The Deleted Log

Leo was downstairs, talking to the plumber about the water pressure in the master bath.

I was upstairs, standing in front of the smart-home hub in the hallway closet. My fingers hovered over the screen.

*Entry Log.*

I tapped it.

The list populated instantly.

*Today, 8:00 AM - User 2 (Leo).*

*Today, 8:15 AM - User 3 (Cleaner).*

I scrolled down. Past the morning. Past the night.

*Yesterday, 9:45 PM - Power Failure Detected.*

*Yesterday, 9:48 PM - Motion Sensor: Front Gate.*

*Yesterday, 9:50 PM - Keypad Entry: User 1 (Elena).*

My breath hitched.

User 1. That was me.

I hadn't opened the gate. I had been in the kitchen, making tea. The power had gone out three minutes earlier. I was standing in the dark, wondering where the flashlight was.

So who used my code?

Leo had his own code. User 2.

The cleaning lady was User 3.

Only one person had User 1 access. Me.

Unless...

Unless someone had watched me enter it.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember the last time I had used the keypad. I usually just used the app on my phone. But two days ago... yes. My phone had died. I had punched the code in manually.

Who could have seen me?

The gate was visible from the road. But you’d need binoculars to see the numbers.

Or a camera.

A camera with a zoom lens.

Or... a camera installed *in* the keypad.

I stood up. I turned off the shower. I didn't care that my hair was dry. I wrapped a towel around my head, just in case Leo saw me.

I walked into the bedroom. I went to the window—the one overlooking the driveway.

I looked down at the gate.

From here, it was just black iron bars against the white snow.

But directly across the street, in the dense woods that bordered the Conservancy land, there was something.

A flash.

Sunlight hitting glass.

I squinted. The trees were bare, stripped by winter. But high up in an old oak tree, partially obscured by a squirrel nest, was a shape that didn't belong.

A trail camera.

The kind hunters used to track deer.

Or the kind stalkers used to track prey.

I grabbed my phone. I zoomed in with the camera, snapping a picture.

It was definitely a camera. Pointed straight at my gate. Straight at the keypad.

If that camera had recorded me entering my code...

And if someone had retrieved that footage...

My heart began to race. A frantic, bird-like fluttering in my chest.

I needed that SD card.

But I couldn't go out there. Not with the reporters at the end of the driveway. Not with Leo watching me like a hawk.

I needed help.

I looked at my phone. My contacts list was short. My circle had shrunk over the years, pared down by my anxiety and Leo’s gentle isolation.

*Chloe.*

Ethan's girlfriend.

She had messaged me on Instagram three months ago, asking if she could take photos of the house for her art project. I had said no. I always said no.

But I still had the DM.

I opened Instagram. I found her profile. *Chloe_Visuals.*

Her latest story was a black screen with white text: *He didn't do it for a prank. He did it for me.*

My stomach dropped.

For her?

I tapped the message icon.

*Me: Chloe. It's Elena Rostova. I need to talk to you.*

The typing bubbles appeared instantly.

*Chloe: Go to hell.*

*Me: Please. It's about Ethan. I think... I think he was trying to tell me something.*

*Chloe: Yeah. He was.*

*Me: I know he wasn't pranking me. I saw the video. The reflection.*

A pause. The bubbles disappeared. Then reappeared.

*Chloe: You saw the mask?*

My blood turned to ice.

She knew.

*Me: Yes. Who was it?*

*Chloe: Meet me. The Folly. One hour.*

The Folly. The crumbling stone gazebo in the woods behind our property. The place where the teenagers smoked and drank.

*Me: I can't leave. The press.*

*Chloe: There's a hole in your back fence. Behind the rhododendrons. Ethan showed me.*

Ethan had shown her?

How long had this boy been scouting my house?

*Me: Okay. One hour.*

I deleted the messages.

I walked downstairs. Leo was in the study, on the phone. "No comment," he was saying. "My client is devastated."

I walked past the study door, my feet silent on the runner. I went into the mudroom. I pulled on my boots and my heavy parka.

"Elena?"

Leo appeared in the doorway, phone still to his ear. "Where are you going?"

