November 4, 2035

  The walls of the studio were thick with yesterday’s sound.

  You could almost feel it, ghostly drum fills still echoing in the foam panels, stray harmonics hanging like spiderwebs in the stale air, the musk of sweat and expired emotion suspended somewhere near the ceiling. It was Sunday. Manila’s light outside was thin, industrial. Like the world had been copied onto cheaper paper and left to fade under a humming fluorescent bulb.

  Inside, the rented studio felt like home.

  That tight, insulated kind of home you earn by volume and volume alone. The carpet was grey and threadbare, layered with years of stomped rhythm. The amps buzzed like half-dead wasps. Someone had left a Red Horse can on top of the mixing board. A sticker with “NO SCREAMO” in angry Sharpie had been affixed beside it.

  Sandro was already playing when Amy settled into the drum stool.

  The riff he teased out was irregular, moody, sharp on the fifth, dragging on the third, like someone trying to run on a sprained ankle. His long hair was tied back with a used zip tie. He wore a faded shirt that once had Che Guevara’s face on it, but it had been washed into anonymity.

  Amy tapped her sticks on her thigh once. Then twice. Then entered.

  Kick-snare, hi-hat, ghost note. Syncopated but deliberate, letting Sandro’s angular chords breathe before locking into him like scaffolding.

  Their bassist Jigs chimed in.

  He was always late by a fraction of a second, but in the right way. In the way that made everything feel live, unstable, like one wrong note might collapse the entire structure. He played an old Japanese Jazz Bass that was more duct tape than wood now. His string buzz was gospel.

  “Wait, wait, keep going!” Ram called from the booth, adjusting a cracked pair of headphones.

  He darted over to the mic and began spitting out lyrics, barely audible over the mix.

  “We were born in a cage of glass,

  Raised by bankers and burning flags…”

  “Nooo,” Amy groaned mid-fill, missing a beat on purpose.

  “Bro,” said Sandro, without looking up.

  “Try again, dude,” Jigs added, tuning mid-jam.

  Ram shrugged, grinning. He was wearing his usual tank top and fake pearl necklace, his hair pulled into a messy half-bun that made him look like an indie pastor. He raised both hands in mock surrender, leaned into the mic again, and smirked:

  “I kissed the landlord’s son,

  Now my rent is twice as high…”

  Amy burst out laughing. She hit the crash cymbal like a punchline.

  Sandro shouted “Ayyy!” and switched to a ska rhythm for a split second before slipping back to the original riff.

  They were laughing now. Jigs dropped his pick and mimed weeping. Ram doubled down:

  “He said, ‘no politics at dinner’

  But my mother’s name is…”

  Then the door opened.

  The laughter didn’t stop immediately, but it did soften.

  In stepped Miguel Tan, dressed like the kind of guy who reads the op-eds and the bylines. A clean black shirt, jeans that weren’t new but had been ironed, a canvas bag slung over his shoulder like a quiet thesis, and an oil stained paper bag in hand.

  “Yooo!” Sandro called out from the booth, pressing a button to kill the mic. “Migz!”

  Miguel raised a hand, half-wave, eyes scanning the room, amps, bodies, cables, gear. Amy.

  Amy had already stood up. The drum stool spun a little behind her. And she was out. Ram walked in the booth to man the keyboard.

  “Hey,” she said. Flat. Like a hand-drawn wave.

  Miguel nodded. “Nice studio.”

  “Yeah,” Amy said, brushing hair from her face. “Sandro’s tight with the owner. We get discounts.”

  A second of silence hung there. Between them. Heavy with ambient noise.

  Somewhere behind the soundproof glass, Sandro and the others were goofing off with a kazoo filter on the mic.

  Miguel tilted his head, gave a small smile. “How are you holding up?”

  Amy opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at the floor, then at his shoes, then at the neck of Jigs’ bass which had a sticker that read “DEATH TO DISCO.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  She wasn't.

  There were so many things inside her right now: the anxiety coiled like a fist in her stomach, the seething quiet rage that someone had entered her house, entered her mother’s room, touched her things, and had the audacity to make it look casual. She wanted to throw something, maybe a cymbal, maybe herself.

  But instead, she said it again, quieter this time. Like a mantra.

  “Fine.”

  Miguel looked at her and didn’t push. Just nodded once.

  And that, for now, was enough.

