Page 55 of What We Become

“Okay.” A breath. “Knoxie. I really like this bed. Tell Odin I’m keeping it.”

“I’ll have him invoice Milo.”

Her fingers loosen around mine as she drifts off.

I stay until her breathing evens out.

THIRTEEN

KNOX

Downstairs, the kitchen sounds like a church service. Cabinet doors. The whisper of a knife through greens. Holden has a wine glass going. Micah’s reading pantry labels and gathering ingredients.

Milo’s at the island with a tablet. “Camera feed, as promised. Eight exterior, zero interior, encrypted, local storage.” He spins it so I can see the grid of trees and gravel. “Odin undersold it. This is genuinely good work and I’m annoyed about it.”

“Where’s Eli?”

“Second floor. Claimed the bedroom farthest from the sex room, which is a choice he’ll have to live with.” He reaches into the suitcase and produces a small white unit. “Also. Kitten monitor.”

Holden looks up from the cutting board. “You packed a baby monitor.”

“I packed a two-way audio monitor with night vision that I’m calling a kitten monitor because it will stop us all from creeping outside her door. One unit in her room, one down here. She wakes up, she talks, we hear. Nobody’s alone in a strange house unless they want to be.” His voice stays light, but his hands are careful with the thing, and what’s under the joke isn’t hard to read.

Nobody argues.

“Give it here,” I say. “I’ll set hers.”

“Eat something first.” Micah slides a wine glass across the counter at me. “You’ve been clearing rooms for an hour.”

I slide the wine back. Holden sets a plate in front of me—cheese, bread, olives—and points at it without looking up from the shallots. Micah passes me a glass of water instead.

I eat standing. Bread, cheese, three olives, in that order, because food is fuel and this isn’t a meal—it’s a rest stop. Micah watches me inhale the plate with an expression that’s half disapproval, half recalculating how long the food will last us.

“Perimeter,” I say.

“Now?” Holden glances at the window. “You’ve got maybe twenty minutes of light.”

“Enough to walk it once.”

“I’ll come with—” Milo starts.

“No.” I take the tablet off the island, check the camera grid, and hand it back. “Watch the feed. If you lose me, call. We’ll mark where.”

He opens his mouth to argue, thinks better of it, and pulls the tablet back into his lap. “Rude. But fine. Surveillance duty accepted.”

I take the flashlight from my pack, step onto the deck, and start walking the property line.

The gravel drive goes out one way. I follow it to the gate—heavy steel, code entry, camera covering the approach from both directions. Good.

I test the fence line where it meets the trees. The ground drops off hard on the south side, scree and rock, same as the master deck’s drop. Nobody comes up that way. North side slopes toward the service road, easier grade, but the trees are dense and the underbrush is loud. Anyone pushes through that, we hear them before they’re fifty yards in.

I check each camera against the angle Milo’s tablet showed. Eight exterior. The two flank units cover the deck overlap. The one on the gate is clean. The one facing the treeline has a blind pocket where a low branch glows white in the infrared and blocks part of the view. I’ll cut it back tomorrow.

I circle the foundation. Windows. Every one of them. Latches, frames, the glass itself. Thick, tinted, probably treated. When I put my palm flat to the pane and look in, I can’t see more than a vague warm glow at most angles.

By the time I complete the loop, the light’s gone. The mountains take the sun and give nothing back. The ridge goes black against black.

I click on my flashlight.