Anaya did not breathe for three full seconds.
Then her training took over. She set the newspaper down without folding it, slid her phone into her back pocket, and picked up the heavy steel flashlight she kept by the door. It was not a weapon. But it was close enough.
She opened her apartment door an inch.
The hallway was empty. The long strip of carpet ran away from her under the humming lights, past six identical brown doors, to the stairwell at the far end. Nothing moved.
Then she saw it. The stairwell door was swinging — slowly, softly, the way a door swings when someone has just let go of it.
Anaya walked toward it. Her sneakers made no sound on the carpet. Door 4C. Door 4D. Behind 4E, a television laughed at something. She reached the stairwell and pushed the door open with the end of the flashlight.
Cold air. Concrete steps going down into shadow. The smell of dust and old paint.
"Hello?" Her voice bounced down the stairs and came back to her smaller.
Below, three floors down, the outside door banged shut.
She ran. Down one flight, two, three — her shoulder hitting the rail at each turn — and burst out into the parking lot behind the building. A row of cars. A dumpster. A streetlight buzzing orange.
No one.
Somewhere far off, an engine started, and then it was gone too.
Anaya stood in the wind with her heart slamming against her ribs. When it slowed enough for her to think, she walked back to the stairwell and swept the flashlight beam across the floor, step by step, the way she would at any scene.
On the second-floor landing, something glinted.
She crouched. It was a small brass key, no longer than her thumb, with a square hole at one end instead of teeth. She had seen keys like it in antique shops. A clock key. The kind you used to wind an old wall clock.
She did not touch it. She took a photo, then called Bell.
He answered on the first ring, as if he had been waiting. "Rao."
"Someone was in my building," she said. "They left me the third watch. And a key."
There was a long silence on the line.
"Rao," Bell said finally, very quietly. "Who else knows where you live?"