  Miguel blinked, as if waking from some long pause in his own head, then sheepishly held up the paper bag in his hands.

  “Uh,” he said, voice awkward and hopeful, “I brought food.”

  Amy stared at it a beat longer than expected.

  Something about the sudden reveal made her laugh, a soft, real thing. Like catching a cat falling off a windowsill with dignity still intact.

  “Wait, really?” she said, eyebrows arching as she took the bag from him. It was warm. “Dude. You didn’t have to.”

  “I know,” Miguel replied, scratching the back of his head. “But, you know… early Sunday, long session. You guys looked hungry last night.” Then, a pause. “I mean. Not like… visually. I just meant…”

  “Guys!” Amy called back toward the booth, holding the bag up like a prize. “Food!”

  That got their attention.

  Sandro was the first to react, strumming one final chord like a closing statement before unstrapping his guitar and muttering something about “blessings from the kind gods of carbs.” Jigs followed, dramatically sniffing the air like a starving wolf. Ram, as always, made a grand show of stretching like he’d just returned from war.

  The band spilled out of the studio and into the adjacent break room, a tight, windowless space lined with empty water jugs, forgotten extension cords, and stacks of plastic and metal chairs. A small folding table stood like an altar in the middle.

  They laid out the offerings: pressed sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper, slightly spilled coffee, bottled water, and a box of cookies. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was generous.

  Miguel hovered a little, watching them unwrap the food with reverent chaos. He smiled, faint but sincere, like someone watching strangers open a gift they didn’t expect.

  This Miguel, Amy noticed, was not the same man she’d spent hours flirting with last night. That Miguel had fangs. Or at least the performance of them. He had swagger and myth and that velvet Lestat cosplay confidence, complete with some mildly performative nihilism. That Miguel had joked about kissing ghouls and hags.

  But this Miguel?

  This Miguel was softer. A little too careful with his hands.

  He looked like he wasn’t sure if he belonged here, but wanted to.

  Amy turned to him as the others noisily argued over who deserved the last sandwich.

  “Hey,” she said. “Sorry about… last night.”

  Miguel blinked. “No, no, it’s okay.”

  “Things just… escalated,” she said. “I really didn’t think I’d end the night with a police report and a stolen pendant.”

  He shrugged, smiling again, this time more loosely. “It’s alright. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d see you again this soon. So…”

  Amy tilted her head. “You saying the robbery was worth it?”

  “I’m saying,” Miguel replied, “I didn’t expect the jam session invite. I thought I was gonna have to wait a week to text you and pretend I just remembered you existed.”

  Amy laughed, shaking her head as she stabbed the cold brew coffee with a straw.

  “Well. Congrats. You got in faster than most.”

  Miguel leaned back in his chair, cradling the coffee like it was some kind of conversational anchor, and said, almost too casually:

  “Speaking of robberies… my neighbor got robbed, too.”

  Amy, mid-bite into a sandwich, paused. Chewed once. Swallowed.

  “Where?”

  “Valle Verde.”

  Amy squinted, suddenly attentive. “Wait. Was that the house where they also took wagyu and foie gras?”

  Miguel raised an eyebrow. “No… different house I’m pretty sure. Why?”

  Amy leaned in slightly, fingers curling around the edge of the table. Her mind, until now sloshing gently in the haze of last night’s flirtation and this morning’s minimal sleep, snapped back into the cold grind of investigative reflex.

  “Curious,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else. “That’s weird.”

  Miguel tilted his head. “What is?”

  “There’s only one Valle Verde case on the list we’ve been tracking,” Amy explained, brushing a crumb from her lap. “And that’s the one where the burglars also stole wagyu and foie gras from the victim’s freezer, if you can believe that. It happened last week.”

  Miguel blinked. “No, this was a month ago.”

  Amy straightened. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Owner was abroad,” Miguel said, thinking back. “I only found out because the maids in the neighborhood were talking. Gossip train. Apparently, a lot of high-end stuff was stolen. Not sentimental things. Just expensive ones, bags, some watches, wine bottles, imported suits I think, or was it cufflinks? Anyways, no signs of entry.”

  Amy’s eyes narrowed. Her thoughts were now whirring like a hard drive.

  The profile fit, the stealth, the target class, the eerily precise selections. No signs of forced entry, meaning the locks weren’t broken. Meaning it was clean. Quiet.

