My hands clap over my ears, but it does almost nothing to block out the urgent swooping horn. It’s at least double the volume of the team meeting alarm, which is saying something.
Doors slam. I set a very startled Bob on the ground and throw my door open, nearly colliding with Griffin, who’s stumbling out of his room, eyes bleary.
“What’s happening?” I yell over the alarm.
“Perimeter breach,” Griffin says, waving for me to follow him.
My stomach plummets. I rush after him, and Bob follows me down the hall.
I’m close to panic when I reach Zoey’s room, where everyone else is gathered. DJ and Benji stand closest to the door, and Nico’s on Zoey’s other side. I can only see his profile.
Zoey rubs her eyes with one hand, booting up her computer with frantic shakes of her mouse. She’s got pillow creases on her cheek, but she’s typing so fast she looks like she’s been awake for hours.
“The alarm’s coming from the garage,” Zoey says. “Someone’s at Donny’s.”
Multiple windows pop up on her screen, cycling through different camera angles until one locks on the garage, all dark and grainy.
A huge man barrels through Donny’s front door, then takes off across the lawn toward the trees, a limp body slung over his shoulder. Donny’s white hair is unmistakable.
Nico and Griffin race for the door before anyone can say anything. I’m frozen in place, watching the cameras as they burst out of the house, sprinting across the yard toward the driveway.
Zoey pulls up the perimeter feed. “There’s no way he can get out,” she says. “The gate is closed.”
The guy’s at the gate now. He waves his hand in front of the motion sensor, and the gate opens.
“He’s not possessed,” Benji says. “No possessed individual can cross the salt line.”
“It’s notMorrow?” Zoey gapes at the screen. “Who else would break in here, then?”
The man runs through the open gate and ducks into the woods. I wince when a large branch clips him across the head, but it doesn’t slow his pace. He disappears into the trees. By the time Nico and Griffin reach the spot, there’s no one there.
Zoey scrubs backward through the timeline, checking every camera angle.
“The alarm should have gone off if anyone tried to get through the fence,” she says. “Why did it trigger at Donny’s apartment?”
“Because he was already inside,” I say.
All heads turn to me.
“I thought I was seeing things, but I saw a man standing in the woods this afternoon,” I say. “Nico checked the perimeter and didn’t find anything.”
Zoey swears, and DJ covers her mouth with both hands. Nico and Donny must not have told them about the figure. They probably thought there was no need to worry the others, since it turned out to be nothing.
“Could it be someone else from one of our old cases?” DJ asks. “Unrelated to Morrow?”
“That would be fucking random,” Zoey grumbles.
Nico and Griffin charge back inside, and I can hear them climbing the stairs as I flip through everything I’ve read, my brain scrambling for an answer, until I straighten.
“What if thatwasMorrow, but he wasn’t possessing the man?” I ask. “Ghosts can put people into a trance. It’s what happened to me when I went to the containment room to talk to Billy. Could a ghost do that across salt lines?”
“Only the most powerful ones can do that,” Nico says, coming back into the room. “Morrow’s nothing if not powerful.”
He’s standing next to me, eyes glued to Zoey’s screens. I freeze when I notice a bruise darkening his cheek, all red and ugly in the monitor light.
“What happened to your face?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says.
