“A great way to get your attention. To make you stop everything you’re doing—just like you are right now. A great way to manipulate you to respond as directed at a precise time for a certain reason.” Lucy looks around as if someone might be watching, then walks over and holds out her hand. “Let me see.”

I’m not about to give her my phone, and I get up from my chair. I step back from her.

“I need to take a look.” She continues to hold out her hand for my phone. “I promise whatever you just got isn’t from me. Let me see what it is.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Legally I can’t. Legally I won’t be that reckless. I don’t know for a fact who’s doing this, Lucy.”

“Doing what?”

“Sending me things as if they’re from you.”

“And you worry it might really be me doing it.” She looks hurt, then stung.

“I don’t know for a fact who it is,” I repeat.

“What do you mean by legally?” She begins to react angrily and so do I. “You’re just like them. You think I did something. The FBI’s all over my property so that makes me guilty of something?”

“We’re not discussing this. You didn’t overhear anything, not even a ringtone, dammit, and you need to step back.” I’m dismayed by the tone in my voice, and Lucy is about to lose her temper.

“I can’t help if you withhold things from me, Aunt Kay!”

“You can help by answering my very simple question, Lucy. Could someone be spoofing your number? Could someone have hijacked it?”

“You know better than anyone that I don’t give out my phone numbers.” Her arms are defiantly crossed. “I almost never call anybody from my emergency line, anyway. And nobody has that number except you. And Benton, Marino and Janet of course.”

“Well it seems somebody has it. I’m wondering how that could happen. Especially to you.”

“I don’t know how. I don’t know enough yet.”

“I almost never hear you say you don’t know.” I carefully, painfully get up from my stone slab. “I need a few minutes of privacy, please.”

I dig into a pocket for my wireless earpiece. I put it on as I click on the link and immediately text rolls by, bloodred like before:

DEPRAVED HEART—VIDEO 2

BY CARRIE GRETHEN

JULY 11, 1997

I feel the stone dragon watching from his rose quartz perch. His glinting red garnet eyes seem to follow me as I move as far from Lucy as I can.

CARRIE’S FACE looms large and porpoise-like as she peers into a microcamera disguised as a battery-operated beige plastic pencil sharpener shaped like a brick.