Being Watched

I didn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Douglas Kerrigan's car at the curb, engine running, headlights dark, like he'd been waiting for us to notice.

At the office the next morning, everything looked exactly the same — the same neon LARKSPUR sign, the same fake ficus by reception — and that somehow made it worse.

"Maybe it wasn't him," Callum said over coffee in the break room, not sounding convinced of it himself. "Maybe it was a coincidence."

"Company lawyers don't sit outside a retired notary's house by coincidence," I said.

I'd spent an hour that morning searching the company's shared drive for anything from the founding years, and found almost nothing — a scrubbed history, files that should have existed but didn't, an "ARCHIVED — RESTRICTED" folder I didn't have permission to open. When I requested access through the portal, a little red banner appeared: Request logged. Awaiting approval — D. Kerrigan.

My stomach dropped.

I withdrew the request within thirty seconds, but I already knew it didn't matter. It was logged. He'd see it.

By early afternoon, Douglas walked past my desk twice, slower the second time, close enough that I could smell his cologne, and didn't say a single word to me. He didn't have to.

At four-fifteen, an email landed in my personal inbox — not my work one, my personal one, the account almost nobody had — sent from an address that was just a string of numbers at a free provider.

Subject line: blank.

Body, four lines:

Some things are better left buried.

You have a good job here. A future.

Don't make people dig up the past.

This is the only warning you'll get.

I read it three times, my hands cold, my heart loud in my ears.

Whoever had sent it knew my personal email address.

Which meant whoever had sent it had access to something no ordinary employee should ever have.