It had been exactly a month.
No anonymous messages. No new threats. No explanations. Not even from Lizzie. Just silence.
They'd hoped the number would text again. That was the plan. Let it come to them. Track it. Trap it.
She remembered Miles's words when he looked them both in the eye, her and Craig, and said, "The only way to conclusively trace a digital footprint is to catch the message live. Once it hits your phone, don't delete, don't screenshot, don't forward. Just call me immediately."
He had spoken with the kind of intensity that made you sit straighter, like even your pulse had to behave. "Once we intercept it in real-time, we can extract the packet metadata, isolate the origin point, run a traceroute. If the IP's not bouncing through too many proxies or VPN layers, we might just get lucky."
She remembered nodding. Craig had too.
