Bottom left: the driveway. Trenton's truck, undisturbed.
Bottom right: the hallway outside this room. Empty. The night-light still glowing gold under Charlie's door.
I watch the two shapes on the back fence feed and I grow cold.
Charlie is pressed against my side on the cot, her unicorn tucked under her chin, her breathing coming in shallow little pulls. She's not crying. That's almost worse. Kids who've lived with real danger learn fast that crying makes it worse.
"Who are they?" she whispers.
"I don't know yet."
"Is it my daddy?"
I look at the feed. The shapes are moving in a pattern, spreading apart, covering ground. Not the behavior of one desperate man. This is coordinated.
"I don't know," I say again, because I won't lie to her. Not about this.
She nods like she expected that answer, and her fingers tighten around the unicorn.
The monitor crackles. Static. Then Trenton's voice, low and close to the receiver, says, "Two confirmed at the back. Matthew's taking the east side. Stay in the room, Morgan. Don't open that door for anyone but us."
I press the talk button. "What about the front?"
A beat of silence. "Caiden's on it."
Then nothing.
I stare at the feeds. The two shapes at the back fence have stopped moving. One of them crouches. The other is holding something I can't make out in the grainy night-vision green.
Charlie shifts beside me. "Ms. Morgan?"
"Yeah."
"Are Mr. Trent and Mr. Matt going to be okay?"
I watch the feed. Watch the shapes. Watch the empty hallway outside our door.
"Yes," I tell her.
I believe it. I have to believe it. These are men who spent six years doing exactly this, in places with no safe rooms and no backup and no one waiting for them to come home.
But my hands are shaking.
I press them flat against my thighs and keep watching the monitor.
Matthew
The east side of the house is dark.
Trenton killed the motion sensors from the panel inside thirty seconds after Caiden's call came in, maybe less. No lights means no silhouettes. No silhouettes means we move blind, same as they do, except we know every inch of this ground and they don't know any of it.
I press my back to the exterior wall and listen.
Cool air. The smell of Morgan's garden. The distant bark of a neighbor's dog cutting off mid-sound, like it thought better of it.
Then footsteps.
One set, moving slow along the gravel path that borders the garden bed. Whoever it is, they're placing each foot before committing weight. Not crunching. Feeling for loose stone first.
