Page 12 of Snowed Inn For Christmas

She shook her head and then hurried off to get Daisy her drink while I went through the prompts on my phone to disable it before opening it and removing the battery.When she came back, her skin was pale, and I could see how little she had been sleeping lately.I hadn’t noticed the exhaustion yesterday, but today it was more evident with the worry marring her features.

“How long do you think it’s been in there?”she asked, nodding to the AirTag as she pulled out a chair and sat beside me.

“It’s hard to say.My phone picked it up as soon as you brought the unicorn in here, but I ignored the first alert.”

“I wonder why my phone didn’t get any alerts?”

I shrugged, not sure how to answer that.

“Do you have your settings turned on?”

“Yeah.I made sure they were turned on after Mike’s accident,” she said softly, lowering her head as the memory washed over her.“I promised my parents that I would make sure they could always find me, just in case they needed to.”

“Have you checked your settings lately?”I asked, trying to ignore the feeling in my gut.

She shook her head and pulled her phone out of her pocket before quickly swiping through different screens.She pressed her lips together and exhaled heavily through her nose.

“My location services are turned off, and theFind Myfeature is off as well.”

“Maybe there was a system update that—”

“Stop.We both know what really happened, so there’s no use in trying to make light of it.That asshole disabled them on my phone so I wouldn’t know that he put a tracking device in the stuffed animal he gave my daughter.”

The anger in her voice only fueled the fire that was already coursing through my veins.

“Wait—what?Hegavethat to Daisy?”

She nodded and pushed another heavy breath out through her pursed lips.I knew she was struggling to keep it together so she didn’t upset Daisy, but this was too much.

“It was her first day of kindergarten gift he gave to her,” she said with a grim smile.“Right before he started letting himself into my apartment, even when I wasn’t there.”

I inhaled deeply and leaned back against the chair as I stared at the AirTag, realizing this was a whole lot worse than it seemed when she first showed up here yesterday.If he had been tracking her this entire time, then that meant he knew exactly where she was.

Seven

Julie