The office lights on the top floor of our downtown Columbus headquarters were dimmed to a moody

By 11:45 AM, my cardboard box of personal belongings was sitting in the trunk of my Subaru. There were no tearful goodbyes. Colleagues I had worked alongside for four years suddenly developed a fascinating interest in their computer monitors whenever I walked past. Even Cole was nowhere to be found; his office door was locked, and his desk chair was pushed neatly under his terminal as if he had never existed.

As I climbed back into the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition, my phone—which I had finally plugged into a portable charger in my coat pocket—suddenly vibrated with a text message.

It wasn't Daniel. It was an unknown local number with a Westerville area code.

*Check the bottom pocket of the black gym bag you left in your office locker downstairs,* the message read. *You dropped something on Friday night that your husband didn't get to see.*

My heart slammed against my ribs. I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the keypad. *Who is this?* I typed back instantly.

There was no reply.

I sat in the freezing parking garage for five minutes, debating whether to drive straight home to an empty house or walk back into the belly of the beast. But the curiosity—and the desperate hope that there might be something here to explain the nightmare my life had become—overcame my fear.

I got out of the Subaru, pulled my wool coat tight around my neck, and walked briskly back through the glass revolving doors of the office tower. Because my security badge had already been deactivated at the front desk, I had to wait for a delivery driver to push open the side entrance, slipping past him into the lobby before the security guard could look up from his monitors.

The basement locker room was cold, dim, and smelled of chlorine and old sweat from the corporate gym upstairs. Rows of gray metal lockers lined the cinderblock walls. I walked down aisle three until I found locker 112—my old gym locker. The combination lock was still hanging on the latch, unlocked.

I pulled the metal door open. Inside sat my old gray canvas gym bag, pushed far into the back corner.

My hands shaking, I pulled the bag out, unzipped the main compartment, and reached past a pair of old running shoes and a spare towel to feel along the bottom lining. My fingers brushed against something hard and rectangular—a small, black plastic object tucked away in a hidden Velcro pocket I rarely used.

I pulled it out into the dim fluorescent light.

It was a small, high-capacity USB flash drive.

I stared at it in bewilderment. I had never owned a black flash drive like this. It didn't belong to me.

Suddenly, the heavy metal door of the locker room clicked open behind me. Footsteps echoed sharply against the concrete floor, slow and deliberate, moving down the aisle toward row three.