Episode 8 - The Return of Victor Malone pt. 2

Matt is King

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

He was, in fact, absolutely not about to move. He was quite comfortable. Move, Dick said and hung up. Fingers ate a second granola bar. In a minute, he said to no one. He sat in the lawn chair for the next 40 minutes. He did not feel bad about this. He felt, honestly, like he had found a place he belonged. Chapter 8. The Duchess. The Duchess was nothing like Fingers. She moved along the far edge of the yard where the tree shadows were thickest, staying well off the main path. She paused before each step and looked. She was not in a hurry. Being in a hurry was how professionals became amateurs. She spotted the welcome matte flower launcher from 12 feet away. The pressure plate had a slightly uneven profile in the moonlight. Barely perceptible, but she'd been looking for it. She walked around it. She found the sprinkler board by the uneven pattern of the leaves, too uniform on one side, which meant they had been rearranged. She stepped over the section entirely. She bypassed the tripwire at the gate without difficulty. Upstairs, Bear stopped writing. Duane, he said quietly into the radio. Duane's voice crackled back. I see it. She skipped trap one and three. She went around the board. I see it. Duane, how? A pause. She studied the originals. She knows my thinking. A shorter pause. Or she knows someone who does. Henry beside Bear. Is she better than Duane? Bear. Nobody's better than Duane. Henry. Right. Bear. But she's better than we expected. Henry was quiet for a moment. He ate a beef stick without tasting it. The Duchess reached the back door. She put on her gloves, thin, professional, coated on the palm to prevent sticking. The peanut butter knob was not going to be a problem. She turned the handle and stepped inside. The mudroom was quiet. She stood still for 30 seconds, listening. Then she moved into the main hallway. She found the grease hallway at the threshold. The faint sheen on the floor caught the light from the window. She stopped. She studied it. She moved along the extreme left baseboard one foot at a time, keeping her weight distributed carefully. She could feel the coating under her boots, but she was moving slowly enough that it didn't matter. She was three quarters of the way down the hallway when the bowling ball fired. Not from the direction she'd entered from, from the far end, Duane's east end trigger, installed specifically because someone methodical might edge along the baseboard and make it most of the way through before relaxing. She heard the release mechanism a fraction of a second before it swung. She dropped flat. The bowling ball passed overhead in the dark, swinging on its pendulum rope. She lay on the greased hallway floor for a moment. She was breathing hard. This was not in the police report. She stood slowly, reoriented, and moved forward. Lois was in the rafters. She had gotten up there via the hallway door frame which she had used as a mounting point to access the overhead storage beam. This was not something a normal child could do. Lois was not a normal child in any respect that involved physical movement. She had been tracking the Duchess for the past four minutes. She had watched her bypass three traps. She had watched her survive the bowling ball by half an inch. She had watched her stand back up. Now the Duchess was at the end of the hallway, looking at the door to the main room. Lois dropped, she came off the beam in a single clean motion and landed in the hallway directly in front of the Duchess in a gymnast's low stance. Feet, shoulder width apart, weight forward, arms out and she just looked at her. The Duchess stopped. She looked at the child in front of her. The child looked back. Neither of them moved for a full four seconds. Hi, Lois said. The Duchess said nothing. I'm Lois. You're a child, the Duchess said. Yes? You dropped from the ceiling, the Duchess said. Yes. How? The beam, Lois said simply. The Duchess looked up. Looked back down. You should leave, Lois said. The Duchess started to move around her. Lois was faster. She was always faster. She got around the Duchess and in front of her again with something between a sidestep and a cartwheel, landing back in her stance. The Duchess stopped again. She regarded this situation. I don't want to hurt you, she said. You're not going to, Lois said. A pause. You seem confident. My brother built everything in this house, Lois said. I know where all of it is. The Duchess looked at the hallway. She looked at the floor. She looked at the ceiling. Then she moved quickly to the right, went for a doorway Lois hadn't covered. Lois went over her, not around. Over. She vaulted, used the Duchess's shoulder as a push point, and landed on the other side. The Duchess stopped moving, she turned. She looked at the ten year old gymnast who had just vaulted over her head. Okay, the Duchess said quietly. Okay, Lois agreed. They looked at each other in the dark