CHAPTER 1: THE TENSION ON THE WIRE
The dry snap of vinyl was the only warning the porch gave.
Frank’s hand was on the handle before the deadbolt finished sliding into its brass housing. The sun was sitting heavy across the top rail of the cedar railing, beating down with that dry, late-August sting that smelled of baking paint and cut grass gone yellow. Out past the threshold, the shadow wasn’t right. It leaned crooked against the fluted siding by the door jamb, cutting off the lower pane of sidelight.
He stepped out without clearing his throat.
Karen was already into the second tug. Her fingers—manicured, tipped in pale peach lacquer—dug behind the mounting bracket of the bell housing, knuckles blanching against the siding. A pair of oversized tortoise-shell lenses hid her eyes, but the hard ridge of her jaw stood out under taut, powdered skin. She had the wire pinned between thumb and forefinger, levering the screw holes out of the old pine casing until the dry wood dusted down onto the doormat like cornmeal.
Frank didn’t shout. Shouting gave up the yard before a boot even hit the dirt.
He reached down, his wrist catching the sleeve of her coral knit just below the joint, fingers closing over the slack loop of two-strand copper before she could whip the lead free.
“That’s wired into the transformer,” Frank said. His voice was gravel dragged through a screen door. “You pull that, you’re buying the board inside the hall.”
She didn’t flinch back the way someone startled would. She jerked, a sharp, lateral snap of her forearm that tore the wool of her cardigan across his thumb, but she didn’t step off the welcome mat. Up close, through the tint of the dark plastic frames, her pupils were pinned tight against the glare.
“It hums,” she said. Her breath smelled of menthol gum and stale tea. “You’ve got it angled thirty degrees past your boundary line. It catches the kitchen window every time the wind takes the lilac.”
“It catches my flagstones,” Frank said. His fingers stayed locked around the rubber-sheathed wire. The bell itself hung loose between them, suspended by a four-inch tail of gray insulator, its plastic casing scuffed where she’d pried it with what looked like an iron flathead still sticking out of her canvas tote on the steps.
“It’s an eyesore, Frank. The association charter—”
“Charter doesn’t run three feet past the post.” He didn’t pull, but he anchored his weight back into his heels, feeling the dry boards of his own porch groan under his work boots. “Take your hand off the bracket.”
“I was going to tuck the wires back,” she said, her lip curling just enough to show small, even porcelain teeth. “I was doing your siding a favor. You let it hang like that, moisture gets in behind the cedar.”
“It wasn’t hanging until two minutes ago.”
She went still. For two beats, the only sound was the drone of an air-conditioning compressor kicking on over at number twelve, rattling its fan against an unlevel pad. Frank didn’t let go of the lead. He worked his left hand down the casing, his thumb finding the smooth curve of the faceplate to steady it.
The tiny ring around the lens didn’t flicker. It sat there, a pinhole of steady, dull amber, warm to the touch from the afternoon heat.
Karen’s chin raised a fraction of an inch. “Let go of the wire, Frank.”
“You first.”
She released the bracket, but she didn’t step down to the walkway. Instead, her hand drifted down toward her hip, fingers brushing the flap of her canvas bag as if checking the weight of whatever was nested inside. Frank turned the unit over in his palm, angling the backplate up toward the sun to check if the screw tabs were sheared clean off.
The plastic was scarred near the base, but it wasn’t from his siding.
Across the black resin backing, just below the factory barcode, someone had scored a three-digit series into the casing with a hot needle, then sealed the gouge with a smear of clear silicone that was still tacky enough to take the print of his thumb.
Karen leaned forward, the dark glasses slipping an eighth of an inch down the bridge of her nose. Her voice lost its sharp edge, dropping into something tight, flat, and entirely too low.
“Where did you buy that unit, Frank?”
