The front door is standing wide open. He waits a moment, listening. There’s nothing but the wind rustling the branches above. Even so, he walks past the front door and moves around the side of the house, aware that his shoes are crunching loudly in the gravel. The back door is open too, but he can see through the window that the kitchen is empty.

As he steps into the house there’s that same faint, sharp odor that he caught at Wentworth’s. This time he recognizes it immediately. It catches in his throat. There’s a steady orange glow coming from the hallway. He crosses the kitchen and sees tea lights scattered along the corridor, lining the floor like the emergency lights that mark the exit routes on an airplane. When he reaches the door that leads down to the cellar, he stops and places his hand for a moment on the ravaged wood of the door. It’s cool to the touch. He moves on, taking an exaggerated step over the hole in the floor and stepping into the dim living room.

There are more tea lights here. Hundreds of them. On the mantelpiece, the floor, balanced on the brown, moldy arms of the sofas. With the curtains drawn, it’s enough to throw dark shadows into every corner of the room. Again he has that feeling of being watched. This time he looks straight toward the portrait on the chimney breast. He moves slowly, stepping carefully across the rotting floorboards, his shoes sinking into the soggy carpet. The eyes of the man in the painting—the fire watcher—follow him all the way across the room, drawing him in. The fire watcher is here in the house with him. And he’s sure now he knows who it is.

—

Rabbani holds her finger against the tiny metallic intercom button and listens to it trill for several seconds. Still nothing. She tries calling him again, but once again her call is immediately directed to voicemail. What is wrong with him? Surely he hasn’t switched it off again? On the other hand, she imagines that if she’d been suspended, that would be the first thing she’d do.

But she isn’t Tyler. And he specifically asked her to call him, so why isn’t he answering? There could be any number of reasons, of course, but she has a nasty feeling something’s wrong.

She was given the all clear to leave the hospital that morning but decided to tell her mother they weren’t letting her out until the afternoon. That way she could avoid the fuss and finish the job Tyler had given her.