Still, I was wasting time and giving whoever was inside a chance to prepare, which was almost always a mistake. Pulling out my baton, I flicked it out and raised my flashlight to eye level as I nudged the front door open with my foot. I caught a glimpse of something to my right and stepped in, doing a sweep of the front hall with my light before moving on to the room where I had seen something.

The house was pitch dark inside, and my flashlight seemed very meager as it pushed its way into what had possibly once been a dining or living room. On the far side of the room was the large bay window I had seen, and next to it, dimly outlined in the reflection of my flashlight on the window, was a large figure. Its back was turned to me, and it was hard for me to say for sure if it was the woman I had seen or someone else. I stopped where I was and used a command tone to order the person to turn around and raise their hands. I know they began to turn around, but that’s the last thing I can remember from the encounter. The next thing I knew, I was back at the clubhouse.

I felt strangely woozy, and my first thought was that I was just experiencing the aftereffects of having been so sick the past few days. That I must have dozed off or something, even though that was something I had never done during my time as a guard. But then I started remembering being at the house. Seeing the woman turning to face me. And something else…but I lost it again. Looking at my phone, I saw that nearly two hours had passed since I had been patrolling in Zone Three. I also had a missed call from Oscar.

****

“Hey, man. Sorry to call you so late, but I saw I missed a call from you like thirty minutes ago and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

I could tell when Oscar spoke that he hadn’t been sleeping when I called, but he still sounded unsure of how to respond. “Um…yeah. Sorry, kid. I was just up late and thought I’d check in on you. See how things were going…Since you’ve been under the weather and all.”

I frowned at that a little. Oscar was a nice guy, but he wasn’t touchy-feely or overly conscientious. It seemed out of character that he’d just randomly call to check on me when nothing was wrong. Except something was wrong, wasn’t it? And it was looking more and more like Oscar knew something about it.