Chapter 6
Zora had the keys in her fist, not mine. That was the rule we made without saying it. She could move near windows and I couldn't.
She stayed low and slipped down the side hall toward the laundry door, the one that led out to the concrete pad by the trash bins. I stayed back by the pantry, my shoulder against the wall where the warm lamplight didn't spill. The phone in my hand was dark again, but not off. The red SELECTED bar sat there like a hot coal under glass.
"You stay," Zora whispered over her shoulder. She didn't wait for me to answer.
The house felt too tight. Every board creaked louder than it should have. I could hear the low thrum of the SUV out front still, that red light ticking against the frosted glass in the entryway, even from the back hall. My gold pendant felt cold against my skin. I held my breath without meaning to.
Zora reached the side entry. It's a narrow door, white with a square window at the top, the kind with chicken-wire glass you can't see through clearly. She kept the deadbolt locked and put her hand on the knob. She looked back once, checked where I was.
"Don't come closer yet," she said.
I nodded. My mouth was dry. The olive cargo pants Zora wore made no sound when she moved, but my own top zipped up to my throat felt like it was squeezing.
She eased the door open one inch. Just one inch.
Cold air cut in. Not wind, just that night air that smells like asphalt and wet leaves. And with it came light I hadn't expected.
Beyond the side yard, past our fence line, a second light swept slow across the driveway of the house next door. Not headlights. A cordon light, high up, white and steady, then a pulse of red again further down the street. It wasn't just the one SUV out front. There was another vehicle parked angled at the corner, and I could see the faint outline of a figure standing by it, facing our property.
Zora went still. Her fingers tightened on the door edge.
"Zora?" I whispered.
She didn't open it wider. She stared through that crack. "There's another one," she breathed. "At the end of the block. Lights on the ground, by the curb."
My stomach dropped. The perimeter wasn't the SUV. The SUV was just the doorbell.
I made a mistake then. I stepped forward. One step, then another, thinking if I could see the angle myself I could judge how far the light reached. I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that it was just a neighbor's porch light.
The second my foot hit the rug by the washer, the phone in my hand woke itself.
No touch. No button. The screen flared bright. FINAL NOTICE — NYLA BANKS — SELECTED — that red button and the red record icon underneath pulsed, brighter than before, washing my palm in red.
At the same instant, outside, the white spotlight that had been idling at the corner snapped and swept. A clean, fast arc straight across our side yard, across the fence, and hit the white door we were standing behind. Light cut through the chicken-wire glass and laid a hard grid pattern across Zora's face and my chest.
Zora flinched back but didn't slam the door. Slamming would have been sound.
"Back," she hissed at me, sharp and low. "Nyla, get back now."
I scrambled back two steps, pressing my back flat to the pantry. The phone dimmed a fraction as I moved away, but not all the way. It stayed lit, pulsing slow, like it knew I'd been near the threshold.
The spotlight held on the door for three long seconds, then dragged away, slow, searching the eaves, the trash bins, the fence. Zora watched through the crack until it passed.
She eased the door shut. Soft click. She turned the deadbolt with both hands, slow so it wouldn't clack.
We stood in that narrow hall, breathing hard, the washer humming beside us for no reason. The phone in my hand finally dropped back to a dull glow, but the red was still there.
"It's not just the front," Zora said, her voice thin. She kept her hand on the deadbolt like she could hold it locked with pressure. "They've got the block. Side street's covered. That light moves when you move."
I looked down at the phone. SELECTED. Red. Then at her pocket, where her phone made a faint green edge. EXEMPT.
"So I set it off," I said. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted it to. "Just getting close."
Zora nodded once. She wasn't mad. Her eyes jumped from the door to the hallway behind us, calculating. That protective look was still there, but now it had math in it.
"We can't go out low," she said. "Not front. Not side. They've got sensors or that thing tracks. You can't hit any ground-level door without that light finding you."
"So we're boxed?" I asked.
She shook her head and pushed off the door. She grabbed my wrist — not the hand holding the phone — and pulled me away from the side entry, back toward the interior hall that led to the garage.
"No. Garage is different," she said, low and fast. "Garage door is steel, no window. And the back hall has no glass. We haven't tested that. If the trigger is your phone near an exterior opening with line-of-sight, the garage might be blind."
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We moved together, quick and quiet, past the pantry, past the warm lamplight of the entryway we were avoiding entirely now. The keys were still in her fist, the metal biting into her palm. I followed her because I didn't have another choice, the red glow of my phone lighting the underside of my chin with every step.
Behind us, the side door stayed shut, the grid of that spotlight still burned into my eyes. Ahead, the dark hall to the garage waited, and it was the only door we hadn't proven was locked by light.
