My wife texted me, “Pick me up from work right now. It’s urgent.”

 

My wife texted me: “Pick me up from work right away. It’s urgent.”
As I walked out, she looked surprised to see me.
She said, “I didn’t text you.”
I showed her my phone. Her face fell. She reached into her pocket, shaking.
I froze when she showed me…

…his second phone.
The same message appeared on the screen, sent   from his number   , but not from this phone.

“This… this can’t be possible,” she whispered, her eyes wide with fear. “I’ve never used any other phone but this one. This one works, the other one…”

She fell silent and looked at me as if she didn’t know whether to continue.

“The other one is in the closet at home. I haven’t touched it in months.”

As if on cue, we both turned toward the car. The back door was slightly ajar. I   knew  I’d closed it.

I approached slowly. I opened it.

Inside – empty.

But there was   another phone  lying on the seat. The same model as his. Locked. Just a notification on the screen:
“He mustn’t know.”

“Whose is it?” I whispered.

She simply shook her head. “I don’t know. But I think we should leave. Now.”

Something   was wrong. And it wasn’t just about phones anymore.

…I started the engine without saying anything. His eyes never left the phone in the back seat.

We left. The streets seemed quieter than usual. Too quiet. When I stopped at a red light, she whispered:

“Do you think someone is following us?”

I looked in the rearview mirror. A black SUV was parked a few meters behind us. No headlights. No license plate.

“How long has he been behind us?” I asked.

“I don’t know… maybe since we left the office.”

The light turned green. I turned sharply onto a side street. The SUV followed me. I turned around. There it was again.

“This isn’t an accident anymore,” I said through gritted teeth. “Call the police.”

She took out her phone, but just before she could dial the number,   the screen went black  . She tried again. Nothing.

“It freezes it… my phone restarts on its own,” she said.

“Okay, try mine…” I handed it to her. But when she took it,   mine froze as well  . A single word remained there, against a black background:

“YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.”

“Who… WHO is warning us?” I shouted.

Suddenly, the SUV caught up with us. The right window rolled down.
There was no face. Just…   a mask  . White, expressionless. And a single message, written on a piece of paper, was presented to us:

“Stop looking. Or next time it won’t just be a message.”

I cut the curve and pressed the accelerator. The SUV didn’t accelerate; it simply disappeared around the corner, as if its mission was accomplished.

I stopped at a nearby cafe with video surveillance. We went in. The owner recognized us—we came here often. I asked him to look at the cameras.

“A black SUV pulled up here about ten minutes ago, we saw it, it must be registered,” I said.

He looked at us strangely. “That’s not true. The cameras haven’t been working since last night. We cut the power.”

My wife had turned pale. “We have to go home. Right now.”

Back home, we went straight to the bedroom. She opened a drawer in the closet and took out her old phone. It was turned off.

“Look,” she said, “I never used it, except for my business contacts, two years ago. But I haven’t activated it since.”

We turned it on. Surprise:   an updated list of incoming and outgoing messages from the last few days  . Some… identical to those received today.

My wife was shaking. “Someone cloned my phone…”

“Or he had access to your old work account,” I said.

The next day, we filed a complaint with the police and the mobile operator. A few days later, they called us.

“We suspect that a former employee of your wife’s company misappropriated company data,” a police officer said. “It appears he cloned your phone using inside access.”

The name they said left us speechless.

Kalin  . A colleague fired last year for aggressive behavior. He had access to the archives. He never returned the office equipment.

It turned out he’d been following my wife for months. He was using his access to old phones to monitor her communications.
The SUV had been rented with false information. The   “He must not know” sheet   was part of a psychological game.

His goal?   To isolate her. To make me paranoid. To make her doubt everything and everyone.

But his mistake was to underestimate two people who love each other.

Kalin was arrested.
His phones were wiped and replaced.
His number was permanently blocked.

Now when my phone rings, I don’t wonder   who’s on the other end  .

But every message… makes me shudder.