Soft footsteps moved through the apartment. Then a series of beeps. Hazard poked his head out into the hallway and saw Mitchell tapping his phone. Mitchell glanced up.

“Are you ok? Jesus, you’re green. Are you going to puke?”

“I’m fine. What are you doing?”

“Checking the alarm system.”

“You have an alarm system? Why didn’t it go off?”

“Well, yeah. I bought it after, you know, everything that happened. I turned it off when we got off the elevator.”

“For fuck’s sake, Mitchell. That would have been nice to know.” Hazard wiped his face again, and then he grimaced and squirmed, trying to peel the t-shirt away from his sweaty back. “Let’s see it.”

It was one of the do-it-yourself kinds, a premium brand that Hazard recognized because he had considered buying one himself. It had motion sensors, door and window sensors, interior cameras, and a hub that emitted an alarm and notified an off-site monitoring company.

“But it didn’t activate last night?” Hazard said.

“Well, everything is inside the apartment; I guess it would have gone off if he’d actually gotten the door open, but . . .”

“And you didn’t think of activating it yourself?”

“I told you,” Mitchell said, blushing. “I just froze.”

Hazard grunted.

“You know the problem with these things?” Hazard said. “False alarms.”

“I know, but I talked to the offsite monitoring company when I bought this one. They have access to the camera feed, so they can check and see if they really need to call the police.”

“No, I mean, home security systems in general. They generate so many false alarms that police are typically slow to respond. And you have to consider human error; maybe the person at the offsite monitoring company is slow that day. Maybe the dispatcher is in a shitty mood. Maybe the responding cop hates calls like this.”

“That’s . . . that’s crazy. It’s a 911 call. They have to respond. It’s an emergency.”

Hazard shrugged. “That’s life. Let me check the strike plate, and then we’ll go to the hardware store. Turn this stuff back on; we’ll be right back, but better safe than sorry.”

The strike plate didn’t show any signs of an attempt at forced entry, so they locked up, and Mitchell activated the security system on his phone again. They drove to the closest hardware store. Hazard picked up a few things, ignoring Mitchell’s winces at the price tags, and when they got to the register, Hazard ran his own card and ignored Mitchell all over again as the kid objected and tried to pay. When they got back to the apartment, Hazard was almost feeling normal again; Mitchell deactivated the alarm, and they moved through the unit as a team, clearing the rooms once again.

“This is security film,” Hazard said, passing the roll to Mitchell. “Start putting it in every window. If somebody tried to shatter the glass, the film holds it together. Those window sensors aren’t going to be worth shit if somebody breaks the glass and climbs inside.”