The lining was slightly torn. Something round and silver was pushing through from the inside.My brain processed it in pieces, the way your mind does when it encounters something that should not exist. The white plastic edge. The size of a coin. The clear tape holding it in place against the pink inner fabric.

An AirTag.The cold that moved through me started in my chest and reached my hands before I fully understood what I was looking at.

I turned the backpack carefully, pulling the torn seam just far enough to see it clearly. Whoever had placed it there had not simply dropped it in. It had been wrapped in tape and wedged deep into the corner of the lining, tucked behind a layer of fabric. This was not something that had been forgotten in a pocket or slipped in carelessly. This had been hidden.

Lily’s voice was barely a breath. “It beeped when we were in the shoe store. I thought maybe it was a toy at first. Then I felt the bump through the fabric and I remembered what those things are from that video we watched.”

She meant a safety video from her school, one of those age-appropriate internet safety lessons. My eight-year-old remembered an AirTag from an internet safety video. I was going to have complicated feelings about that later.