Story code: ST-000702
Part 2: The Recovery Address
I read Derek’s text at the side counter inside the station, with a jar of chained pens beside me and a missing-person flyer taped crooked to the plexiglass, and for a second the room narrowed to those four words: Ask Evan about iCloud. It was a neat message, almost helpful on the surface, which made it worse. Derek was denying nothing. He was daring me to follow the route that let him pretend this was all old syncing and not him using it to keep me scared.
Officer Ortiz came around from the window when she saw my face change.
“Another one?”
I turned the phone toward her.
She read it without touching the screen. “Did your brother ever manage your cloud account?”
“He helped me transfer everything when my old phone died,” I said. “I don’t know what ‘manage’ means exactly. He set things up because I was locked out of half of it.”
“Do you know if your backups were turned on?”
“I know I turned things off after the breakup. I thought I did everything.” Even saying it that way sounded thin. I had done what a normal person thinks deleting means. I had not done what someone who expected to be hunted through settings menus would do.
Officer Ortiz nodded once. “This is why I ask access questions first. People hear ‘deleted’ and think the trail ended there. It doesn’t always. If someone had device access, knew the recovery path, or got into an old synced account, that can matter as much as who presses send now.”
She did not say Evan’s name again. She did not need to.
I called him from the plastic chair by the wall because I did not want to wait until I got home and hear him answer from ten feet away. He picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
That should have sounded normal. Instead it sounded timed, because Derek’s message was still bright on my screen.
“Did you ever log into my iCloud from your laptop?”
There was a pause long enough for me to hear the station printer kick on behind the desk.
“Why?”
“Because Derek sent me deleted photos. Because I’m at the police station. Because he just told me to ask you about iCloud.”
Another pause. Then, “I set up your new phone, Maya. You know that. I had to sign in to transfer stuff.”
“Did you stay signed in?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for a minute back then. I would’ve signed out.”
Would’ve.
I pressed my thumb hard against the edge of the chair. “Did Derek ever use your laptop?”
His voice changed shape on that one. Not louder. Tighter. “Why would he use my laptop?”
“Answer the question.”
“A couple times at Mom’s, maybe. To print something. To look up truck parts. I don’t remember. That was a long time ago.”
I closed my eyes for one beat and opened them again because I could feel Officer Ortiz waiting nearby without hovering.
“Did you ever give him the Wi-Fi password?”
“Everybody has the Wi-Fi password.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He let out a breath straight into the phone. “Yes, okay? Yeah, probably. He was around. You brought him around.”
That landed exactly where he meant it to, not as an answer but as a shove. I looked up at the station lobby, at the toddler now asleep on the woman’s shoulder, at the bulletin board full of forms about theft prevention and neighborhood meetings, and I had the strange urge to laugh at how ordinary everything still looked.
“Did you know my recovery email?” I asked.
“The family one? Sure. We all knew it. Mom still uses it for receipts sometimes. Why are you acting like I hacked you?”
I heard keys clicking on his end now, fast and uneven. He was doing something on a keyboard while we talked.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m checking whether your old device is still listed under the account page from the browser save. Hold on.”
Browser save.
My grip slipped on the phone. “From what?”
He went quiet for a second too long.
“Evan. From what?”
“From my laptop,” he said. “It might still have your login cached if I never cleared it after that transfer. I’m trying to help you.”
Officer Ortiz held out her hand for the phone, not to take over, just asking with her eyes if I wanted her to hear. I put it on speaker.
“This is Officer Ortiz at city intake,” she said, calm as ever. “Do not change settings, delete data, or sign in and out of anything until your sister documents what’s there. If a browser has saved account access, that needs to be preserved, not cleaned up. Do you understand?”
The keys stopped.
“Yeah,” Evan said.
“Did anyone besides you use that laptop after Mr. Hale had been in your home?”
He did not answer right away. Then he said, “He borrowed it once when his phone screen was cracked. Maybe twice. I didn’t think that mattered.”
There it was. Not proof of everything. Not enough to finish it. But enough to make Derek’s whole posture make sense. He could deny stealing anything because maybe he never had to break in himself. Maybe he only needed the kind of access people wave off inside a family house.
Officer Ortiz wrote down the make of Evan’s laptop, the old family recovery address, the timing of the transfer to my new phone, and the fact that Derek had used the computer in our home. She told me to send myself full screenshots of the messages and not to alert anyone else yet if I wanted the digital trail intact.
On my way out, my mother called. Her first words were not What happened.
They were, “Why is Evan asking me where the old account notebook is?”