Clara woke up with a sharp crick in her neck. She was still wearing her work clothes from yesterday, crumpled on the living room sofa. The apartment was dead quiet.
She sat up, rubbing her temples. The dining room table looked pathetic in the morning light. The roasted chicken sat exactly where Arthur had left it, the fat congealed into a white, waxy pool in the skillet. The two glasses of Pinot Noir were untouched.
She reached into her blazer pocket and pulled out her iPhone. The screen lit up.
8:14 AM. She swiped down to check her notifications, expecting a barrage of angry emails from David about the botched presentation, or a text from Arthur explaining where he slept.
There were no notifications.
Clara frowned. She looked at the top right corner of the screen. Where the 5G symbol usually sat, there were just four small letters.
SOS. "You've got to be kidding me," she muttered. She toggled the airplane mode on and off. She held the power button and did a hard restart. When the Apple logo faded, the SOS was still there.
She walked over to the TV console and unplugged the router, waiting thirty seconds before plugging it back in. The green lights blinked, struggling to authenticate, then turned solid red.
Arthur hadn't just changed the password. He had completely bricked the network.
A cold, heavy knot formed in Clara's stomach. She couldn't check her bank account. She couldn't email Marcus to apologize. She couldn't text David to see if she still had a job. Without the internet, the apartment felt like a concrete box.
Starbucks, she thought. Just get to Starbucks. Connect to the public Wi-Fi and sort this out.
She grabbed her keys from the entryway bowl, didn't bother changing out of her wrinkled blouse, and took the elevator down to the parking garage.
Her leased 5-Series BMW beeped as she unlocked it. The leather seats were cold. She pushed the ignition button. The engine purred to life, immediately followed by a sharp, electronic chime.
A bright yellow fuel pump icon lit up on the digital dashboard. Range: 12 miles.
Clara gripped the steering wheel. She had driven all over the county yesterday for the Gallagher lunch and hadn't stopped to fill up.
She pulled out of the garage and merged onto the wet morning streets, driving under the speed limit to conserve fuel. She pulled into a Chevron station three blocks from the apartment, parked at pump number four, and got out.
The cold morning air bit through her thin blazer. She pulled her wallet from her purse and slid her heavy Chase Sapphire card into the reader.
Processing... Card Declined. See Cashier.
Right. The fraud alert. Or whatever Arthur had claimed it was.
She pulled out her personal debit card. The one she had drained at Del Frisco's to save face. She slid it in, praying a direct deposit had cleared, or she had miscalculated her balance.
Processing... Insufficient Funds.
Clara stood at the pump, listening to the heavy rush of traffic on the nearby avenue. A man in a beat-up Ford pickup at the pump across from her was casually filling his tank, drinking a coffee.
She unzipped the coin purse section of her wallet. She fished out a crumpled five-dollar bill and a handful of quarters.
She felt a hot flush of humiliation creeping up her neck. Clara Harrison, Senior Account Executive, walking into a brightly lit gas station convenience store to prepay five dollars and fifty cents in loose change for a luxury car.
She pumped the gas. It took less than ten seconds. The needle on the dashboard barely moved off the red line.
She drove the remaining mile to Starbucks in complete silence, parked, and practically ran inside. She didn't buy a coffee. She just stood in the corner near the restrooms, pulled out her phone, and selected the Starbucks Guest Wi-Fi network.
The little checkmark appeared. The Wi-Fi fan lit up.
Instantly, her phone vibrated. Then it vibrated again. And again. A backlog of emails and app notifications flooded the screen in a rapid-fire sequence.
Clara ignored the work emails. She opened the Verizon notification first.
Notice: The cellular service for the device ending in 4092 has been suspended by the Primary Account Holder. To restore service, the Primary Account Holder must log in or contact customer support.
Her breath hitched. It wasn't a dead zone. It wasn't a missed bill. Arthur had deliberately turned her phone off.
She opened the Chase app next. The password error from the restaurant was gone. It let her log in via FaceID.
She tapped the joint checking account. The balance was $85,000.
Clara exhaled, her shoulders dropping an inch. Okay. He didn't take the money. But then she looked closer. Beneath the balance, under the 'Recent Activity' tab, there was a list of canceled auto-payments.
Equinox Membership - AutoPay Canceled. BMW Financial Services - AutoPay Canceled. State Farm Auto Insurance - AutoPay Canceled.
He wasn't stealing from her. He was just taking his hands off the wheel. He was stepping back and letting all the plates he had been quietly spinning for five years crash to the floor.
She stood in the corner of the crowded coffee shop, holding a phone that could only work on borrowed Wi-Fi, with five dollars of gas in her car and a career hanging by a thread.
Arthur wasn't fixing a server. He was gone. And he knew everything.