He didn’t know I was watching.
He didn’t know I was recording.
And now I had proof. Direct. Undeniable. Prosecutable proof that Jake Carson had tried to hire someone to murder me.
Tomorrow I would give it to Sarah.
And then we would stop him.
But that night, listening to my husband breathe in the next room, I realized something.
I wasn’t afraid anymore.
I was ready.
It was Tuesday afternoon, March 5, just past four, when I walked into the office of Anderson Investigations on Southwest Morrison Street in downtown Portland. The place smelled like old coffee and cigarette smoke even though a no-smoking sign hung on the wall. A man in his fifties with buzzed gray hair sat behind a cluttered desk covered in manila folders and empty Styrofoam cups. He looked up when I came in.
“Zoe Martinez?”
“That’s me.”
“Tom Anderson.”
He stood and shook my hand with a firm grip.
“Have a seat.”
I sat across from him with my purse on my lap. I had hired Tom five days earlier, right after showing Sarah the video of Jake hiring Rick Donovan to kill me. Sarah had opened an official investigation, filed for a warrant, and told me to lie low. But I couldn’t just sit around waiting. I needed to know more. I needed to understand why Jake was doing this, and how deep Maya’s involvement went.
So I hired Tom to follow them both.
Now he slid a thick folder across the desk.
“Preliminary report,” he said. “I’ve been tailing them for five days. They’re not subtle.”
I opened it.
Photographs. Lots of them. Jake and Maya entering the Marriott Downtown on Southwest Sixth Avenue. Jake and Maya sitting at a corner table at Clyde Common, holding hands. Jake and Maya kissing in the parking lot of a Fred Meyer.
My stomach twisted, but I kept going.
“They meet three times a week,” Tom said, leaning back in his chair. “Always at the Marriott. Always between two and five when you’re working at the restaurant. They check in under a fake name—Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. Jake pays cash.”
I nodded slowly and kept flipping.
“What else?”
“Your sister’s seeing a fertility specialist,” he said. “Portland Fertility Center on Northeast Glisan. I followed her there twice last week. Standing appointments every Tuesday and Thursday at ten.”
I looked up.
“Fertility specialist?”
“Yeah. She’s trying to get pregnant.”
He slid another photograph across the desk. Maya exiting the clinic with a folder tucked under her arm.
“From what I can tell, she’s been going since January. Looks serious.”
My chest tightened.
“Maya wants a baby with Jake. Does she know he’s married?”
Tom gave a small shrug.
“Hard to say for sure, but based on their behavior? They act like a couple planning a future. Long-term stuff. She talks about opening a place called Maya’s Table. He talks about moving to Seattle. They’re not hiding it from each other. Just from you.”
I closed my eyes for a second and breathed.
“What about that?”
Tom slid one more photo across the desk. Jake and Maya sitting at the café inside Powell’s City of Books. Jake was holding up a document. Maya was reading it and smiling.
“Took that yesterday,” Tom said. “Couldn’t get close enough to read it, but it looked official. Medical paperwork, maybe.”
I stared at the photo.
A thought hit me so fast it felt physical.
“Can I see that again?”
Tom handed it back. I zoomed in with my phone camera. At the top of the page, blurred but legible enough, was a logo.
Oregon Wellness Clinic.
Underneath, in small print:
Patient: Jake Carson.
Diagnosis: Low sperm count due to prior injury.
Treatment: Testosterone therapy to improve sperm quality.
Estimated completion: December 2024.
My heart stopped.
“What is it?” Tom asked.
“I need to make a call.”
I dialed Sarah. She answered on the second ring.
“Zoe. Everything okay?”
“I need you to check something for me. Jake’s medical records. Specifically, I need to know if he’s ever had a vasectomy.”
There was a pause.
“Why?”
“Because I think he’s lying to Maya. He gave her fake medical documents saying he’s being treated for low sperm count. But I need the truth.”
“Hang on.”
I heard typing. Because Sarah had already opened the criminal investigation, she had a warrant granting access to his medical records.
