The old house had belonged to her aunt, who had raised flowers and hated modern locks. Mara had spent six months replacing the worst of its plumbing and painting over floral wallpaper. There were no secret passages, no remarkable architectural features, nothing a stranger should know better than its owner.
Unless the warning referred to something ordinary.
She walked back to the hallway and looked at the rear wall. Her home office had a small external service door, used years ago for deliveries when her aunt sold seedlings. Mara kept a bookcase in front of it. She had forgotten the door because she had never once used it.
She moved the bookcase. A thin line of daylight edged the frame. The upper hinge had been loosened, and the door sat crooked. She touched the latch. It lifted with almost no resistance.
A soft, mechanical click came from outside. Mara dropped to her knees. Through the gap she saw the end of a black cable disappear beneath the garden bench. There was a small adhesive sensor on the door frame, scarcely larger than a thumbnail.
Someone had been monitoring whether the service door opened.
Mara backed away and called Holt. The officer told her not to touch anything else and promised to return. Mara stood in the hallway staring at the narrow shaft of light. The person who had tried the front door had never needed the front door. He had been checking whether she was alone and whether she would let him into a room whose second exit had already been prepared.
The thought unsettled her more than the broken glass.
Holt arrived with another officer and a technician who carefully removed the sensor. It appeared to be part of an inexpensive commercial motion alarm. There was no sign that it had been connected to her home network. Whoever set it could have used a receiver from nearby.
“This suggests someone planned access,” Holt said. “It doesn’t tell us why.”
“The photographs,” Mara replied. “There’s someone deliberately putting them in my gallery. They want me to find something.”
“Or they want you distracted.”
It was a fair point. Mara showed her the last message, then noticed a thumbnail she had overlooked. In it, the red wagon was partly covered by a striped picnic blanket. A corner of a hand-lettered sign protruded from beneath the blanket. The sign bore the image of a white fox.
“I know that logo,” Mara said. “Arcadia Rooms.”
Arcadia Rooms had opened six months earlier in the old grocery warehouse near the railway crossing. It offered immersive puzzle adventures for families, team-building evenings, and elaborate birthday parties. Its advertising featured the white fox on colored backgrounds. Mara had never visited, but its vans drove around town with furniture, screens, and collapsible scenery.
