Chapter 1
The front door was open an inch and the whole house was breathing cold air. I could see the street through the gap, dusk turning the sidewalk gray, and the red pulse from outside washing across our frosted glass and onto the floorboards. Someone had parked a dark police SUV out there with its headlights on and its emergency lights flashing, and the light kept hitting the inside of our entryway in slow, even beats. It should have been sirens and shouting. It was just that flashing, and the warm lamp behind us making the rest of the house look too normal to be true.
Zora stood shoulder to shoulder with me. Her phone screen glowed green. Mine glowed red. That was the contradiction that wouldn't resolve. Two phones, same house, same light, same moment, opposite verdicts. My pendant felt cold against my skin and my bracelet pressed too tight around my wrist because I'd clenched my fist without realizing it.
My name is Nyla Banks and I was twenty-five and I was the one they'd picked.
At dusk the entryway had been just an entryway. Zora had come in first, keys in her jacket pocket, and I'd been by the lamp table when the doors shivered. The frosted panel on the right caught the red first. I thought it was a reflection from a passing car until the light came again, timed, official. Zora pulled the door in but didn't latch it, just left it ajar so we could see out without being seen. The street was quiet for a county road at that hour. No neighbors out. The SUV sat low at the curb, dark paint drinking the twilight, white headlights steady and one red beacon turning over and over against the trees.
Then my phone buzzed. Not a text. A full-screen takeover I had never seen before. Black background, white letters, FINAL NOTICE at the top. Under it my name. NYLA BANKS. A thick red bar underneath that said SELECTED. Below that a solid red circle like a record light. Zora lifted hers at the same second. Hers said ZORA BANKS EXEMPT on a green bar with a green indicator. Same interface, different color, different fate, in the same warm lamplight.
I stared at mine and my hand started to shake. The red made my olive cargo pants look darker.
Zora said, "Keys now, we have to go."
I didn't move. I kept looking at that word.
"Selected? What does that mean?" I asked. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.
She didn't have an answer. She glanced from my screen to hers to the door.
"I don't know. They came looking for me," I said. It was the only true thing I had.
That was the lie and the evasion and the plea all at once. I didn't know what SELECTED meant, that was true, but I said it like I didn't know why they'd come, and I did. Or I felt like I did. The last week of missed calls from a blocked number, the letter I'd left unopened on the kitchen counter because the return address was a county office I'd never been to. Zora heard the gap.
"Don't do that," she said. She kept her voice low. "Tell me."
"I'm not hiding anything," I said. That was the one short lie. One sentence. It hung there.
Outside, a voice came through a loudspeaker. It wasn't yelling. It was flat and amplified, the kind of voice that reads from a form. "Nyla Banks, continuity response."
Zora's hand found my arm. Her jacket rustled. She held her green EXEMPT phone out slightly in front of us like it could be a shield, like the color would be visible through the glass if anyone looked. My phone still burned red in my palm. The record icon didn't blink. It just stared.
"Sorry, who the hell is that?" Zora whispered. Louder, she said toward the door without opening it, "Don't open it."
"I'm not letting them take you," she added, and that was the plea. One short sentence, but her fingers tightened.
The SUV's red light kept sweeping. We could hear boots now, not close, but moving on pavement. Not running. Approaching. The double doors with the dark wood frame rattled a little when the wind pushed from the street. Neither of us had locked the deadbolt. If they pushed, it would give.
The loudspeaker crackled again, closer this time, and a different voice, a field voice, said, "Selected subject located."
May you like
Zora shifted half a step in front of me. I saw her reddish tint catch the warm lamp and the red emergency light at the same time. She held the green phone higher, screen out. I held the red one down at my side, thumb over the edge, as if hiding it would change it. The doorway was still closed. The gap showed only light and the dark shape of the vehicle and the blurred trees beyond.
We froze side by side in that entryway facing forward, breathing shallow, listening to the approach we couldn't yet see, the door still closed, the next sound still to come.
