The line hissed at her, thin and constant, and under the hiss ticked her brass desk clock.

Then a floorboard creaked near the receiver, a long low groan, and fabric brushed across the mouthpiece.

“Wayne. Come here.”

Wayne Owens came around the desk with his reading glasses in his hand and didn’t put them on.

“That isn’t a dead line,” Claire said.

“Somebody’s walking around on it.”

She typed with two fingers and sent the update straight to the officers’ body monitors.

The clock in the corner of her screen read nine twenty-one and eleven seconds.