Chapter 4
The switch didn't work the first time I tried it.
I stood by the door with my hand hovering over the plastic plate and pressed it up. Nothing. The lamp on the side table kept burning low and yellow, and the overhead stayed dark. Dante was two feet away with his hands visible at his sides, the way he'd kept them since I told him not to move.
"Try again," he said.
I pressed it again, harder. Still nothing. My apartment wiring had been bad since February. The super had put a piece of tape over it once and told me not to overload the circuit with the radiator and the lamp on the same outlet.
"It's not you," I said, mostly to myself. "It sticks."
Dante looked at the switch, then at the lamp. "Can I?"
I hesitated. My heart was still beating too fast. But I nodded once and stepped back just enough for him to reach it.
He didn't crowd me. He leaned in, flipped the plate down and up once, quickly, the way you check a breaker, and then held it up for a full second. The overhead light stuttered, buzzed, and came on. White and too bright after the dim. I blinked.
The room changed completely. With the overhead on I could see everything I'd been missing in the half-light. Dust on the radiator. The chip in the paint by the door where I'd moved my dresser in. His face, clearer, tired.
"There," he said, and took his hand off the switch and stepped back again.
I felt steadier with the light on. Like the apartment was mine again. I took a breath that actually filled my lungs.
"Okay," I said. "So where?"
He looked around the room. "You said you didn't know you had it. That means whoever left it didn't want you to find it. So not a drawer. Not a closet shelf."
He said it like he was thinking out loud, not telling me what to do. I appreciated that.
I started with the table that held the lamp. I pulled the drawer out. Old mail, a checkbook I never used, a pack of batteries. Nothing else. Dante stayed by the door while I checked, giving me space, but his eyes kept moving. To the window, to the fire escape, to the hallway outside.
I lifted the lamp to check behind it. It was heavier than I expected. The base was one of those cheap ceramic ones from Target, painted to look like stone. I tipped it and something inside it shifted. Not a rattle. A thud, soft, like something taped.
"Wait," I said.
Dante came a step closer. "What is it?"
I turned the lamp on its side. On the bottom, under the felt pad, someone had cut a neat circle and then taped it back. The tape was old, yellowed. Not my tape. I had never turned this lamp over before. I bought it with the apartment and never dusted under it.
My hands started to shake again.
"That's it," Dante said quietly. He didn't reach for it. "That's where they'd put it. Somewhere you wouldn't look but could still grab fast if they needed to."
I picked at the tape with my fingernail. It peeled away clean. Inside the hollow base was a small flat packet wrapped in brown paper and rubber banded once. No label. No writing. About the size of a passport, but thicker. I didn't pull it out all the way. I could feel the edge of what felt like a USB drive inside the paper.
I sat back on my heels, holding the lamp.
Before either of us could say anything, there was a knock.
Not a loud pounding. Three short taps on the dark wooden door, right at the height of the brass knob. Dante went completely still.
We both looked at the door. Then his phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. Once. Twice.
He didn't answer it right away. He looked at me, and I saw the calculation happen in his face.
"They're checking," he whispered. "That knock is them asking if I did it. The text will be them telling me to bring it down."
I slid the packet back into the lamp base with my thumb and pressed the felt back down, my palm sweaty against the ceramic. I righted the lamp. The light kept burning overhead, too bright, exposing us.
The knock came again, same three taps, a little more insistent.
Dante's phone buzzed again. He pulled it out just enough to glance at the screen, his jaw tight. He turned it so I could see one line without unlocking it.
Status?
I stared at the word. My apartment suddenly felt very small and very watched.
"Don't answer yet," I said, my voice barely audible.
May you like
He nodded and slipped the phone back into his pocket, unanswered. The person in the hall waited a few more seconds, then I heard footsteps moving away from the door, not down the stairs, just back toward the stairwell to wait.
The lamp sat between us, ordinary again, hiding what we'd just found. We hadn't opened it. We hadn't even touched the packet inside. But whoever was outside now knew something had either gone right or gone wrong in my doorway, and they wanted an answer.