  “No signs of entry?” she repeated, brows furrowed.

  “Yup,” Miguel said. “Maid didn’t even know anything was gone until the guy came back from Spain or Dubai or wherever. Flipped out when he noticed his stuff was missing. Thought she stole it. Almost fired her.”

  Amy winced. “Jesus. Poor maid.”

  “CCTV cleared her though,” Miguel added quickly. “Caught some figures slipping in around 2:30 a.m. Hooded. Gloves. No flashlight. You could barely see them unless you were looking real hard. They were in and out in, like, thirty minutes. Maid slept through the whole thing.”

  Amy leaned back, her fingers drumming unconsciously against the table.

  Twenty-five minutes. Luxury goods only. No violence. No mess. Same neighborhood. A different week.

  This may not be an isolated incident. And this case hadn’t even pinged on Truthspan’s radar. That meant there were likely more.

  Miguel watched her expression shift. “Wait how did you know about a wagyu and foie gras burglary? You were researching it?”

  Amy exhaled, tapping her temple with a finger. “I’m in a training program. New media org. Truthspan.”

  “Right. That investigative start-up with the viral stories, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I’m working with one of their senior reporters, Anton Mercado. We’ve been chasing a story. A string of burglaries. All hitting wealthy households, mostly gated villages, some condos. All that’s taken are fence-able items, never cash, and always no sign of forced entry. Cops don’t think they’re connected. We think they are, but we don’t have definitive proof.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Miguel looked impressed. “Sounds intense.”

  Amy smirked, then took another sip of coffee.

  “It is. Especially when you realize the people getting hit are all people who can afford to keep things quiet. And a lot of them do.”

  Miguel nodded slowly, letting the information settle.

  “So,” he said finally, voice softer now, “you think my neighbor’s house might’ve been part of the same string?”

  Amy didn’t answer immediately. She just looked at him, thoughtful.

  And for a second, the studio vanished. The break room, the cookies, the laughter of her bandmates, all of it faded.

  Instead, there was just a series of dots, unconnected, unconfirmed, but suddenly shimmering under the same strange light.

  Amy clicked her tongue.

  “I think,” she said, “you might’ve just given me a new lead.”

  Miguel leaned forward a little, elbows on his knees, the coffee cup turning slow in his fingers. His voice was gentle, almost too much so, like he was stepping onto a frozen lake and wasn’t sure where the cracks were.

  “So,” he asked, “what do you think of the story now… now that you’ve also been broken into?”

  Amy didn’t answer right away.

  Instead, she stared into her drink like the answer might be swirling in the dregs. The cold brew had gone lukewarm. She took a long sip anyway.

  “It’s hard to describe,” she said finally, exhaling through her nose.

  Her mind went back to that moment last night, sitting in the police station, her phone bright with forwarded CCTV footage from the house.

  Four masked figures moving like ghosts through the familiar geometry of her home.

  Their silhouettes passed through the living room with a kind of eerie ease, like they’d done it before. One paused in front of her mother’s sculpture cabinet, as if judging the taste. Another slid open a bedroom drawer, sifted through old receipts, makeup kits, a box of ribbons, like they were searching for something long lost. No urgency. No fumbling.

  They walked like they belonged there.

  And that, more than anything, was what made her stomach turn.

  “It’s scary,” she said at last. “To think someone could just… walk into your home like that. And not just steal stuff. But be in it. Like it’s theirs. Like your safe space doesn’t mean anything. Like you don’t mean anything. I can see where the pendant is right now actually, I still have that connection with our stuff, but it’s in a rough neighborhood that both my parents and police all agree will be impossible to comb through because of the bad GPS signal. It’s difficult to describe that feeling of knowing where your stuff is, but you’re just can’t get to it”

  Miguel’s gaze flicked toward her, and she caught the subtle softening in his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “If asking brought up… if it’s too fresh. I shouldn’t have.”

  Amy waved her hand, dismissing it. “It’s fine. Honestly. Better to rip the bandaid off now than let it fester.” She leaned back in her seat, tapping her fingers lightly on the cup. “It’s just… I can’t imagine what kind of people would do something like that.”

  There was a pause.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” Miguel asked.

  Amy turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “No. Why would you think it is?”

  Miguel shrugged, half a smile. “Considering the lyrics your band writes… I figured you guys, of all people, would have a sense of what desperation looks like.”

