“Easy morning, easy night. The protective target in 8 is still asleep, the protective target in 12 just finished breakfast, and I’ve seen the protective target in 10 in the living room window several times, he’s not crying anymore.”

Piet Hoffmann barely heard what the security guard was telling him, and it made him feel a little ashamed, but it wasn’t these threatened people—whom he was being paid so well to protect—that he wanted to know more about.

“And . . . the new ones?”

“I still don’t like having them a couple kilometers away.”

“You’re right, Andy, but just now it is what it is.”

The security guard was pressing a few buttons on the monitors and pushing a few keys on the keyboard, or that’s what it sounded like through the phone.

“I see her, the mother, right now. Camera 7, facing the balcony. She’s standing in the kitchen in a yellow bathrobe, I think, and staring at . . . well, nothing. However, and this isn’t good, boss, but a while ago . . .”

The guard suddenly fell silent.

“Yes?”

“And this isn’t good at all.”

“What is it, Andy?”

“She’s talking on the phone. I’m absolutely sure. She’s not supposed to do that, she must have snuck it in . . .”

“My fault—I forgot to inform her last night. I missed it. I was rushed.”

“You want me to go over there now? Talk to her? Take the phone?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll talk to her.”

“Because we need to know who she’s communicating with. And she has to know it’s dangerous. That . . .”

“I’ll talk to her, Andy. Discuss everything.”

And Hoffmann just wanted to scream now.

Tell me what she really looks like, what you think she’s feeling? For real? More broken than I know? More sad? When you zoom in and look at her eyes, are they . . .

But that was the one thing he couldn’t do. Because no one, not even his employees, could know.

“Thank you, Andy. You’re on it, as usual. And the others . . . how . . . have you seen the kids?”

“I caught a glimpse of the older boy a while ago. Camera 2, facing the bedroom. Worried. That’s how he moved. Sometimes it’s so obvious. I’ve seen many a worried child on these screens—but that was definitely one of the worst. What the hell have they been through, boss?”

Piet Hoffmann stayed where he was, as if frozen in that uncomfortable kitchen chair.

Hugo.

His little boy, who was getting big now, and who slept as restlessly as he did himself, who already knew that the world belonged to the safe ones—he too had stared out the window just like his mother, anxiously on the lookout for the unknown.

The terrifying.