And the recording caught Vanessa saying the quiet part aloud, naming the thing she was actually after, to a woman she was in the middle of trying to destroy.

Vanessa lunged for the phone in my hand, a last desperate reach, as though seizing the device could unmake what was on it.

I simply stepped back out of range.

“It isn’t on the phone, Vanessa,” I said, almost gently.

“It’s on a server you can’t reach, in a form no one can alter.

There’s nothing on this screen to grab.

There hasn’t been all along.