  Amy’s expression stiffened. Just slightly. The corners of her mouth didn’t quite twitch into the scoff she was trying to suppress.

  She set the cup down.

  “Whatever those people were,” she said, calmly but with steel under the words, “they weren’t desperate.”

  Miguel nodded, though not entirely in agreement. He looked like he wanted to say more, but thought better of it.

  Amy leaned forward, elbows on the table now. “Desperation doesn’t move like that. Doesn’t look around your living room like it’s browsing. Doesn’t make off with curated bottles of wine and silverware sets without touching a single emergency cash envelope or iPad left in plain sight.”

  “Then what does it look like?” Miguel asked, tone quieter now.

  Amy didn’t answer right away. She just sat there, brow furrowed, the weight of the question pressing down on her shoulders. Her mind itched with the memory of something Anton had once muttered over takeout and case notes, about how clean burglars often weren’t just thieves, but something colder. More deliberate.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said finally. “But I don’t think it’s about need.”

  And in the stale quiet of the break room, amid the mess of wrappers, half-finished drinks, and the faint hum of distant amps, the silence that followed didn’t feel like a lull. It felt like a dare.

  She thought, for a moment, about the lyrics they’d written, about struggle, hunger, injustice. About rising from nothing. But none of them had really lived that. Not Amy. Not Ram, with his lawyer parents. Not Jigs, whose family owned a chain of pharmacies. Not even Sandro, whose house doubled as an HQ and showroom.

  They sang about hard lives like tourists writing postcards.

  And Amy, for all her righteous noise and protest drums, knew that she had never needed anything the way truly desperate people do. So what does she know about desperation that she could say what she saw wasn’t precisely that?

  But that wasn't something she was ready to sit with today.

  Not with Miguel looking at her like that.

  Not with strangers still living in the shape of her home.

  Not while her safe place still felt touched.

  So instead, she said nothing. And let the silence hang.

  Suddenly, something registered in her mind, soft but definite, like a snare tightening under the skin of the silence. Her eyes narrowed slightly, lips curling into a grin.

  “Wait…” she said, tone laced with playful suspicion. “You listened to our songs?”

  Miguel’s eyes widened just a little, caught. Then came the laugh, that awkward, unpolished kind that only made him more endearing. He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Yeah?” he said. “I mean, Sandro’s an old friend from high school, right? So I figured I’d do my homework. Listened to a few tracks last night. Just… you know. Support.”

  Amy leaned back, arms crossed, grin widening. “Support, huh?”

  Miguel shrugged, smiling with that boyish guilt that never quite learned how to hide itself. “Yeah. I mean… rock isn’t really my thing. I’m more into hip hop, to be honest, so I don’t even know how to judge it properly.”

  He paused.

  “But I did like what I heard,” he added. “Especially the drum solo at the end of… uh… what was it? A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare? The drum solo was wild. It felt like a panic attack in the best possible way. Like you were saying something that didn’t need words.”

  Amy laughed, caught off guard. “I’ll take that as a compliment, you’re surprisingly good at describing music you claim not to get.”

  Miguel shrugged again, more relaxed now. “Maybe I just listened harder than I planned to.”

  Amy rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help the grin curling at her lips. “Alright, alright. Points for effort.”

  They sat like that for a moment, the break room still around them, but quieter now. Softer. Something unforced had settled between them, something that came from listening, really listening.

  The story, the fear, the CCTV footage still lurking in the back of her mind, it all faded just enough for her to sit in this moment, let it be uncomplicated.

  The rest of the break passed in easy rhythm. They drifted onto other topics, movies, random gossip, joining in with the others on their convo, talking about the worst gigs they’d played (Sandro once electrocuted himself with a mic at a dive bar in Poblacion). Miguel mostly listened, occasionally chiming in with dry humor that earned him chuckles from Ram and even a rare laugh from Jigs. Amy didn’t notice when she stopped being guarded with him. It just… happened. Miguel stayed to chill with them in their jamming session, bobbing heads and questioning the choice of lyrics.

  After the session, Miguel lingered at the door, hands in his pockets.

  “Same time next weekend?” he asked, almost too casually.

  Amy raised an eyebrow. “You inviting yourself again?”

  He shrugged, smiling. “Only if the drummer says it’s cool.”

