Chapter 9 - She Had Been Watching Me
Police searched everything Vanessa owned.
Her office.
Apartment.
Car.
Cloud accounts.
Storage locker.
What they found there made the staircase feel like only the final scene of something that had been building for months.
Photos of me.
At my obstetrician's office.
At the grocery store.
Walking with Maya.
Sitting outside a coffee shop.
Pictures taken from far enough away that I had never noticed the camera.
There were copies of my prenatal appointments.
A schedule of when Ryan traveled.
A list of medications I had taken during pregnancy.
And dozens of printed screenshots from private social media posts.
“How did she get these?”
Officer Brooks shook her head.
“We're still investigating.”
I felt violated in a way I couldn't explain.
My life had been observed.
Measured.
Cataloged.
Vanessa had known where I slept, when I was alone, when I saw my doctor.
My daughter had been watched before she was even born.
Then police found something else.
A key.
Not to the house.
To my car.
I remembered two occasions when my SUV had behaved strangely.
Once the tire pressure warning appeared suddenly after leaving a charity dinner.
Another time the brake pedal felt soft.
Ryan had taken the car to the dealership.
Both times, they said nothing serious was wrong.
Officer Brooks requested service records.
Then she requested the vehicle itself.
The inspection took six hours.
The call came after dinner.
Someone had tampered with a rear brake line.
Not enough to cause immediate failure.
Enough to weaken it over time.
I sat frozen.
“When?”
“We can't determine exactly.”
“Could that have killed me?”
“Yes.”
Maya turned away, crying.
I couldn't.
I felt past tears.
“Ryan knew?”
“No evidence of that.”
“Vanessa had access.”
“Yes.”
A memory hit me.
Three months earlier.
Vanessa had borrowed my SUV.
She said her rental car wouldn't start.
I had handed her my keys.
Like an idiot.
No.
Not an idiot.
A person behaving normally toward someone she thought was a colleague.
That distinction mattered.
Officer Brooks continued.
“We also found your medical file in her storage unit.”
“My medical file?”
“Copies.”
“How?”
“We're investigating that too.”
I thought about the warning message.
You should have left quietly when you had the chance.
Then another memory surfaced.
A dinner.
Vanessa placing a sparkling water in front of me.
Drink. It's just lime.
I hadn't finished it because it tasted bitter.
My pulse jumped.
“Officer.”
“Yes?”
“Can pregnancy blood tests show if someone was exposed to medication months ago?”
She looked at me carefully.
“Sometimes, depending on the substance and timing.”
“There was a night Vanessa gave me a drink.”
Maya stared.
“When?”
“About five months ago.”
Brooks wrote it down.
“Tell me everything.”
I did.
Two days later, police received the first breakthrough from Vanessa herself.
She demanded a lawyer.
Refused questions.
Then, during transport, she reportedly looked at Officer Brooks and said:
May you like
“You think the stairs were the first time she almost lost that baby?”
That sentence triggered an entirely new investigation.
