Page 62 of Secret Baby Daddy

I have heard that sentence before.

Months ago, early in our correspondence, Cassandra used almost the exact phrase debating a hypothetical case, and I remember it because it struck me as too precise to be spontaneous, the kind of sentence a person builds once and then reaches for again when the moment calls for it.

Piper said nearly the same words to me three nights ago, in the dark, on the far side of a pillow wall neither of us fully respected by morning.

Coincidences happen.

People repeat good sentences.

It means nothing on its own.

Cassandra: There’s a detail I probably shouldn’t tell you. We were trapped together during a security lockdown a few nights before this happened. There was only one bed. We built a wall out of pillows like a couple of teenagers, and he took the side closest to the door without me even having to ask, because apparently some men are just built that way whether they mean to be or not.

The laptop nearly slips out of my hands.

Nobody outside that room knows about the pillow wall.

Not Hayes.

Not Cordelia.

Not a single person on the security detail, because I never logged it, never mentioned it to anyone, because it was never anything but the two of us and an old estate and a decision that felt, at the time, entirely private.

I run the possibility that I am wrong one more time, with the same rigor I would apply to any conclusion this consequential.

Every version of coincidence I try to construct collapses under its own weight.

I know what I need to do next, and I hate every part of it, and I do it anyway, because twelve years of training has taught me that confirmed evidence is the only kind worth trusting, however much it costs to obtain.

Atlas: Sounds like he understands you better than you expected anyone to.

Cassandra: He does. It terrifies me a little.

I set the laptop down.

I walk, quietly, into the bedroom, find my phone charging on the nightstand, and type a message on an entirely separate thread, a single line to Piper’s personal number, nothing that requires Blackline at all, nothing that should mean anything to anyone except a man checking on a colleague after a long night.

Everything alright? Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to make sure you were resting.

I send it.

I stand in the doorway, and I watch.

Piper’s phone lights up on the nightstand beside her, three feet away, screen glowing pale blue against the dark.

She stirs, reaches for it, reads it, and something soft crosses her face before she sets it back down without replying, already drifting back toward sleep.

I go back to the alcove.

I open Blackline again.

I wait.

Cassandra: Sorry, got distracted for a second. Where were we?

I do the math one final time, cleanly, without mercy for myself.

The timestamp on her reply.