The next morning, Isabelle woke before her alarm.
The flat was silent except for the rain tapping against the windows. Becca's unicorn lunchbox sat on the counter, packed neatly beside Luke's dinosaur one. Her mum had already left a note: "Don't worry about tea tonight."
She stared at the note for a long moment, feeling an ache that had nothing to do with tiredness.
Her mother shouldn't have to pick up the slack, not after everything. But Isabelle didn't have much of a choice. The job that was supposed to provide stability now felt like a chessboard — and she was beginning to suspect someone was moving the pieces against her.
The missing camera still gnawed at her. Every time she pictured that bare space behind the plant, her stomach twisted. Someone had found it. Someone who knew where to look.
And Robert's knowing comment "You strike me as someone who plans ahead" echoed in her mind like an accusation.
She wanted to believe he wasn't involved, that he was simply perceptive. But trust didn't come easily anymore.
Not after Clive.
Not after four years of rebuilding from the rubble he'd left behind.
She wasn't about to let another man, however polished and inscrutable, make her doubt herself again.
The Northern line was its usual chaos — damp coats, umbrellas, commuters pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Isabelle wedged herself between a businessman with a folded copy of The Times and a woman clutching a reusable coffee cup, her handbag pinned against her side.
The air smelled faintly of rain and cheap aftershave.
As the train lurched forward, someone swung forward, his hand landing on her torso. She flinched and twisted to get away from the touch, but then his hand moved — firmer this time, lingering where it shouldn't.
For half a second, she froze.
Then she moved sharply sideways, stepping closer to the doors. Her pulse hammered in her throat.
The man behind her mumbled something — apology or excuse, she couldn't tell — and looked away, pretending to adjust his briefcase.
It could have been an accident. The train was crowded; everyone was jostling for space.
She forced herself to believe that.
It was easier than admitting how unsafe she suddenly felt.
When she finally stepped off at Bank, the cool drizzle outside felt like relief. She took a steadying breath, lifted her chin, and joined the flow of commuters heading toward the office.
She didn't have time for weakness. Not today.
By the time she reached her desk, her plan was forming.
She couldn't risk another visible camera — whoever had removed the first one clearly knew how to cover their tracks. But that didn't mean she was finished.
She had something subtler in mind.
The IT department had been testing a new "secure cloud sync" for sensitive documents, supposedly accessible only through staff logins. Isabelle knew enough to suspect it wasn't as secure as advertised. So she decided to make use of it.
She created a decoy file — a draft proposal with deliberately misaligned numbers and a few choice errors. Then she stored the real one on her flash drive, safe and encrypted.
The decoy would sit on the shared drive, easy to find for anyone snooping. If it was tampered with or sent somewhere it shouldn't be, she'd know.
A trap within reach. Quiet. Invisible.
She couldn't prove anything yet, but she could collect breadcrumbs.
"Morning," came a voice from behind her.
Her pulse jumped before she turned.
Robert stood there, immaculate as ever, coffee in hand. His tie was slightly askew today, as though he'd put it on in a rush. The imperfection made him look almost human.
"Morning," she said evenly.
"You were in early today," he noted.
"I had some catching up to do."
He nodded toward her screen. "Still playing detective?"
Her head snapped up. "Excuse me?"
He gave a faint, inscrutable smile.
"You've got that look. The one people get when they're trying to solve something, they know they won't rest until they do."
She stared at him, pulse rising. "If you have something to say, Robert, please just say it. I don't have time to play games."
He leaned a hand against the desk, lowering his voice just slightly.
"Just that you're not as subtle as you think. Be careful who you let see your cards."
And with that, he walked off, leaving her simmering.
Was that a warning — or a confession?
She hated that she couldn't tell.
The rest of the morning unfolded as a blur of calls, reports, and careful, polite exchanges. Sienna drifted by twice — once under the pretence of asking about a client file, once to offer a saccharine compliment on Isabelle's blouse.
Each time, Isabelle smiled thinly and made a mental note of what Sienna looked at on her desk.
Around midday, she sent the decoy report to the shared drive and waited.
By three o'clock, someone had opened it.
She knew because she'd planted a tracking code in the metadata — a simple script that logged access timestamps.
At 3:07 p.m., the file had been viewed and then closed again.
Her heart gave a small, hard thud.
She cross-checked the time with her memory of the office. Richard had been in a meeting with the finance team. Sienna had been hovering near the copier. Robert had been — standing in the corridor, on a call.
She remembered it because he'd glanced at her as he passed, a look she couldn't quite read.
Coincidence? Maybe.
But her skin prickled.
That evening, when the office began to empty, Isabelle stayed behind again. She told herself it was to finish the quarterly schedules, but really she was watching. Listening.
At half seven, the cleaners arrived — a quiet team who spoke little more than a few words of English. She smiled, nodded, and pretended to keep working.
They vacuumed, wiped desks, emptied bins. No one went near hers.
When they'd gone, she locked her drawer and slipped the flash drive into her bag, the decoy still glowing faintly on her computer screen.
Then she turned off her computer and stood by the window for a moment, looking down at the city. The rain had stopped, but the streets still gleamed under the orange glow of the streetlights.
Somewhere below, buses rumbled, sirens echoed faintly, lives unfolded in neat, indifferent rhythm.
She pressed her head against the glass and whispered, "You're not going to win."
On the way home, the Tube was quieter — only a handful of commuters, the steady squeak of the train running along the tracks. She kept her back against the carriage wall this time, her bag held close across her chest, eyes fixed on the reflection in the glass.
The incident from that morning played over in her mind — the hand, the crowded air, the small, shameful flicker of fear. She hated how easily it had unsettled her.
She told herself it was nothing, just a symptom of everything else — the missing camera, the sabotage, the constant strain of being watched.
But deep down, she knew better.
Something was shifting.
The office had always felt like a battleground, but lately it was beginning to feel like something darker — a game with invisible rules, where trust was a liability and stealth the only armour.
When she got home, the kids were already asleep on the sofa, cartoons frozen mid-frame on the television. Her mum gave her a weary smile.
"You look done in, love."
"Long day," Isabelle said, slipping off her heels.
Her mum poured her a cup of tea and nodded toward her.
"You need to slow down before you make yourself ill."
"I can't," Isabelle murmured. "Not yet."
"Is it that new man your boss hired? The one who thinks he's God's gift?"
She blinked. "Robert?"
Her mum smirked faintly. "You've mentioned him enough."
"I've mentioned him because he's —" She stopped herself, unsure how to finish the sentence. Because he's watching me? Because I don't know if I can trust him? Because part of me wants to?
"Because he's irritating," she settled on.
Her mum chuckled. "They usually are."
Later that night, after she'd tucked the kids into bed and loaded the dishwasher, Isabelle opened her laptop and checked the decoy document on the shared drive again.
There it was — a second entry.
The decoy file had been opened again at 8:46 p.m.
Her pulse quickened. She hadn't left the office until eight-thirty.
Someone had gone back after she had left.
Someone with the kind of access that came with a keycard.
Her cursor hovered over the timestamp.
She whispered into the stillness, "Got you."
But the triumph was hollow, fleeting — because as the realisation sank in, so did another: she wasn't sure who she'd caught.
And if she was wrong, she might already be in far deeper danger than she knew.