—
I held the backup lighter for the stove to the fuse—it ignited with a whoosh, and bright yellow tendrils of smoke started snaking over the counter, onto the floor.
“Someone will see this through the trees?” he asked.
“I hope so,” I said. It would be bright. The moon was out. It would look wrong. It would, hopefully, make someone come. Make someone call. Make someone check.
He coughed, the smoke filling up the room.
“Go,” I said.
And then I pulled open the back curtains, pounded my fist against the glass so they would see. So they would look. I felt both exposed and protected, and my heart was pounding against my ribs. “Now!” I called to Ryan.
I heard something hit the roof and roll slightly, coming to a stop. And then I saw faint wisps of smoke trailing over the side of the roof, over the windows, into the yard. I hoped some would go up instead. I hoped Annika would look at the sky and see.
By the time Ryan returned, the sound at the back door had stopped, and I wondered if this was enough. If they would leave.
I risked a glance out the curtains again. I was scared there’d be a face staring back, but the bulletproof glass made me bold. The smoke in the sky made me even bolder.
Like this was a game, and I had finally played a hand.
The phone continued to crackle. Ryan continued looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time. And my heart continued to beat, on and on, terrified and alive.
The room was still covered in a hazy layer of smoke and the scent of the chemical reaction. Ryan pressed his face between the gap in the curtains, and his face lit up in the glow. He stared at the bright smoke, as if he were making a wish on it.
I walked closer to the walkie-talkie to listen for a response—but it was all the same.
I picked it up and shifted from station to station, repeating the same message: “We’re trapped in the house on Blackbird Court in Sterling Cross. There are armed intruders. Please send help.”
The noises at the door had stopped. But something was happening on the roof.
A bang. A creak. Something rolling again—and the smoke no longer falling from above.
“Is someone up there?” I whispered.
“I can’t see….Oh. The wall. Kelsey, someone’s there. Someone’s on the wall.”
I pulled the curtain farther aside and saw a shadow crouching on the back wall beyond the gate, leaning forward. The faint light from the house beyond lit up the profile—her hair, wild. She turned to the side and raised her hand, and I saw a phone held up to the sky.
“Annika,” I gasped.
Go for help, I wanted to yell. But then I realized the reason she was holding her phone to the sky was because she couldn’t get a signal, like us. Go inside, I wanted to shout. Go. Call.
But then there was a bright beam of light that traveled in a wide arc from the other side of the house, pulling her attention.
She stood up on top of the wall, arms out like it was a balance beam, and she walked toward the front. The lights stayed put, and I recognized the sound—an engine running.
I smiled, the hope almost painful in my chest as I gripped both of Ryan’s hands in my own. His were cold, and faintly trembling, and he whispered, “We’re okay.”
I squeezed back reassuringly. Those were headlights in my driveway.
That was a car. Maybe the police. Maybe from Annika, or the message we’d sent on the walkie-talkie, or the fact there was a cloud of sparks flying from my rooftop. It didn’t matter why.
Help was here.
And with it, relief, spilling out with a laugh, and Ryan smiling back as his hands gently stilled.
I imagined the men, fleeing.
I ran to the office so I could see both of them at once—Annika near the back, and the car near the front. It was hard to tell in the headlights, which were pulled all the way to the gate and pointing directly at the front door. The glare on the camera was too bright.
The lights cut off abruptly, and a shadow exited the driver’s side. Police, I thought.
Annika was still toward the back, slowly walking forward. On the back camera, Annika was moving her hands, pointing to the roof—and then she froze. She turned. She looked like she was calling into the dark.
“Where are the men?” I asked. I scanned the screens for their shadows. “Where are they?”
Annika was frozen on the wall. And the person in front of the metal fence made their way closer to the gate. I couldn’t see the intruders. Were they on the roof, watching? They didn’t appear to be inside the gate anymore.
The person at the gate moved their hand to their face, shielding their eyes from the smoke—and their face caught the light of the moon.
Wide-eyed and confused, and familiar.
Cole.
Annika was making her way toward him, but kept stopping and looking over her shoulder.
Cole had one hand wrapped around the bars of the gate, staring up. He held out his phone, as Annika had just done, and pointed it up toward the sky.
Neither of them saw, as I did, the shadows moving just outside the gate, closing in on them.
Ryan and I had been watching the video monitors in the office, but now we ran to the front window, peering out a sliver of curtain beside the door. We couldn’t see the shadows this way, but they were nearby.
“They’re both outside of the gate now,” I whispered, but Ryan didn’t answer. He leaned closer to the window, his hands pressing against the wall.
Annika approached the front yard from the top of the wall, calling to Cole. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were both moving their hands, and then Annika froze again, like a deer caught in the headlights.
She held her phone out to Cole, and he did the same. They both shook their heads.
Annika hopped down off the wall, closer to Cole.
A shadow moved to Cole’s left, and they both swiveled their heads in that direction. They saw it. Or it saw them.
Everyone froze.
Run, I mouthed.
A noise escaped Ryan’s throat.
He stared at me—like the moment in the car before we fell. Like we were still falling.
It felt exactly like that—like fingers grasping for purchase, hands and nails reaching out for skin and bone. What each of us might do, taking the other with us.
“What do we do?” he asked.
There was the simple answer: open a window, tell them to run. Hope they made it to the car, made it out, before anyone else got to them, and close the windows back up, sealing us safely inside.
There was the simpler answer: nothing.
I took a deep breath, the air burning a path straight to my lungs. Ryan nodded at me. I nodded back.
We knew the answer already.
We knew.
Because what I was most afraid of in that moment—and what I believed Ryan was most afraid of—was not the men getting in. It was watching them on the camera as they harmed these other people because we were doing nothing.
I ran to the kitchen, grabbing the second container, and held the fuse to the flame. Tendrils of smoke began trailing behind through the house.
I hit the code to disarm the alarm, the faintest beep, and Ryan winced.
I pressed the button beside the front door to open the gate, and I took a deep breath, steeling my nerve.
And I thought I understood what Ryan meant about not being brave for climbing into my car. How a bravery medal could feel cold and accusing, the jab of the pin over his heart, like a reminder, like the spiders I felt crawling across my skin—
Because it was not bravery that made me jerk open the front door to the chilled air, the endless possibilities. It was fear.
Don’t be afraid. You’re okay.