59

Sierra’s POV

The car couldn’t get to the school fast enough. Every red light felt like a personal attack. Louis sat beside me, his jaw so tight I thought it might crack. He was on the phone the whole time, his voice a low, angry growl giving orders.

“I want a full description from every staff member who saw him. I want all the security footage from every camera within ten blocks. I want to know how he knew the teacher’s name. Someone talked. Find out who.”

I just stared out the window, my hand pressed against the cold glass. My mind was playing a horrible movie: a stranger’s hand grabbing Katie’s, pulling her away from the colorful school doors, into a car. Katie’s confused face looking back for me. The movie wouldn’t stop.

“She’s okay, Sierra,” Louis said after he hung up. He put his hand over my frozen one on the seat between us. “They followed protocol. She’s safe.”

“He knew her teacher’s name,” I whispered. “He knew the dismissal procedure. That’s not a random creep. That’s someone who watched. Who studied.”

“I know,” he said. The two words were heavy and dark.

We pulled up to the school. It looked so normal. A bright, brick building with kids’ paintings in the windows. The jungle gym in the yard was empty and still. But now it looked like a trap to me. Every bush, every parked car, could hide someone.

Martin was already there, talking to the principal, Mrs. Green, whose face was pale and serious. She saw us and rushed over.

“Mr. and Mrs. Crowe, I am so sorry. We are so terribly sorry. He was so convincing. He had what looked like a driver’s license with the name ‘Charles Crowe’ on it. He said he was your brother, Mr. Crowe, in town unexpectedly. He knew all the security passwords for early pickup—the ones we change monthly. He knew everything.”

Louis’s face was like stone. “There is no Charles Crowe. My brother’s name is William, and he lives in London. The passwords were compromised. How?”

Mrs. Green wrung her hands. “We don’t know! We email them to the authorized family contacts the first of every month. Your assistant, Mr. Gaines, is on that list, as are both of you.”

“Our systems were hacked weeks ago,” Louis said, more to himself than to her. “They got the passwords. They’ve been reading everything.”

I felt dizzy. The bug in the laundry room was just one piece. They were everywhere. In our phones? In our emails? Watching us plan our fake weekend trip, reading the school passwords, listening, always listening.

“I want to see my daughter,” I said. My voice sounded strange.

They took us to the school office. Katie was sitting in the principal’s big leather chair, her feet dangling. She was coloring a picture with a secretary’s fancy pens. She looked up and her face lit up.

“Mommy! Daddy! Did you hear? A funny man tried to take me for ice cream but Mrs. Green said no!”

She wasn’t scared. She thought it was a game. A mistake. My heart squeezed so hard it hurt.

I knelt down and pulled her into a hug, smelling her strawberry shampoo. “That’s right, baby. He wasn’t supposed to. Only Mommy or Daddy or Nanny Anna pick you up, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, squirming. “Can I finish my rainbow?”

Louis crouched down too. “Katie, this is very important. The funny man is a stranger. Even if he knows Nanny Anna’s name, or your teacher’s name, you never, ever go with him. You shout for Mrs. Green. You understand?”

She looked at his serious face and her smile faded a little. “I understand, Daddy. Stranger danger. We learned about it.”

We took her home. The car ride was quiet this time. Katie chattered about her rainbow drawing. Louis and I didn’t speak. We just held her hands, one of us on each side.

When we got home, the fortress felt like a prison. The new cameras on the walls looked like blind eyes. How could we trust any of it?

Louis went straight to his office. I got Katie settled with her nanny in the playroom, then I followed him. He was standing in front of a big screen, footage from the school’s street playing on it.

“Show me,” I said.

He pointed. A figure, dressed in a plain grey jacket and hat, face turned away from the camera, walking up to the school office door. He was average height. Average build. He moved calmly, not rushed. He disappeared inside.

“He was in there for four minutes,” Louis said. “Then he left, walking east. He vanished a block away. No car caught on camera.”

“He knew where the blind spots were,” I said.

“Yes.”

We watched the footage over and over. It told us nothing. The man was a ghost.

