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Nothing had been moved across rooms or turned upside down. But Hakeem had spent enough weeks cataloguing this space—its angles, its rhythms, its particular way of holding light at different hours—that he could feel the difference, the way a stage actor senses a prop moved an inch out of place.

The front door was unlocked. He stepped inside, set his keys in the bowl, and stood in the hallway listening.

From somewhere deeper in the house, a sound like metal on metal. A small, repetitive clicking; deliberate and evenly spaced, like someone counting coins with their hands instead of their voice.

Hakeem followed the sound.

He found Antonio in the back hallway near the bathroom, standing at the window with both hands on the frame. He was examining the latch with his fingers, pressing it into the locked position, then releasing it, then pressing again. His expression wasn’t tense exactly, but it was absent, as if he had temporarily dismissed the rest of the world while he attended to something that mattered more.

He didn't look up when Hakeem appeared.

"What are you doing?" Hakeem asked.

"Checking the locks."

"All of them?"

"I'm being thorough."

Antonio pressed the latch one more time, seemed unsatisfied with the resistance, and moved past Hakeem without making eye contact. He walked to the next window in the front room, the one that never fully shuts, and began the same process. Fingers on the frame. Latch tested. Mechanism assessed.

Hakeem stood in the hallway and watched him.

This was not the Antonio from last night. Last night's Antonio had followed him upstairs, put his hands in his hair, and said "tell me to stop" in a voice that sounded like it was being dragged across gravel. That Antonio had been dangerously, uncharacteristically open in a way that left Hakeem vibrating on his bedroom floor for an hour.

Antonio had rebuilt his wall, every brick back in place. The reserve was reinforced, as if the vulnerability of the doorframe had breached his defenses, a mistake he was now correcting with structural urgency.

"Did something happen?" Hakeem asked.

"No."

"You're checking every window in the house."

"I'm checking the locks because the landlord asked me to inventory them." Antonio didn't look at him. He moved the latch twice more, then pulled out his phone and typed something—a note, presumably, which Hakeem chose not to think too hard about.

"The landlord," Hakeem repeated.

"He's considering an insurance update. He needs to know what works and what doesn't."

It was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Landlords made requests, and tenants were expected to comply. None of this required a theory about murder or a man who was grinding into you twelve hours ago and is now moving through the house like a technician performing a safety audit.

And yet.

Antonio crossed to the kitchen. Hakeem followed, because not following felt like letting Antonio control the shape of the space between them, and Hakeem wanted the illusion of choice. Antonio tested the window above the sink—the one that let in too much morning light, the one that had appeared in the manuscript pages Hakeem had read in Antonio’s desk drawer. His fingers traced the latch, the frame, the seal. He pushed the window open three inches, held it, then closed it again. He typed another note.

"How many is that?" Hakeem asked.

"Seven."

"You've checked seven windows this morning?"

"I've checked every window and both exterior doors." Antonio set his phone on the counter and finally looked at Hakeem. His face was neutral in a way that felt practiced. Level. "Is that a problem?"

"No," Hakeem said. "It's just… thorough."

"I'm a thorough person."

The sentence landed with the particular weight of stating a fact you were expected to remember. Antonio held eye contact for one more second, then picked up his phone and walked toward the stairs.