She nodded, solemn, clutching her backpack.
I watched her walk through the school gates, and then I sat in the parking lot and forwarded copies of everything — the camera footage, the lab work, the receipt with the stranger’s name — to Zora and to a backup email only I could reach.
I was building the thing that would end this.
I did not yet understand that the other side was building something too, and that they were further along than I was.
Chapter 10 — The Man in the Kitchen
Around four that afternoon my phone lit up with a motion alert from the kitchen camera: someone was in my house.