hallway. Somewhere upstairs, Bear whispered into his radio, Duane, I need you to see this. Chapter nine. Fredberry Saves the Day. Nobody was watching Fredberry. This was, in retrospect, a complete failure of the operational plan, and everyone involved would discuss it later. Evelyn had been assigned specifically to Fredberry duty and had taken it seriously. She had watched him for the first forty minutes with impressive focus. But then, Lois had radioed in about the Duchess in the hallway, and the radio had been passed around and Evelyn had turned her head for what felt like four seconds. What felt like four seconds was apparently eleven minutes, because time moves differently when you are eleven and there is a genuine crisis three rooms away. And when she turned back, Fredberry's blanket was there, but Fredberry was not. She searched the safe room, no Fredberry. She searched the adjacent hallway, no Fredberry. She checked behind the couch because he liked it there. No Fredberry. Henry, she said into the radio, very quietly, I have a situation. Fredberry had found the kitchen. He liked the kitchen. The floors were smooth for crawling. There were things at low levels that were interesting to look at. The Cheerios supply was here. He had navigated the hallway and Zifot source. His bear walk was extremely efficient by now, and had found a dry patch of floor in the middle of the kitchen and sat down with a small pile of cheerios that he had been carrying in his fist. He was eating them one at a time when the Duchess came around the corner. She stopped. She and Fredberry looked at each other. Fredberry was one year old. He had a cheerio in his hand. He was looking up at this woman in black with the focused calm of someone who finds everything equally interesting. The Duchess had been through a great deal in the last fifteen minutes. She had been shot with a bowling ball pendulum. She had been matched physically by a ten year old. She had entered a house that was significantly more dangerous than any professional briefing had suggested. She had not been expecting a baby in the kitchen. She stood very still. Fredberry extended the Cheerio toward her. It was, as gestures go, completely sincere. The Duchess looked at the Cheerio, she looked at the baby, she looked at the Cheerio again. There was a fraction of a second. It was very brief, and she would deny it later if anyone had seen it, where something in her expression shifted. Then from somewhere in the house, Henry shouted at the top of his lungs Fredberry is in sector four. This was followed immediately by Evelyn. This was followed by Evelyn from somewhere else. I know, I know I'm going. The Duchess, startled by the sudden noise, stepped backward. Her foot landed on the hot sauce sprinkler trigger. Duane had installed the hot sauce sprinkler system in Zone C, kitchen section, using a modified ceiling sprinkler head connected to four linked hot sauce bottles. Economy size, the house brand, forty seven fluid ounces each. He had selected the variety described on the label as extra hot, not for casual use. The sprinkler activated, it covered approximately an eight foot radius. The Duchess was standing in the center. She moved fast backward, right into the doorway she'd come from. The doorway had a second trigger. Duane had put them in series specifically because a person backing up quickly was a predictable response. This second trigger activated the ceiling paint bomb. The balloon, filled with one gallon of electric blue latex paint, Aldo dropped and burst directly above the doorway. The Duchess was now red from the hot sauce and blue from the paint. She stood in the hallway. She was dripping. Henry came around the corner at a full run, carrying Fredberry like a football under his arm and stopped dead. He looked at the Duchess, he looked at Fredberry, he looked at the Duchess again. Fredberry, Henry said, slowly and with great feeling, you are the greatest person I have ever met. Fredberry said Bah. Exactly, Henry said. Exactly right. He turned and ran back up the hallway. The Duchess stood there, red and blue and dripping in a quiet house, and for the first time in fifteen years of professional work, she had to take a moment. She was regrouping. She was a professional, she would regroup. But first she stood there for just a second. Upstairs bare. That sequence just scored an eleven point two. I had to make up a new number. Duane, the Fredberry contribution was unplanned and it scores a ten on its own. Duane, write it down, I'm adding it to the diagrams. Chapter ten Victor Malone comes to the front door. Vic had waited long enough. Fingers had apparently found a place to sit down. The Duchess had gone silent on the radio for the last five minutes, which either meant she was deep in the house or she was dealing with something she hadn't expected. Either way, it was time to stop watching and start moving. He crossed the street. He moved the way Victor Malone always moved, deliberately, without hurry, like a man who had