I tap the first one. It’s me and my mom, fighting in the kitchen. Taken forty minutes ago from outside my kitchen window.

My arms grow clammy. Numb. I swipe right.

The second picture. A close-up of the grill on our back porch. And written in the thin layer of dust covering it are the words, “Back off.”

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

I don’t know when I finally fall asleep, but at 3:33 a.m., a loud noise I can’t define jolts me awake. I lie in bed, paralyzed, sweating profusely, heart racing.

Something scrapes against the office window downstairs. The sound is slow. Taunting. Then there’s rattling. Someone trying to pry open the window just below my room.

I breathe deeply, unable to afford another asthma attack, and ground myself in the plausibility of a murderer breaking in to kill me.

The office window is easily thirteen feet up. Someone would need a ladder, and there are likely still news crews out front. Whatever I’m hearing, it’s not a threat, I try to rationalize.

I strain my ears, hypersensitive to every creak and rustle around my house. A car starts. Its door opens and shuts—a heavy one from the sound of it. The car doesn’t move. It idles. A news van camping out front.

My room is pitch black except for the tiny halo of blue light hovering around my clock.

The scraping comes again, this time accompanied by a low drone—the wind.

A branch from our magnolia tree must be brushing against the side of our house. That’s the scraping. No need to be neurotic. But just as I think it, my mind is back on Navy Pier . . . Dopney moans from inside the Swarm. His bones crumble as they beat his face, kick his ribs. Waves crash against the concrete.

I dig my palms into my eyes, trying to block it. I kick off the covers and sit up. I need to get a grip. Grabbing my inhaler from the side of my bed, I tiptoe to the window—to prove that there are no monsters or murderers stalking around my yard, waiting to kill me.

Despite tonight’s warning.

Pulling back the curtain, I peek through the wooden blinds and make out at least two news vans below. The windows are dark, with scum reporters likely sleeping inside. Across the street, the tree in my neighbor’s front yard rustles, but other than that, the night is still. My yard clear.

I check the parked cars lining the street, making sure they’re empty and normal and recognizable—my neighbors’ cars, the ones always parked outside.

Two houses down, I notice a black Escalade I’ve never seen before, its windows suspiciously tinted.

The biker from the article. The dead blogger. He was sideswiped by a dark Escalade.