  She pretended to think. “Hmm. I guess you’ve earned a guest pass.”

  Miguel laughed, and they said their goodbyes, their footsteps echoing down separate paths as the city swallowed them back up.

  The sun had already begun its descent by the time Amy got home, casting the living room in a soft, gold light that made everything feel quieter than it really was.

  Her mother’s voice cut through it, sharp and clipped.

  “Hindi puwede yung ganyan. We pay dues. We expect proper surveillance.”

  We expect results.

  She was on the phone, pacing. Probably talking to the subdivision’s security office, her tone that particular register of polite anger reserved for service failures and house break-ins. Her nails tapped against her crossed arms with every sentence.

  In the kitchen, her father stirred something over the glass stove, humming along to a jazz playlist from the Bluetooth speaker tucked beside the rice cooker. It smelled vaguely of butter and lamb. He glanced up as Amy entered, offered her a smile without saying a word, just a look that asked, You okay? She nodded, mouthed Later, and continued past him.

  Upstairs, her bedroom was just as she’d left it, except now it wasn’t.

  She stood by the door for a long moment, not moving.

  The air felt still, but not empty.

  As if some residue of the burglars lingered, invisible but heavy. She imagined them: faceless, gloved, stepping through her space without hesitation. Fingers grazing spines of books she’d obsessed over. Eyes glancing over posters of bands they may have never heard of. Hands opening drawers stuffed with stickers, incense packets, half-used eyeliners.

  What would they have thought of her?

  She crossed to her vanity, opened the top drawer slowly, half-expecting the stolen platinum bracelet to have miraculously reappeared.

  It hadn’t.

  The space it left behind seemed more noticeable than the bracelet itself ever was when it was still there.

  Her phone buzzed.

  Anton Mercado.

  She answered without checking the time, lying back on the bed, one arm stretched across her forehead, the phone cold against her cheek.

  “Hey,” she said, voice low, tired in a way that felt deeper than just the day.

  She didn’t know what Anton was calling about yet. But she had a feeling the conversation would pull her back into the story, into cold logic and trailing patterns and theories and cross-referenced timelines.

  For now, she let herself sink a little into the soft mattress, bracing.

  “Hey,” Anton said, his voice gentle but steady. “How are you holding up?”

  Amy stared at the ceiling. “Shaken,” she said, not bothering to pretend otherwise. “Like… I know I’m okay and nothing happened to me directly, but… still. There’s this… this wrongness in the room. Like something got bent out of shape, and it hasn’t snapped back yet. Not really anyway.”

  Anton was quiet for a moment before replying. “I read your report. You could have just waited until Monday.”

  “I had to put the energy somewhere,” Amy said, closing her eyes. “Felt better typing everything out than just… sitting with it. It’s easier to shut down my brain and catalogue my memories than to confront it.”

  “Well,” Anton said, “your trauma coping mechanism is very readable. It’s incredibly thorough. Clear timeline, sensory details, observations…”

  Amy gave a small snort. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “But,” Anton continued, shifting tone slightly, “there’s been a development.”

  She sat up. “What kind of development?”

  “One of the bigger pieces from another victim, the Senator’s house case in Whack Whack, it turned up at a pawn shop in Marikina. The serial number matched. The pawn shop flagged it through the national stolen items database, like they’re actually supposed to. You’d be surprised how rarely they look these up. Anyways, the police traced it back.”

  Amy leaned forward, heart starting to beat faster. “And? Who brought it in?”

  “That’s the part,” Anton said. “It wasn’t one of them. It was just… a kid.”

  Amy’s mouth tightened. “What kind of kid?”

  “Sixteen. Maybe seventeen. Pickpocket, apparently. Grabbed a pouch off someone in North EDSA and tried to fence the stuff inside. Got unlucky.”

  “So it’s a dead end again.”

  “Could be,” Anton admitted. “Police still have him in custody. They're looking into whether they can track down the person he stole it from through mall CCTV, but right now, there’s nothing.”

  Amy ran a hand through her hair, frustration curling behind her ribs. “So we’re back to square one.”

  “Pretty much,” Anton said. “At least officially. Off the record? I’m still not convinced of the police narrative that they’re unrelated. Too many weird similarities in these cases. Too clean. Too selective. And still no clear motive.”

  Amy looked around her room, the posters, the books, the empty space where the bracelet used to be.