“The singing, and now this,” I said, sinking into a chair. “It’s the same person. It has to be. They’re not trying to expose you in the news, Louis. They’re not trying to get money. They’re trying to… to get *in*. Into our lives. Into our heads. They wanted to take Katie not to hurt her, but because… she’s ours.”

Louis finally looked away from the screen. His eyes were haunted. “It’s a game. A sick, personal game. Miranda Vale wants a story. This person… they want *us*.”

The word hung in the air. *Us.* Our little unit. The thing we had just finished building out of the rubble.

“What did we do?” I whispered. “Who did we make this angry?”

Louis was silent for a long time. “It might not be about what we did,” he said slowly. “It might be about who we *are*. A perfect, unbreakable target. Some people… they see a wall, and they need to break it just to prove they can.”

A notification popped up on Louis’s computer. An email. The subject line was just a music note. 🎵

He clicked it.

There was no text. Just an audio file. He played it.

It was a recording. A little staticky, but clear. It was the sound of Katie laughing. Her real, happy giggle from the park yesterday. And underneath it, so quiet you almost missed it, was a man humming *Rock-a-bye Baby*.

Then it stopped. A typed sentence appeared on the screen below the audio file.

**“She has such a lovely laugh. It would be a shame if it ever stopped.”**

I gagged. I literally bent over, hand on my knees, sure I was going to be sick. Louis slammed the laptop shut so hard the sound echoed in the room.

He was breathing hard, his fists clenched on the desk. The rage coming off him was a physical heat.

“That’s it,” he snarled. “No more defense.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, straightening up, tears of fury in my eyes.

“We’ve been playing defense. Waiting for them to make a move. Reacting. That ends now.” He turned to me, his gaze blazing. “We find them. We don’t wait for them to come to the school again. We use what they want.”

“Me?” I asked, my blood going cold again.

“No. Not you. Never you.” He shook his head. “They want our family. Our… performance of being a family. So we give them a bigger performance. A public one. We draw them out into the open where we can see them.”

“How? Another gala?”

“Bigger,” he said. He started pacing, his mind racing ahead of mine. “We throw a party. Here. At the house. We invite half the city. We make it a charity thing for… for child safety. We get it in all the papers. We show everyone how strong and happy and *together* we are. It will drive them crazy. They’ll have to come. To see it. To be near it. And when they do…” He stopped, looking at me. “Our security will be ready. Not just to protect, but to identify. Every guest, every staff member, will be scanned, vetted, and watched. We’ll turn our home into a sensor net. And we’ll catch this ghost.”

It was a huge, terrifying risk. Inviting the city into our home while a stalker was hunting us. But Louis was right. We couldn’t live like this, jumping at every sound. We had to turn the tables.

“Okay,” I said, my voice stronger than I felt. “We throw a party.”

“It has to be real,” he said. “You have to plan it. Be seen planning it. Make it the talk of the town. Let them hear about it through the bugs they might still have. Let them read about it. Let the itch to be here, to ruin it, become too strong for them to resist.”

I nodded. I could do that. I could plan a party. It was just another kind of performance. And now, I was a professional performer.

“We’ll catch them, Sierra,” Louis said, coming to stand in front of me. He put his hands on my arms. “We’ll end this.”

“And then what?” I asked. “When we catch them?”

A shadow passed over his face. The gentle, scared Louis was gone, replaced by the one who built an empire and buried his secrets. “Then they will never, ever frighten our daughter again.”

I didn’t ask what that meant. Some part of me, the part that had grown that cold, strong muscle, didn’t want to know.

I went to find Katie. She was building a tall tower out of blocks. I sat on the floor with her.

“Hey, sweetie. How would you like to help Mommy plan a really, really big party?”

Her eyes got wide. “With balloons?”

“So many balloons,” I promised, forcing a huge smile. “And a magician, and a chocolate fountain.”

“YAY!” she shouted, and her tower crashed down. She didn’t care. She was already thinking about chocolate.

I hugged her, holding her laughter close. We would use her laughter as bait. The thought made me feel sick and strong at the same time.

The game was changing. We were no longer the prey hiding in a hole.

We were going to build the brightest, loudest, most beautiful trap the world had ever seen. And we were going to wait for the monster to walk right in.