decided something and was acting on it. He wore rubber boots, thick gloves, a hat pulled low, he had his glass cutter in his jacket pocket and the floor plan memorized. He went to the front porch. He stepped onto the first porch step. The confetti cannon fired. It was new. Duane had mounted it inside the porch light fixture, concealed behind a reflector panel angled at precisely nose height for an adult male. The cannon used compressed air in a modified barrel and fired a load of approximately one thousand pieces of foil confetti that had been soaked in UV reactive dye for forty eight hours. The dye was invisible in normal light. Under a police UV lamp it would glow bright green. Under normal porch light, Victor Malone was covered in a thousand tiny pieces of colored foil, head to toe in approximately three fifths of a second. He stood on the porch. He did not move. Henry upstairs window. He looks like he looks like he was having trouble completing the sentence. He looks like a parade exploded on him Pierce. Henry, focus. Henry, I am focused. I can also be observant. These are not competing skills. Pierce watched Vic from the upstairs window. Vic reached up and wiped his face slowly. He pulled confetti off his jacket, looked at it, let it fall. Then he looked up. He looked directly at the upstairs window. But Pierce didn't move. Vic's expression was not embarrassment. It was not frustration, not the sputtering anger of someone who had been humiliated. His face was still, his eyes were flat and cold and focused. This was different from last time. Two years ago, Vic had been about the job. Now he was about something else, and Pierce could see it from thirty feet away. He came back because of us, Pierce said quietly. Yes, Duane said from behind him, looking at his tablet. That means it's personal for him. Yes. That makes him more dangerous. Yes, Duane said. It does. That's why I built Zone D. Duane. Not yet, Duane said for the fourth time. Pierce looked at him. Duane was watching the sensor panel with the quiet focus of a chess player, three moves from checkmate. Trust the system, Duane said. Pierce turned back to the window. Vic had stepped off the porch. He was moving around the side of the house. He was going for the basement. He's changing approach, Bear said. I know, Duane said. He saw the porch. He's smart. He's going for the basement window. He pulled up a different sensor feed. Which means he's about to arm Zone D. He said the last part very quietly. Pierce. Zone D gets armed by the basement? There's a pressure plate under the basement floor mat, Duane said. It doesn't fire anything. It just sends a signal to the Zone D sequence, telling it someone is in the house who shouldn't be. He looked at Pierce. When Zone D fires, it needs a confirmed threat in the building. That's how I make sure it doesn't go off by accident. Pierce was quiet. You've been planning for him to come through the basement, Pierce said. Duane said nothing. You wanted him to go for the basement, Pierce said. The basement window is the only untrapped point of entry, Duane said. I left it that way on purpose. Pierce stared at him. Henry, from across the room. Duane. Yes. Are you running a trap that spans the whole house? Define spans, Duane said. Henry ate a beef stick. He was handling things. On the sensor panel, a small indicator light went from orange to red. Zone D is armed, Duane said quietly. Chapter eleven The Duchess Regrouped. The Duchess found the downstairs bathroom, rinsed her face in the dark without turning on the light, and assessed. She was covered in paint and hot sauce. The paint was inconvenient, but the hot sauce was in her eyes and she needed it out. She dealt with it methodically. She had dealt with worse. She had once worked a job in Buenos Aires that ended with her repelling down a building in the rain carrying two laptops. Hot sauce was manageable. She dried her face, she checked her gloves, sleep functional. She looked at her reflection in the dark window. She thought about the baby in the kitchen. She thought about the child who had dropped from the ceiling. She thought about the bowling ball pendulum that she had specifically not been told about. She thought about the fact that she had studied this system for four days, cross-referenced everything against professional standards, and a group of children, the oldest of whom appeared to be approximately fourteen, had still surprised her three times in twenty minutes. She thought about Duane. She did not know his name. She knew his thinking. She had been inside it for four days. She had read his designs the way she read security systems, looking for the logic, the priorities, the personality of the designer. Most systems told you about their builder. This one told her he was meticulous, anticipatory, and patient in a way that was not common in adults, let alone children. He was also, she was now certain, better than the police report suggested. She adjusted her plan. The hot sauce and paint were going to make her