A minute later she exhaled sharply.
“Okay. I’m looking at his file now. Jake Michael Carson, date of birth April 12, 1988. And Jesus, Zoe.”
“What?”
“He had a vasectomy,” she said slowly. “August 15, 2019. Oregon Health and Science University. Permanent sterilization procedure. No reversal on record.”
Three years before he married me.
Five years before he promised Maya a baby.
My throat closed.
“He’s been lying to me this whole time.”
“And if he gave your sister fake fertility records,” Sarah said quietly, “then he’s lying to her too.”
I finished the thought.
“He’s lying to both of us.”
I hung up with shaking hands. Tom was still watching me.
“Bad news?”
“He had a vasectomy,” I said. “Five years ago. He’s been lying to both of us.”
I opened my laptop and logged into the cloud account where I had been saving all the copied evidence. I searched the messages I had taken from Jake’s phone before he changed his password.
There it was.
A text from Jake to Marcus Brennan dated February 25.
Keep them hoping, bro. Hope is the best drug. As long as Zoe thinks I’ll give her kids someday, she won’t leave. And as long as Maya thinks she’s getting pregnant, she’ll do whatever I ask. Easy.
I read it twice. Then a third time. My vision blurred.
Jake didn’t love me.
He didn’t love Maya.
He didn’t love anyone.
He had been using both of us. Stringing me along with promises of a family so I would stay. Stringing Maya along with promises of a baby so she would help him. Poisoning me so I’d be too weak to fight when he stole Rosa’s Kitchen. Lying to Maya about a future so she’d stay loyal. And all the while, he had been planning to kill me, inherit the restaurant, sell it, and vanish with the money.
Maya was a pawn just like me.
The difference was, she didn’t know it yet.
I closed the laptop and looked at Tom.
“Can you keep following them?”
“As long as you’re paying.”
“Good. I need everything. Photos. Recordings. Locations. Times. Everything.”
“You got it.”
I left his office with the folder tucked under my arm and a hollow ache in my chest. Jake didn’t love anyone. He loved money. Power. Control. And Maya—my little sister, the girl I used to read bedtime stories to, the one who used to braid my hair—was just another pawn in his game.
Part of me wanted to warn her.
Part of me wanted to tell her the truth. That Jake had had a vasectomy. That there would never be a baby. That the future she imagined with him was a lie.
But another part of me—the part that remembered her kissing my husband, laughing about Maya’s Table, texting him about having his child—thought she deserved to find out the hard way.
Jake lied to both of us.
But only one of us knew the truth now.
And I was going to use that.
Seven and a half months passed.
Seven and a half months since I found the video of Jake hiring Rick Donovan to kill me. Seven months since I sat in Detective Sarah Morgan’s office and showed her the footage of my husband planning to blow up Rosa’s Kitchen with me inside. Seven months of planning, waiting, gathering evidence, and building the kind of case no jury could ignore.
After I gave Sarah the video back in March, we made a plan.
A long one.
Sarah wanted to arrest Jake immediately, but I convinced her to wait. If we arrested him too soon, his lawyer would argue he had never meant to go through with it. That it was just talk. But if we waited—if we let him believe his plan was still working, if we caught him at the scene expecting me to die—then we would have him cold. Conspiracy. Attempted murder. Fraud. No wiggle room.
So we waited.
Sarah opened an official investigation. She got warrants. She tracked Rick Donovan. She interviewed him quietly. Rick confessed everything. Jake paid him five thousand dollars cash to loosen the gas valve at Rosa’s Kitchen. Rick was supposed to do it three days before October 28, then disappear. Jake would make sure I was alone in the kitchen that night. The gas would leak. I would light the stove. Boom. Tragic accident. Grieving widower inherits restaurant. Sells it. Walks away clean.
Except I knew.
And three days before October 28, it was time to make sure his plan failed.
It was Friday afternoon, October 25, just after two, and I stood in the kitchen of Rosa’s Kitchen with my phone pressed to my ear.