At eleven, a dog began barking. It was Iris, who had barely made a sound since she arrived. Mara turned off the kitchen tap and listened. The bark came again, a sharp warning, then silence. From the dining-room window she saw a flashlight beam moving through the side yard.
Frances stood in the hall wearing her coat, having agreed to remain overnight. Owen was asleep upstairs. Mara told Frances to lock the inner door and call Keene. Then she took her phone to the darkened kitchen and looked through the narrow window above the sink.
Two figures stood near the gate. One tugged at the lock. The other checked the ground beneath the fence. They had not brought a vehicle into the alley, but Mara could hear an engine idling farther away. The taller figure carried a folded dog crate.
A sharp voice came from the street: “Police. Show me your hands.”
The flashlight beam vanished. The shorter man ran toward the alley, and the taller one dropped the crate. A moment later tires squealed. Mara remained inside exactly as she had on Saturday, listening while officers moved around the property. She could do nothing useful by walking into the darkness. Her obligation was to the animals and the sleeping child above her.
One man escaped. The other was stopped at the end of the block by a patrol car responding from the opposite direction. He was the same man Mara had seen in her garage. The abandoned crate contained seven new blue collars, each printed with a number rather than a name. Mara recognized the format from the Annex photographs.
Officer Keene returned after midnight, looking tired. She confirmed that the arrested man had worked for Victor’s events company and that the second intruder remained unidentified. The investigation would take time. But the immediate danger had changed: one of the people willing to cross Mara’s fence was no longer free to do it again that night.
When Keene left, Mara found Cedar standing at the doorway, unwilling to lie down until she sat beside him. She rested her hand on his shoulder. The dog leaned toward her and exhaled, as if the sound of her breathing had finally convinced him the house was quiet.
10. A Show for People Who Needed Answers
Tuesday evening brought rain and a line of umbrellas outside the Mercer Exhibition Pavilion. Victor’s advertisement had worked. People arrived carrying programs, photographs, and questions written on small pieces of paper. Mara waited beneath the covered entrance with Nisha, Leda, and Rena Solis. They were not planning to storm the stage. Their objective was simpler and more difficult: find the people being deceived, describe the mechanism without humiliating them, and prevent Victor from using the animals again.
