Supervisor Wayne Owens stood half a foot behind her chair, his heavy reading glasses pushed up on the bridge of his nose.

“Have the ground units made physical contact with the caller?” Wayne asked.

“Unit twelve is inside the front hall,” Claire said.

“The line is still live from the upper floor.”

Wayne reached over her shoulder and tapped a short sequence into the keypad at the upper right of her console.

He entered his six-digit supervisor override, locked the audio recording against automatic deletion, and flagged the file for an official department audit.

“If the homeowner refuses them access to that upstairs hallway, it’s going to turn into a procedural fight over the entry,” Wayne said.