Bridges, outside, was wadding up the carpet into the back of the Expedition. He pulled out a black metal shelf and took down a suitcase from which he got a camera lodged in gray foam. He photographed the carpet. He photographed the front door of 6A Brooks, the hallway, the bathroom, the bedrooms. He was about to photograph the kitchen when the phone rang. It so surprised him, and Mourad and Heather, that Bridges dropped the camera and Mourad instinctively pulled his stun gun. When it rang again, Heather was breathing so fast she felt Bridges must be able to hear her, and she put her hands over her face to make herself quiet. Mourad had almost slid into the kitchen with a gun pointed at a police officer. He was so shocked by his own self-destructive foolishness that he deflated, mind and body, and clung—as he had as a schoolboy to the teacher who once protected him from a parent intent on caning him—to Heather, who, he was unhappy to realize, felt like a single thin leaf.

Would Bridges answer? Someone, somehow was calling, they just knew, to ask for Aziz. Their thoughts pushed and shoved against one another and fear kicked up around them.

Bridges picked up the phone. They heard it. It was suddenly elaborately quiet. It seemed at least one hour passed between his “Yes,” and his reply, which was, “Who? A who?” And then they heard their rescue, because he said next, “Oh, Heather.” He walked into the living room and looked at them. Mourad was cowering, still not recovered from his dread of his runaway instincts.

“You Heather?”

She nodded.

“Talk to this person then.”

She got up like a woman in a home for the elderly and made a dazed shamble toward the kitchen. Her departure woke Mourad into a greater insecurity. He simply sat. He heard her say, “I know I’m late. I apologize. . . . Yes. I’m sick. A little sick. But I will come in. . . . No, not that sick. Just sick a little.”