Arthur’s digital investigators were highly paid, but they were conventional.

They looked for credit card transactions, cellular tower pings, and IP addresses routing through local servers.

Three months before I walked out of the Costello estate, I had systematically dismantled my digital existence.

I did not merely delete my accounts; I poisoned the databases.

I wrote a simple script that ran every night at midnight on the office server, slowly swapping my real social security number with that of a deceased woman from upstate New York.

My banking records were diverted into a series of nested shell corporations based in Cyprus, which then dissolved themselves.

I had paid for this cottage in cash, using five-thousand-dollar bundles delivered to a lawyer who asked no questions.

Arthur’s trackers would have found nothing but dead ends and automated error messages.

The headlights of the Ford sedan cut across the kitchen wall as the car turned into my driveway.

The engine died, leaving only the sound of the sleet tapping against the glass.

I stood in the shadow of the hallway, waiting.