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “There’s an intentionally to it.”

  Amy rolled onto her side, phone pressed to her ear. “Hey, Anton, what do you think about the pendant?”

  “The one with the GPS chip?”

  “Yeah.” She pulled up the app and stared at the dot, still unmoving. “It’s been stationary since last night. Somewhere in this neighborhood in Quezon. Kind of a rough area, actually.”

  Anton hummed, thoughtful. “How wide’s the pin range?”

  “Pretty big. A few dozen houses at least. It’s not super precise.”

  “Then it’s pretty much futile,” he said bluntly. “The police aren’t gonna sweep an entire neighborhood just for a pendant your mom didn’t even seem too concerned about getting back. It’s not enough.”

  Amy frowned. “But it’s something, right? I mean… if it’s still there, then that means they were there. We have a location.”

  “Maybe,” Anton said. “But we don’t know their post-op protocol. For all we know, they realized it had a chip and tossed it. Could’ve ended up in someone’s trash, or swapped hands half a dozen times. It’s a lead, sure, but not as strong as it looks on paper. The police knows of repeat offenders, if something was stolen in an area, they already have an idea of who it was and ask them to cough it up. If the police didn’t say anything when you gave them that pin location, then they likely don’t know anyone there that would fit the profile.”

  Amy sat up, her knees drawn to her chest. “Then what are these burglars doing? What’s the point of all this?”

  Anton was quiet again, then said, “They didn’t take cash, right?”

  “Nope,” Amy replied. “There were envelopes left out. Literal stacks. They didn’t even glance at them.”

  “So we’re not looking at people who are strapped for money,” Anton said. “Not the usual B&E profile. They’re skilled. Precise. Anyone with those capabilities could use a single haul to bankroll an entire side hustle, go legit, whatever. But they keep hitting. Over and over. Same kind of targets.”

  “Kleptomania?” Amy guessed.

  “Could be,” Anton said. “Could be thrill-seeking. Or, hmmm, maybe it’s not about money at all.”

  Amy tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  “The things they steal. Jewelry. Designer stuff. Tech. All high-end. What if it’s intentional? These are what would be considered luxury items. Symbols of Excess. What if they’re trying to send a message?”

  Amy’s eyes narrowed. “Like… some kind of anti-rich ideology?”

  “It’s a stretch,” Anton admitted. “But patterns matter. Rich neighborhoods. High-profile families. Selective looting. Maybe it’s not just about what they can take, maybe it’s about who they take it from.”

  Amy lay back down, staring at the ceiling. A cold thread worked its way through her chest.

  “And what kind of people,” she murmured, “build a philosophy out of stealing?”

  Anton’s voice crackled through the phone. “This is just pure speculation, okay? But if we’re going there, maybe it’s a group that believes in wealth redistribution. Through theft.”

  Amy blinked. “You mean like… Robin Hood?”

  “Or fsociety,” he said. “But I’m serious here, this is all conjecture. I’d need to cross-check for any surges in charitable donations, sudden spikes in public school funding, medical bills being paid off anonymously. Things like that.”

  “That sounds doable,” Amy said quickly. Too quickly.

  “It’s hard,” Anton replied, firm. “Especially in this country. Most of that kind of help moves through informal channels. Word of mouth. Cash in envelopes. You’d be trying to spot patterns in fog.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Anton was silent for a moment. “Amy…”

  “I know what you’re going to say,” she interrupted. “I’m too close to this. Conflict of interest. My judgment’s compromised. And yeah, it probably is. But I’m still doing it.”

  “Amy.”

  “You gave me a direction, even if it’s the wrong one. I need that right now. I need to do something, Anton. I can’t just sit around waiting for the next update on a police report that’s already going cold. I need to find out why these people are doing these, why us.”

  A long exhale. Then Anton said, softer now, “I get it.”

  “I’m not asking for your blessing,” Amy added. “But I’d rather have it.”

  “…Then you have it,” he said, finally. “But be careful. You’re not a journalist chasing a scoop right now. You’re a victim trying to make sense of what happened to you. That’s a very different kind of story.”

  Amy stared at the ceiling, a strange clarity blooming in the back of her mind.

  “I’ll figure out what kind it is,” she said. “One way or another.”

  For the first time since the break-in, her hands weren’t trembling, and she knew where to start.