Mara watched three times.
“Look behind you.”
She turned slowly. The living room was empty. Yet from the hallway came the faintest sound of the front door’s latch being tested.
Mara did not shout. She took the brick from the floor only after wrapping it in a kitchen towel, stepped over the glass, and retreated into the kitchen, where the side door had a deadbolt. A shadow moved across the hallway wall. A second later the front door opened by an inch.
“Hello?” a man’s voice called. “Home security service. We received an alarm.”
Mara had never contracted a home security service. She held her breath.
“Mrs. Ellison?” he said. “I can see the damage. It’s safer to let me inside.”
The lock stopped moving. Footsteps went away. Mara waited until she heard a car engine pull away, then called the police. While she spoke, another image appeared in the album: the narrow black case resting on the hood of a white van. Along the side of the van, almost erased by a smear of mud, were three orange letters: ARC.
The dispatcher asked whether she was injured. Mara said no. Then she said something that sounded impossible even to her: “I think my neighbor broke the window to stop someone else getting in.”
Outside, Willa Fenwick hadn’t disappeared at all. She was standing behind the hedge beyond the gate, watching the street as if she were waiting for something to move.
Chapter Two: A Man Who Knew the Lock
Officer Denise Holt arrived first, a careful woman with a practical voice and an umbrella she carried even when the forecast promised sunshine. She looked at the broken pane, examined the brick, and listened without interruption as Mara described the man at the front door.
“He said he was from home security?”
“I don’t have home security. I have cameras I installed myself.”
“Do you know your neighbor?”
“Enough to recognize her. Not enough to explain this.”
Holt watched the footage once. Willa’s face was unmistakable. So was the brick leaving her hands. Holt asked why Mara hadn’t gone outside.
“Because she told me not to,” Mara said.
Holt played it again without sound, studying Willa’s mouth. “Maybe. I can’t be certain.”
A second officer arrived to examine the door. He found fresh scratches around the latch and a narrow strip of metal caught inside the frame. The supposed security technician hadn’t simply knocked. He had tried to open the lock.
That changed the conversation. Holt requested a second patrol car, then asked Mara about the mysterious photographs. Mara opened the shared album. It was labeled FERN STREET LIBRARY DAY, the title of a community project that had ended a month earlier. Its participants had used a tablet at the library to upload photos for a children’s exhibition. Usually their names showed beside their pictures. These new ones were marked MARA ELLISON.