conspicuous in any light. She needed to move faster and accept that stealth was partially compromised. The interior zone was known to have eleven traps. She had identified six of them on approach. Five were still unknown. She moved back into the main area. She had made it through the living room doorway when she almost stepped on Tad. Tad was sitting cross legged on the living room floor, eating queso from a cup. He had been there for some time, apparently undisturbed by the sounds of traps firing and distant shouting and Maddie's music, which had been playing from the speaker for the past twenty minutes at a volume that was doing real work. He looked up at her. You're the one from the car, he said. The Duchess didn't respond. She moved to go around him. You have the same eyes as my dentist. She stopped. What? My dentist, Tad said. She looks at things the same way, like she's counting them. The Duchess stared at him. I don't like my dentist, Tad said. She started moving again. Tad moved with her, not blocking her, not pursuing her, just present in that particular way that small children have of occupying space in a way that is difficult to navigate around. My tooth has been loose for six months, he said. I think it decided to stay. Move, she said. I'm moving toward the hallway, Tad said reasonably. She was moving toward the hallway too, which meant he was technically correct. Do you know crows can recognize faces? he said. That crow outside, do you think he knows what's happening in here? From upstairs Tad Molly's voice, careful. Stay where I can see you. Tad looked at the Duchess. I have to go where Molly can see me. He started toward the door, then he stopped. He turned and looked at the chandelier. There was a rope hanging from it, a simple rope, looped and knotted at the bottom, hanging at about a child's shoulder height. Tad looked at the rope. Duane said don't pull that, he said. Good, the Duchess said. He said it twice. Tad looked at it. He really specifically said not to. The Duchess saw the net folded in the ceiling above the chandelier. She saw the trigger mechanism. She understood exactly what the rope did. She started across the room toward Tad to physically move him away from it. Tad pulled the rope. The net dropped. The Duchess hit the floor under twenty two pounds of rope net, arms at her sides, legs tangled, completely contained. She did not immediately move because there was no point. Tad looked down at her. He looked at the rope. He looked back down at her. I knew that rope was for something, he said. He collected his queso from the floor where he'd set it, went to the doorway, and called up. Molly, I'm here. You can see me. Molly. Thank you, Tad. Tad. The lady is in the net. A pause. Molly. What net? Tad. The one from the rope. A longer pause. Molly. Okay, stay there. Tad ate some quezo. From within the net on the floor, the Duchess stared at the ceiling. She had been defeated by a child who didn't know what a chandelier trigger was. She lay very still for a moment. Then she said to no one in particular, that was the rope. Tad nodded. It really was. Chapter twelve. Vic in the Basement The basement window took Vic thirty seconds with the glass cutter. Clean lines. One piece out. He set the glass on the outside sill, reached through, turned the latch, pushed the window in. He dropped inside quietly, landed soft on both feet, and went still. The basement was dark. He had a pen light. He clicked it on. A thin beam, just enough. The floor. He looked at the floor. It was covered in upside down bottle caps, hundreds of them, a full surface treatment, edge to edge, slightly overlapping. The ridged edge of a bottle cap against the sole of a rubber boot didn't hurt, but it crinkled. Significantly. Every step he took was going to crinkle. He moved forward. Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle. He understood. It was an audio alarm, not a trap that stopped him. A trap that announced him. Every step told the upstairs exactly where he was. He moved anyway. He wasn't here to be silent, he was here to finish it. He found the first basement trap, trackery tum. A tripwire at ankle height connected to an indoor confetti cannon, indoor grade, smaller. He saw the wire by pen light, stepped over it. He found the second. A motion activated foam dispenser mounted to the ceiling beam, the kind that triggered on heat signature within twelve inches. He covered the sensor with his gloved hand and held it until the LED went dark. He found the third, a floor mat, slightly too new looking for a basement floor, pressure plate under it. He stepped on it. Nothing happened. He frowned. He stepped on it again, still nothing. He moved on. Duane upstairs watching the sensor panel. The Zone D arming indicator had gone solid red thirty seconds ago. He's in the basement, Duane said. He found traps one and two. He missed three. Pierce. What does three do? Duane. Tells me he's in the building with certainty. Zone D is fully armed. He looked up. He's coming up the