The sound of the geese woke me. They make a peeling, squealing kind of distress noise, a screaming punctuated by deep, growling honks. I remember thinking as I lay on the floor of my kitchen and listened to them that the sound meant that they were still alive, and that was all that mattered, really. I was lying on my front with my hands at the small of my back. As I shifted, I felt one of the cable ties I’d pulled from the bottom drawer around my wrists let a little blood flow into my numb fingers. Prickling, stinging. A black boot passed near my face.

He was raiding my house. I’ve been raided a few times since all this began, my house turned over by Crimson Lake cops with a grudge. I’ve come to recognize the sound of it. A crash, the whisper of papers sliding across the polished wood floor. A drawer clunking as it’s wrenched from the dresser. I looked around. All the kitchen cupboard doors were open, smashed cups and plates, Tupperware containers on the floor. Wine everywhere, running down the cupboards like thin blood. One of the chairs was broken. He’d started here, moved from room to room. I tried to shift upward, assess anything broken or bent inside me. Everything hurt in equal measure.

“Don’t move.”

The boot came back, emerged from the blur at the corner of my vision and shoved me back down onto the floor. I heard a goose’s wings flapping on the porch. I watched the blond man as he disappeared again into the bedroom, came to the kitchen table and righted the remaining dining room chair. He sat, dumped my laptop on the table and pushed it open.

“There’s nothing in the house,” he said. “I didn’t think you kept it online. Too traceable that way. But maybe I’m wrong.”

He became distracted, clicking through the inner workings of my computer. I braved a covert, awkward shuffle into the corner of the kitchen. I pushed myself up, took a moment to look at my attacker. I was steadily growing hotter. My entire body boiling beneath my clothes. Recognition. I knew this man. I knew his thin, angular face and big, dark blue eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” He clicked around the computer, glanced at me. Looking at my face brought him out of his frenzied search of the laptop. I shifted backward, but there was nowhere to go. “I’m looking for pictures. Videos. Documents.”

He was looking for child porn. Whoever this man was, wherever I had seen him before, he was associated with my case. This wasn’t a robbery, although I’d known that from the anger. This was personal. I felt blood running down my jaw, tasted it between my teeth. His shirt was torn. I hadn’t made much of an impact.

“If you leave, I won’t call the police,” I said.