The first blow sounded like a dinner plate breaking against a brick wall.
Rachel Cole dropped the basket of clean towels she was carrying through her kitchen.
The second blow came before she reached the back door.
She ran outside and found her neighbor, sixty-five-year-old Miriam Vale, standing beside the side gate with a black baseball bat.
Red plastic covered the concrete near her shoes.
The little alarm that Rachel had installed beside the converted rehearsal room hung from its cable like a broken lantern.
Miriam had not bothered to cover her face.
She raised the bat again when she saw Rachel approaching.
Rachel stopped three steps away.
“Put that down.”
Miriam lowered the bat without surrendering it.
Her gray hair had escaped its usual neat braid, and a narrow red mark crossed one cheek.
“That thing needed to go,” she said.
“It was on my house.”
“I know where it was.”
“You came through a locked gate to destroy it.”
Miriam looked past Rachel toward the small building at the rear of the property.
The rehearsal-room windows were dark.
Rachel had rented the room to a local youth theater collective six weeks earlier.
She had installed the red alarm after discovering that the former workshop had only one obvious exit from the rear corridor.
The device sounded whenever the emergency door was forced open or held open beyond its safety interval.
It did not lock anybody inside, and it was not connected to a police dispatcher.
It existed to make sure that an unexpected opening could not pass unnoticed during rehearsals.
The alarm had never sounded during a scheduled session.
“Why were you desperate to stop it working?” Rachel asked.
Miriam gripped the bat with both hands.
“You should ask the people you let into that room.”
“I have their contract and their insurance.”
“You have their signatures.”
Rachel felt anger give way to a colder sensation.
“What does that mean?”
A car passed at the end of the alley.
Miriam watched its headlights disappear before answering.
“I thought there would be time to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I thought I could do one thing without anybody getting hurt.”
Rachel pulled out her phone and photographed the broken casing.
Miriam did not object.
“I’m calling the police,” Rachel said.
“You should.”
The response startled Rachel more than another threat would have.
“Then stay right there.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere.”
Rachel called the nonemergency number and reported the damage and unlawful entry.
When the dispatcher asked whether the neighbor still held the weapon, Rachel looked at Miriam.
Miriam placed the bat carefully on the concrete and stepped away.
“She’s put it down,” Rachel said.
The dispatcher told her to keep her distance until an officer arrived.
Rachel moved toward her kitchen door, then heard a faint tapping from the rehearsal room.
It came three times and stopped.
She turned back.
Miriam’s face had become so pale that Rachel could see the little freckles under her eyes.
“Don’t go in alone,” Miriam said.
“Who is in there?”
“I don’t know who’s left.”
Rachel did not wait for an explanation.
She called the emergency number again and told the dispatcher that someone might be inside the outbuilding.
Then she shouted toward the windows.
“This is Rachel Cole. If anyone is inside, call out.”
For several seconds nobody answered.
A young man’s voice finally came from behind the locked rear door.
“Please don’t let them come back.”
