It’s been open for eleven minutes.”

“The line isn’t open.

I hung it up myself.”

No one answered him.

María took half a step toward the threshold.

Thomas moved with her, not forward, just to the side, until his shoulder was planted between the two officers and the foot of the stairs.

Officer María López put her black leather boot squarely on the oak floorboard inside the front hall.

“You need a signed warrant to cross that doorframe,” Thomas Miller said.