Chapter 3
Zora didn't let go of my wrist. She pulled me back from the entryway in one hard tug and the warm lamplight shifted off my face as we cleared the doorway. Behind us the frosted glass panel caught another wash of red from the SUV outside, and I could hear the low thrum of its engine idling at the curb like it wasn't going anywhere.
We moved fast down the short hall toward the kitchen. My olive cargo pants brushed against the wall and my pendant bounced against my black zip-up top with every step. Zora still had the keys clenched in one hand and her phone in the other, screen lit green.
"Lights," she whispered. "We need to kill the lights."
The kitchen was dark except for the under-cabinet strip Zora had left on earlier. It threw a pale line across the counter and the sink. I reached for the wall switch by the pantry and flipped it. Nothing happened. The strip stayed on. I flipped it again, up and down, and it didn't even flicker.
Zora tried the main switch by the hallway. Same thing. She pressed it, held it, pressed it again.
I held my phone out without thinking. The screen had woken itself. FINAL NOTICE was still there in that stark white type, and under it NYLA BANKS SELECTED in red. The red circular icon below it wasn't static anymore. It was pulsing, slow and steady, like a record light. Every time it brightened, the kitchen's under-cabinet light seemed to answer it, holding its glow a fraction longer.
Zora lifted her phone next to mine. Her screen said ZORA BANKS EXEMPT in green and the little green indicator beside it was solid. No pulse. No change.
"Mine's not doing that," she said, quiet.
I stared at the two screens side by side in the dim hall. Hers was steady, calm. Mine was breathing red.
"It's tracking," I said.
Zora didn't answer. She shoved her phone into her jacket pocket and tried the interior door that separated the hallway from the kitchen and laundry nook. It was an old solid-core door we never actually locked, with a deadbolt we'd added last winter when the back handle got loose. She turned the thumb turn. It moved halfway and stopped with a hard click.
She frowned and tried again, putting her shoulder into it. The bolt wouldn't seat.
"Let me," I said.
She stepped back. I put my hand on the thumb turn. It was cool to the touch and it vibrated faintly, like there was a current running through it. When my fingers closed around it, the mechanism gave a soft, flat chime and the bolt slid the other way, unlocking itself with a thunk that echoed down the hall.
Zora's eyes snapped to mine.
"Did you do that?" she asked.
I shook my head. My hand was still on the lock and my phone was still pulsing in my other hand. I pulled my hand away like I'd been burned and the deadbolt stayed where it was, open.
Zora stepped forward and tried the lock again. This time it moved freely for her. She turned it and the bolt shot home with a clean clack. Locked.
We both stood there breathing. The house was quiet except for the refrigerator humming and that faint pulse from my phone.
"It knows it's you," Zora said. She kept her voice low. "It didn't want you to lock it. It let me."
I looked down at the red icon pulsing against my palm. "So the house is part of it?"
"I don't know," she said. She checked the hallway again, toward the entryway where the red light was still bleeding through the frosted glass. "But we're not staying by that front door."
She wedged a kitchen chair under the handle of the interior door anyway, even though the deadbolt was set. Then she pulled the curtain over the small window above the sink and killed the breaker for the under-cabinet light by hand at the box under the stairs. The strip finally went dark and the kitchen dropped into the warm, low light coming from the living room lamp we'd left on.
We stood in that half-dark with our backs to the counter, both phones still lit. Mine pulsed red against my leg. Hers glowed steady green in her pocket, lighting the edge of her brown crop top under her jacket. Outside, beyond two doors and a hall, the SUV was still there, and somewhere out there a voice had already said the words we'd heard through the phone, Selected subject located.
Zora reached over and, carefully, turned my phone face-down on the counter. The red light leaked out around the edges anyway, pulsing against the wood.
May you like
"We stay here for now," she whispered. "We figure out what SELECTED actually means before we go out there."
I nodded. My throat was dry and my bracelet had slipped down my wrist. I didn't know if putting the phone down made us harder to find or just easier to hear ourselves think, but for the first time since the doorway, the house felt like it had chosen a side, and it wasn't mine.
