Chapter 8
I left the phone on the kitchen counter like it was hot.
Zora had told me to. Just set it down, she'd said, and walk away. See what happens when the thing isn't in your hand. We were standing in the hallway between the kitchen and the garage, and I could hear the low idle of the SUV still out front, that faint throb through the walls. My palm felt empty without it, lighter, and that scared me more than holding it had.
"You sure?" I'd asked.
"Thirty seconds," Zora said. "We need to know if it's tracking you or tracking that screen."
I set it face-up. FINAL NOTICE glowed against the dark granite, red box around NYLA BANKS SELECTED, the little red record dot pulsing under it. I stepped back. Zora was already moving toward the garage door, her own phone dark in her jacket pocket. She pulled the garage entry shut halfway behind her, not latched, just enough to put distance between us and the devices.
For two seconds nothing changed.
Then the voice outside shifted.
It hadn't been loud before, that flat procedural tone. Now it came through clearer, like they'd turned toward the house. "Continuity response, no movement on selected device," a man's voice said, amplified but not shouting. "Device location static. Interior ping, kitchen window quadrant. No biometric movement."
I stood three feet from my phone and felt my heart drop. They weren't seeing me. They were seeing it.
Zora eased the garage door open an inch and looked back at me. She mouthed, stay.
I nodded. My hands were empty. I shoved them into the pockets of my cargo pants and realized I was holding my breath. The warm lamplight over the kitchen made everything too still, the refrigerator hum too loud. Without the phone against my body, I didn't feel illuminated. I felt unmarked. Exposed in a different way, like I'd stepped out of a spotlight but was still standing on the stage.
"Selected subject, please confirm continuity response verbally," the outside voice continued. "Device isolated from subject. Request visual confirmation at doorway."
Zora's eyes went tight. She stepped back into the hallway in two quick strides and pulled me further from the counter, toward the garage threshold.
"They can't tell if it's you," she whispered. Her breath was short. "They see the dot. Not you. But they know it's not with you now."
"Is that good?" I whispered back.
"I don't know," she said. "It means if you run without it, you can move without them following that red dot. But if you don't answer with it, they know you're dodging."
Outside, a second voice, lower, more clipped: "Failure to confirm continuity response. Initiating visual check protocol. Occupant at doorway provide visual confirmation of selected subject."
I felt cold. My phone sat alone on the counter, pulsing. Red light against granite. From the street it would have looked like I was still in the kitchen if they were only watching the signal.
Zora grabbed my wrist. Her gold bracelet was gone, I'd noticed earlier she wasn't wearing one, but her grip was the same as when we were kids and she pulled me away from the street.
"Listen to me," she said, quiet but fast. "That thing is a beacon. It tells them where the house is, where that counter is. But it also is your proof. You leave it, you buy time to move, but then they get to say you didn't respond. They get to say you hid."
"So I need it?" I asked.
"You need to control it," she said. "We can't leave it pinging alone and we can't hold it the whole time and let it paint us."
She looked toward the entryway. The frosted glass still caught the red wash from the SUV. No one had touched the front doors.
"Visual confirmation means they want to see your face at the door," she said. "Not just the phone's location. They're saying beacon isn't enough."
I stared at the counter. The red RECORD icon was steady now, not blinking. Zora's phone, when I could see it, showed green. EXEMPT. They weren't asking for her at all.
"We have to get back to them," I said. My voice was thin.
Zora nodded once. She moved first, staying low, crossing the three feet to the counter and picking up my phone without looking at the screen, as if touching it less would make it quieter. She pressed it into my hand. The case was warm from the counter light.
The second I held it, the outside audio changed again.
"Movement resumed on selected device," the amplified voice said. "Signal reacquired. Acknowledge continuity response."
My hand closed around it. My pulse hammered against the hard edge.
Zora pulled her own phone from her pocket and held both, one in each hand, red and green side by side. "See?" she said. "They track the phones. But they need eyes on you to finish it. That's the rule."
I understood then, the stupid simple system of it. The phone told them where to look. My face told them they'd found me.
"We keep them together," Zora said. "We bring them to the door when we decide. Not when they ping us."
May you like
I slipped my phone into my pocket and zipped my top up against it. The weight returned, heavy and obvious.
Behind us, the garage door was still cracked, the dark car inside waiting. In front of us, the front doors held. We had the keys again, but now we had the order.
