The curtain edge lifted, settled, and lifted again as a branch brushed window glass. The mail slot clicked once. Probably wind.
The hinge ticked.
The longer I watched, the more the dark rearranged itself; a coat on a hook became a man near the door before it turned back into a coat. I couldn’t tell if there was anything beyond the open door.
Only stillness so deep it devoured sound entirely. Which was somehow worse because silence like this didn’t mean safety.
It meant waiting.
I lifted my arm and moved the knife higher, a futile gesture against whatever was—or wasn’t—out there. Fear screamed inside me as my heartbeat slammed so hard I thought it might punch through my ribs.
I had a sense that the unnamed dark beyond the door was less about the house and more about me. Or maybe what I should really be afraid of wasn’t out there at all.
I closed the door and latched it before I climbed the stairs, knife in hand, to return to bed. I reached over to the nightstand and picked up my phone then opened the recusal email I’d drafted.
I scrolled down to the empty body field and typed a single damning line:I have developed a conflict and must refer out.
My finger hovered above the send button, begging me to decide. But that was the issue. There was no decision to make here. Only what was right.
And what waswrong.
The cursor blinked in a white, insistent glow. A subject line was already there, as was my supervisor’s name. The wordrecusalstared at me, a door I was professionally supposed to walk through voluntarily.
A draft of wind crawled up from the stairwell, cold and thin. A reminder: the open door this house didn’t want me to forget.
I told myself I’d refer Colt out in the morning when daylight might help me think more clearly. When my hands wouldn’t shake from replaying the parking lot incident in my head.
My thumb lowered.
Not onto send. Onto cancel.
A prompt slid up:Discard draft?
Yes.
The word snapped like a lock on a door that no longer wondered if I’d walk through.
The screen went blank; the room fell silent. I closed my phone and slid it under my overstuffed pillow, hoping to hide my choice. The latch downstairs clicked again.
No, probably not the latch. Just the old metal talking to itself.
I told myself I’d finish the email tomorrow, properly. With official citations and a referral list. And, most importantly, with proof I still knew how to do the right thing.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling until my eyes burned.
The cursor was gone.
The door I should have walked through, gone with it.
9
COLT
Cameras flashedin a wall of light that nearly blinded me.
The room was colder than the hallway and far brighter than it needed to be. This wasn’t where I wanted to spend my day.
Sponsor logos plastered the wall behind the table, a mural of money. Cables ran under my shoes, snakes that wouldn’t budge. A red dot came to life on the center camera, pointed directly at me.
