angry red marks against her skin.
And attached beneath a folded strip of medical tape was something black.
Something plastic.
Something with a blinking light.
I stared.
“What is that?”
Marisol swallowed.
“I think it’s a tracker.”
The salon around us disappeared.
The dryers.
The conversations.
The music.
Everything.
I reached toward it.
Ava suddenly grabbed my wrist.
“No!”
I froze.
Her eyes filled with terror.
“Ava?”
“Don’t take it off.”
“Honey, why?”
Her lower lip trembled.
“Because he’ll know.”
Every nerve in my body went cold.
“Who?”
She looked toward the salon windows.
Then toward the door.
Like she expected someone to be standing there.
Marisol quietly locked the front entrance.
“Ava,” I said, dropping beside her chair. “Look at me.”
She wouldn’t.
“Who put that on you?”
“I promised.”
“You are not in trouble.”
“He said you would be.”
My heartbeat pounded against my ribs.
“Who said that?”
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Mom…”
She leaned toward me.
“Please don’t make me say it.”
I held her face between my hands.
“Okay. You don’t have to.”
That was when Marisol noticed something else.
“Claire.”
She pointed beneath the chair.
A tiny piece of folded white paper had fallen from inside Ava’s hair.
I picked it up.
It had apparently been tucked beneath the tape.
Four words were written across it in black ink.
SHE TALKS. RECORD EVERYTHING.
My knees nearly gave out.
Marisol whispered, “Call the police.”
But Ava began shaking.
“No police!”
“Ava—”
“He said the police work for him.”
“Who?”
She sobbed harder.
“The man Grandma takes me to see.”
My entire body went rigid.
Grandma.
My former mother-in-law, Patricia.
The woman who watched Ava every Wednesday after school.
The woman who had spent six months insisting I was “too stressed” to raise my own daughter.
The woman whose son—my ex-husband, Nathan—had suddenly reopened our custody case three weeks earlier.
I looked at the black device.
Then at the note.
Then at my terrified child.
And pieces I hadn’t understood began sliding together.
Nathan suddenly knowing where we had eaten dinner.
Patricia mentioning private conversations Ava and I had inside my bedroom.
My ex’s attorney quoting words I had spoken inside my own house.
Words I had never said around anyone else.
Someone had been listening.
Not just to Ava.
Through Ava.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then a message appeared.
Do not remove the device.
My blood turned to ice.
A second message arrived.
We can see where you are.
Marisol looked over my shoulder and covered her mouth.
Ava began crying.
Then the third message appeared.
Bring Ava outside.
A shadow moved past the salon window.
I looked up.
A black SUV had just pulled into the parking lot.
May you like
And Ava whispered one word that changed everything.
“That’s him.”
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