stairs in about 90 seconds. What do we do? We let him come, Duane said. Vic reached the stairs. Stairs, he went up them slowly, wait on the outside edges where stairs creaked less. He was patient, he had been patient for two years. He opened the basement door. The main hallway was quiet. Different from upstairs, no music from up there, no voices, just the dark hallway and the house's nighttime sounds. He moved into the hallway, he moved toward the kitchen, he moved through the door. He saw the stuffed animals. Emma had been working for forty minutes. She had twelve stuffed animals, four unicorns, three horses, a bunny, an elephant, two bears, and a giraffe. She had duct tape, two rolls. She had Molly's craft string, three spools. She had dental floss she'd found in the bathroom, which she was using as tripstring because it was thin and almost invisible. She had built what she privately called the Fortress of Gerald, which was a set of concentric defensive rings around Gerald's jar in the kitchen corner, each ring composed of stuffed animals connected by dental floss tripstrings at two heights, ankle and knee, so that you couldn't step over the low string without hitting the high one. She was behind the refrigerator. She watched Vic come in through the kitchen doorway. He saw the stuffed animals and paused. He probably thought it was a child's mess, kids' stuff on the kitchen floor. He moved forward, looking for a path around it. His left boot caught the first dental floss string. The first ring collapsed inward. Three unicorns toppling in sequence, which Duane would later note was actually a clever kinetic chain design for a five year old. He kept moving. His right boot caught the second string, the second ring collapsed. The elephant and both bears went over. He stepped forward, annoyed now, not watching his feet. His boot landed on the stuffed unicorn in the center ring. The unicorn sitting on the section of floor Duane had treated with a thin wax and dish soap mixture along the baseboard, slid. Rubber boots were excellent for rough surfaces. They were not excellent for wax linoleum. Victor Malone went down. He went down hard, knee, hip, shoulder, and as he went down the remaining animals collapsed on him. Twelve stuffed animals in a pile, the elephant on his chest, a unicorn perfectly on his face. He lay under twelve stuffed animals in a kitchen, covered in confetti and feathers from outside. He'd walked through the backyard to get to the basement, and now waited with an elephant and four unicorns. Emma stepped out from behind the refrigerator. She was holding Gerald's jar. That's what you get for scaring Gerald, she said. She had been holding that in for forty minutes. Vic looked up from under the stuffed animals. Emma held Gerald up. He was scared. You scared him. You don't scare Gerald. Vic started to rise. Pierce came around the door frame, took in the scene in one second. Vic, the animals, Emma, Gerald, and said, Emma, take Gerald to Henry, right now. Emma looked at Vic. She looked at Gerald. She straightened up. Gerald knows what you did, she said to Vic. Then she walked out of the kitchen with her chin up. The kitchen was very quiet, just Pierce and Victor Malone, who was getting to his feet. Pierce's hand was on the Zone D primary button behind him, mounted to the counter three days ago, labeled in Duane's handwriting Do not press unless Vic is in the kitchen. Victor Malone was in the kitchen. Pierce pressed it. Duane's voice came through the radio. Zone D is active, fifteen seconds. Everyone clear. Chapter thirteen Zone D fifteen seconds. Pierce backed out of the kitchen and into the hallway. Clear, Pierce said into the radio. Clear, Jane responded from upstairs. Clear, Henry said, from somewhere that sounded like under a table. Clear, Bear said, and then wait. And then clear, I'm clear. Lois said nothing, which from Lois meant she was already somewhere unreachable. Ten seconds. Duane was standing at the top of the stairs with his tablet, watching the sensor grid, his face doing the thing it did when everything was about to be what he had planned for it to be. Pierce had seen that face before. It was focused and still and a little bit terrifying. Duane, Pierce said. Nine, Duane said. What is Zone D? Eight. Duane. Seven. Zone D is every remaining trap in the house firing in sequence on a chain trigger, beginning in the hallway and moving forward. I designed it so that a single intruder in motion gets caught in every stage. If they stop, the next stage catches them. If they move forward, the next stage catches them. If they move backward, the first stage resets and fires again. It was inspired, Duane said, by a paper I read on hydraulic trap sequencing in wildlife management. You read a paper five. On wildlife management. Four. For this? Three, Duane said. Two. One. The marble drop went first. A ceiling panel in the main hallway opened. A hatch Duane had mounted six months ago, accessed from the attic crawl space, loaded with four hundred and sixty