55

Sierra’s POV

The dinner was finally over. My face hurt from smiling. My hand hurt from holding Louis’s hand so tight. But we did it. We didn’t run away.

In the car going home, Katie fell asleep on my lap. Louis looked out the window. He was thinking hard. I could tell.

“We showed them,” I said quietly.

“We showed them we can put on a show,” he answered. He didn’t sound happy. He sounded tired. “The person who did this is still out there. They’re still watching.”

When we got home, we put Katie to bed. I checked her room like I always do now. Window locked. Camera on. The little elephant night-light plugged in.

I went to my room and took off my fancy dress. It was heavy. I put on soft pajamas. Louis was already in bed, looking at his phone.

“Anything?” I asked.

“My people traced the money for the pictures. It came from a fake company. A dead end.” He put his phone down. “Whoever this is, they’re careful.”

I got into bed. We just laid there in the dark for a while.

“Do you think it’s connected? The text from Derek and the pictures?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said right away. “It’s testing. Poking us with sticks to see what we do.”

“Well, we didn’t do what they wanted,” I said.

“No. We didn’t.”

We fell asleep.

A few hours later, a sound woke me up. It was a voice. A man’s voice, singing a lullaby. It was coming from across the hall.

Katie’s room.

My blood went cold. I jumped out of bed. Louis was already up, moving fast and quiet. He didn’t turn on the light.

We ran to her door. Louis pushed it open slowly.

The room was dark except for the elephant night-light. Katie was asleep. And the sound was coming from her baby monitor. The one on her dresser. We hadn’t used it in years.

On the little video screen, I could see Katie sleeping in her bed. But over the picture, a man’s voice was singing *Rock-a-bye Baby*.

Louis walked over to it. He didn’t touch it. He just looked. The voice kept singing, soft and creepy.

Then it stopped.

A different voice talked. It was a whisper. “She looks so peaceful. You should keep her safe.”

The screen went black.

I felt like I was going to throw up. I ran to Katie’s bed and picked her up. She mumbled but didn’t wake up. I held her tight.

Louis picked up the monitor. He pulled the battery out. The screen went dead for real.

“How?” I asked, my voice shaking. “How did they do that?”

“The monitor was old,” Louis said. His face was white. “It was on a shared network frequency. Not secure. I should have thrown it away.”

“They were in her room,” I said. “They could see her.”

“They still can,” he said. He pointed to the little camera in the corner of the ceiling—the security one we installed after the kidnapping. Its little red light was on. That was normal.

But then the red light blinked twice. Off. On. Off. On. Like a wave.

“They’re in the security system too,” Louis said. He sounded… scared. Really scared.

He took out his phone and called Martin. “The system is compromised. I want a physical guard outside this door right now. Then get a tech team here. Now.”

He came over to me and Katie. He put his arms around both of us. Katie was sleeping between us.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m right here.”

I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. The tears were hot and they just came. “They’re in our house, Louis.”

“I know.”

“They were singing to her.”

“I know.”

We stood there in the dark room, holding our kid. The red light on the camera blinked one more time, then stayed on. Watching us.

The guard came. He stood in the hallway. Louis and I took Katie to our room. We put her in the middle of our bed. We didn’t sleep.

The tech guys came at 5 AM. They worked for hours. Louis stayed with them. I stayed with Katie.

Later, Louis came back. He looked awful.

“What did they find?” I asked.

“They hacked the old monitor easy. Just a cheap trick. But the security camera…” He ran a hand through his hair. “Someone put a backdoor in the system. They’ve been able to watch the camera feeds for about a week.”

“A week?”

“Since a few days after Derek texted you.”

My whole body felt cold. They’d been watching us. Watching Katie sleep. Watching me read her stories.

“Who?” I asked.

“The tech is good. Really good. It points to someone who knows what they’re doing. Not just a reporter. Not just a creep.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know.” He sat down on the bed. He looked at Katie, then at me. “But it’s a message. They’re telling us they can get in anytime they want. They’re not just poking from the outside anymore.”

I wanted to pack a bag and run. Take Katie and just go. But where? They found us here, in our safest place.

“What do we do?” My voice was a whisper.

“We change everything. New system. New codes. New everything. We find the hole they used and we find *them*.” He touched Katie’s hair. “And we never let her out of our sight.”

That day, our house turned into a fortress again. But it felt different this time. Last time, the bad guy was outside. This time, the bad guy had been inside. In our walls. In our screens.

Louis was right. It was a message.

And the message was clear: *You’re not safe. Nowhere is safe. We’re closer than you think.*