My wife grabbed the phone before I could.
I still remember watching her face change while she read the message.
Not angry at first.
Confused.
Then something worse.
She looked up at me real slow and asked, “Where were you Tuesday night?”
I told her I was driving late field-trip routes for the school district. Same thing I’d told her three nights earlier.
Then she turned the screen toward me.
Under the threat message was a photo.
Blurry security camera shot from inside a casino outside Oklahoma City.
Timestamped Tuesday. 11:43 p.m.
Me standing beside a blackjack table.
I honestly couldn’t speak for a second because I had absolutely no memory of being there.
My wife thought I was lying immediately. I could see it happen in her face. Twenty years of rebuilding trust gone in maybe five seconds.
She asked if I’d started gambling again.
I said no so fast it barely sounded human.
Then she asked me to explain the photo.
And I couldn’t.
That’s when I noticed something else in the picture.
I wasn’t alone.
There was a woman standing beside me with her hand on my arm like she knew me.
Dark jacket. Blonde hair.
Familiar somehow.
My wife saw it too.
She just whispered, “Oh my God.”
Then she walked to our bedroom and locked the door for the first time in our entire marriage.
I sat at the kitchen table until almost two in the morning staring at that casino photo trying to force my brain to remember Tuesday night.
Nothing.
Just flashes.
Rain on the windshield.
A gas station coffee.
Someone laughing in the passenger seat.
Then suddenly I remembered waking up Wednesday morning in my bus parked behind the school garage with a pounding headache and mud on my shoes.
At the time I figured I was getting sick.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
Around 2:15 my phone rang again from another blocked number.
I answered immediately.
Nobody spoke for a few seconds.
Then a woman’s voice quietly said, “You still really don’t remember what happened to her?”