marbles. They dropped in a single sheet, filling the hallway floor from wall to wall, three inches deep, edge to edge. Victor Malone stepped out of the kitchen into three inches of rolling marbles. His rubber boots found no traction. He went down again. The dish soap sprinkler activated cock skew up a system above the marbles connected to the ceiling, releasing a combination of dish soap and water that turned the three inch marble layer into a frictionless, colorful, rolling surface of pure chaos. He tried to stand. He could not stand. He crawled. Crawling was also extremely difficult. Trap three. The second bowling ball pendulum, east end, triggered by his motion, swinging from the far end of the hallway. He ducked, barely. Trap four, the indoor paint bomb above the living room doorway and Adolph Faincy and Dursis. A balloon, yellow paint triggered when his weight crossed the plate in the hallway slash living room threshold. It dropped and burst. He was now confetti UV blue paint from outside and yellow paint from inside, which made a green that was going to be impossible to explain. He was moving, he was still moving. He was a large, very experienced man and he was not going to stop. Trap five. The hot sauce sprinkler, second unit living room doorway. He tried to shield his face, some of it hit anyway. Trap six, the feather cannon, second unit mounted to the wall near the fireplace aimed at the room center. He walked directly into it. He was already covered from outside. He now had a second layer. He kept moving. Trap seven, the indoor flower launcher, front closet rigged to a door sensor. He passed the closet, the door cracked open. The flower hit at chest level. He was still moving. Trap eight, the foam blaster living room east wall, a modified tank that Duane had originally designed for pool foam parties and repurposed for this. It activated when Vic crossed the halfway point of the living room and released a focused stream of foam that hit him in the back as he moved. He stumbled, he caught himself on the couch. Trap nine, the giant rubber band, surgical tubing, eight feet wide, stretched across the dining room entrance at chest height. Anchored to both sides of the door frame. He walked into it, stretching it back, and it shot him backward. He bounced off the wall. He was still there, he was still standing. He had marbles in his boots and paint on his face and feathers on everything, and he was standing in the middle of the living room and he was still moving forward and his eyes were still flat and cold and focused. He's not stopping, Pierce said into the radio. I know, Duane said very quietly. Duane. Traps ten and eleven are sequencing now, Duane said. But Pierce, I need you to listen. What? Trap twelve is the confetti cannon final discharge. It's on the front porch and it fires inward when the front door sensor activates. It's designed to close the sequence. But he hesitated, which was something Duane almost never did. I only have one trap left after that, and then it's just you. Pierce was quiet. I know, Pierce said. Trap ten activated, the ceiling confetti cannon three, final unit discharging over the living room entry. Trap eleven, the zip line. The zip line had been installed along the upper edge of the living room, anchored to the chimney at one end and the staircase new post at the other, for what Duane had described in his notes as rapid personnel transport in emergency scenarios. It had a handle. The handle was in the corner. Bear had been running from the window toward the stairs when he saw the handle. Is that Bear said. He grabbed it. Bear, Pierce said. I'm just holding it, Bear said. The trigger fired. The zip line launched. Bear went across the living room at full speed, four feet off the ground, directly over Victor Malone, yelling Rory McElroy would not do this. As he went, crashing into the couch cushions in an explosion of foam and feathers at the far end. He lay there for a moment. Nine point four, Bear said from the cushions. For the experience, I'm giving it a nine point four. Vic looked at the kid on the zipline. He looked at the stairs. He was covered in ten different substances. He had been hit by twelve traps in three minutes. He was still standing. He started toward the stairs. Then Maddie turned the music on. Chapter fourteen Maddie Performs Nobody had told Maddie what was happening. This was partially intentional. Molly had done an excellent job of keeping the younger kids in the safe room and occupied with snacks and quiet activities, and Maddie had been cooperative for most of the evening in the way Maddie was cooperative, which meant she did what she was told approximately sixty percent of the time, and spent the other forty percent deciding what she was going to do instead. She had been in the safe room. She had then been in the hallway outside the safe room. She had then been at the top of the stairs. She had looked down the stairs at the living room. She had heard things, banging things, trap things, she had heard