The man’s eyes go a little wide, a universal gesture for WTF. “Then how do you know?”

“’Cause the scary man who bangs on the pipes lives down there. How come you wear a mask? Do you have superpowers?”

Just then, a familiar sound sticks the breath to my lungs. A key, rattling in the front door.

All heads whip in the direction of the noise, even though we can’t see the door from where we’re standing. Not with the four-foot stretch of wall, a solid boundary between the base of the stairs and the front door, blocking the view. I stare at the alabaster plaster, breathless.

The man’s whisper laps at the side of my neck. “Who’s that?”

I shake my head, the burning in my arm muscles bleeding away into a panicky tingle. Is it Cam, returning home already with the money? I hold my breath and wait, clutching Baxter to my chest, straining to hear. Five full seconds of frozen terror.

There’s a sharp sound of metal on wood, followed by a whoosh of outside air.

And then two things happen all at once. A long steady beeping erupts from the alarm pad bolted onto the bedroom wall, and a familiar voice sings out a hello.

Tanya Lloyd, the neighbor from across the street.

“Jade, are you here?”

With impressive speed, the man tugs me down the hall and into the bedroom. “Tell her not to move,” he hisses, flipping open the cover on the alarm panel and ticking in the code. “Do it.” Just in case, he raises the gun six inches from my face—as if I need convincing.

“Hang on, Tanya,” I shout, pointing my face into the hallway. “Stay where you are. I’ll be right there.”

My words don’t stop her footsteps from moving deeper into the house. Tanya is our nosiest neighbor, the kind who parks herself in her bay window when the kids are at school so she can keep an eye on the street. She knows every neighbor within a five-mile radius. She knows their kids’ names and their dogs’ names and what day their lawn and pool service comes. She knows who’s pregnant and who’s getting married or on the verge of divorce, and which houses are about to go on the market weeks before the broker hammers a For Sale sign in the grass. If one of our neighbors forgets to pick up their dog’s shit from our front yard, Tanya calls to tell me who it was, and exactly which bush it’s under. She is a one-woman security patrol, and she drives Cam and me up a tree.