The first thing he reached for was Lara’s phone. If she’d been frightened enough to run, maybe there was something on it—messages, calls, anything that could explain what terrified her. But when he lifted it, the screen demanded a passcode he didn’t recognize. He tried the one they’d always used for years, the one they jokingly referred to as “our shared brain.”
It failed. He tried a variation, hoping he’d misremembered. Another failure. Lara had changed her password—recently, deliberately, without telling him. The realization settled uneasily in his stomach. They never hid things from each other. Phones lay unlocked on counters, laptops open, accounts shared without a second thought.