"Fresh air," I said. "Just to the backyard. I feel like I'm suffocating."

He hesitated. He looked at my boots. Then at my face.

"Stay within the fence," he said. "Please. If they get a photo of you..."

"I know," I said. "I'll be careful."

He nodded and went back to his call.

I stepped out the back door. The cold air hit me like a slap. It smelled of snow and woodsmoke.

I walked to the edge of the yard, past the dormant rose garden Leo had designed. The rhododendrons were massive, a wall of dark green leaves.

I pushed through them.

There it was. A section of the iron fence where the bars had rusted through at the bottom. Bent upward just enough for a slim body to slide under.

Ethan's door.

I got down on my hands and knees in the snow. I crawled through.

The woods were silent. The snow muffled everything. I followed the faint trail of footprints—old ones, frozen over—toward the Folly.

The stone structure rose out of the trees like a ruin. Graffiti covered the columns. Beer cans littered the floor.

Chloe was sitting on the low stone wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. She was wearing a black hoodie—the same one Ethan had worn in the video.

She looked up as I approached. Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen. She looked like a child.

"You killed him," she said. Her voice was flat. Dead.

"I didn't know," I whispered. "I thought he was breaking in."

"He *was* breaking in," she said. "To save you."

"Save me from what?"

She reached into her pocket. She pulled out a phone. Not hers.

Ethan's.

"He had a burner," she said. "The cops took his main phone. But he left this one with me. In case..."

"In case what?"

"In case he didn't come back."

She unlocked it. She tapped the screen and held it out to me.

It was a video.

Filmed from inside a car. My car.

I recognized the dashboard. The little hula girl Leo had put on the dash as a joke.

The camera was pointed at the driver's seat.

At me.

I was driving. Singing along to the radio. Unaware.

"He put a camera in your car," Chloe said. "Three weeks ago."

"Why?"

"Because he was tracking *him*."

"Who?"

"The man you're married to," she said.

I stared at her. "Leo?"

"No," she said. "Not Leo."

She swiped the screen.

Another video.

This one was filmed at night. Through a window.

My bedroom window.

I saw myself, sleeping. And standing over me...

A figure.

Tall. Wearing a surgical mask.

But he wasn't looking at me.

He was looking at the camera.

He raised a hand and waved.

"He knew Ethan was watching," Chloe whispered. "He was performing for him."

"Who is it?" I demanded. "Who is the man in the mask?"

Chloe looked at me. Her eyes were full of a terrible, adult knowledge.

"You really don't know, do you?" she said. "You live with him. You sleep next to him. And you don't even see him."

"Leo isn't..."

"Not Leo," she repeated. "Leo is just the landscaping. He's just the camouflage."

She tapped the screen again.

A photo.

It was old. Grainy. A newspaper clipping.

*TRAGEDY AT THE ORPHANAGE. FIRE CLAIMS THREE.*

There was a photo of three boys standing in front of a burnt-out building.

One of them was Leo. Young, skinny, scared.

One of them was Aris Thorne. Smug, even then.

And the third boy...

The third boy was standing slightly behind them. His face was shadowed. But his eyes...

They were the same eyes that had watched me sleep.

"They weren't friends," Chloe said. "They were brothers. Not by blood. By fire."

She looked at me.

"And they made a pact," she said. "To share everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything," she whispered. "Including you."

The wind howled through the stone arches of the Folly.

I looked at the photo. At the third boy.

And then I saw it.

On his wrist.

A watch.

An old, distinctive watch with a cracked face.

I looked down at my own wrist. At the watch I had found in the rubble of the renovation, the one Leo said was "just junk left by the previous owners."

It was the same watch.

"He's not behind you, Elena," Chloe said, her voice trembling. "He's not in the walls. He's not in the woods."

She pointed a shaking finger at my chest.

"He's been living in your house since the day you moved in."

I looked at the watch. The second hand ticked. *Tick. Tick. Tick.*

"He didn't break in," Chloe whispered. "He never left."

I heard a twig snap.

Loud. Close.

I spun around.

Standing at the edge of the clearing, watching us with a calm, patient smile, was the third boy.

And he was holding my hammer.