Henry yelling and bear yelling and Pierce saying Duane in a way that meant something was happening. She had decided something was happening. She was three years old and she was not going to miss it. She came down the stairs, slowly, holding the railing because she had been taught to hold the railing and some instruction stuck, and she entered the living room. She looked at the living room. The living room had paint on it, yellow and blue, which Maddie found pretty. There were marbles everywhere, which Maddie found interesting. There was foam, which Maddie found soft. There were feathers, which Maddie found delightful. There was a man she didn't know standing in the middle of it covered in all of these things simultaneously. She had not been briefed on the man, she looked at him. He looked at her. Maddie did not change her expression. She was wearing her tiara, she had her plastic purse, she was three years old, and she had the energy of someone who had been storing up performance. For approximately six hours and was not waiting any longer. She went to the Bluetooth speaker. She had connected Bluetooth speakers twice before. She had learned from Henry, who had learned she was watching him, and had explained it to her very carefully on the grounds that she was going to figure it out anyway and he'd rather she do it correctly. She connected it in eleven seconds. She selected the song, it was a children's dance track, the specific one, the one with the synth opening and the beat that came in at four that could absolutely be felt in the chest. She had used it for every performance for the past four months. It was, as far as Maddie was concerned, the best song ever recorded. She turned it to full volume. Full volume on that speaker in that living room was approximately what would register on a noise complaint. She walked to the center of the living room, stepping over marbles with the focused attention of someone who knows where her feet are going, and she began to perform. She was spinning, she was doing the big arms, she was narrating, and now Maddie does the big spin. She did the big spin, and the crowd goes wild. She pointed at Victor Malone. You are the crowd, she informed him. Victor Malone stood in the middle of the living room covered in ten substances, twelve traps deep, and was looking at a three year old and a tiara who had just designated him the audience of her performance. He stood very still. Maddie went into the second verse. She had choreography for the second verse. Pierce came down the stairs fast and moved between Maddie and Vic. Maddie behind Pierce. Pierce, Maddie is performing. Pierce, I know, you're doing great. He looked at Vic. Vic looked at him. Outside, the sound of tires on asphalt. Then the sound Pierce had been listening for for forty minutes. Sirens. Duane had set the automatic alert two months ago when he finished Zone C, a simple timer. If zone A sensors activated and the reset code wasn't entered within forty five minutes, a message went to the Bay Village non emergency police line reading Possible Intruder, Lake Roadhouse, children present. It had been forty seven minutes, red and blue lights swept through the front window. Maddie saw the lights and immediately increased the intensity of her performance. Lights meant an audience. This was bigger than she'd planned. Vic looked at the window. He looked at Pierce. He looked at the stairs. He made a decision. He moved. Not forward, not toward Pierce. Backward, toward the kitchen, toward the basement door. Pierce watched him go. He didn't try to stop him, he was twelve. Vic was not. He just watched. Maddie did not watch. She was at full performance capacity and she was not breaking for anything. Henry appeared beside Pierce, having come down the stairs in a sprint. He was holding Fredberry, who was awake again and looking at the lights with enormous interest. Did he? Henry started. He's going for the basement, Pierce said. Henry, should we? He's getting out, Pierce said. Duane, he's going through the basement window. Duane's voice. I know, I'm watching the sensor. A pause. Let him. The police are outside. It's over. Pierce was already at the upstairs window. He got there in time to see the figure come out the basement window. Vic moved fast, across the side yard, staying low through the gap in the far fence. He crossed the street. He stopped on the far curb. He looked up. Pierce was in the window. Vic and Pierce looked at each other from across Lake Road. The police cars were pulling into the driveway. Their lights swept the front of the house. Vic looked at Pierce for a long moment. He didn't smile. He didn't do anything. Then he turned and walked into the dark. Pierce watched until he couldn't see him anymore. Behind him, at full volume, Maddie was performing the finale. Chapter fifteen The Catch The first officer found Fingers in the garage. She opened the side door the one fingers had come through two hours earlier. And pointed her flashlight inside and found a man in a yellow beanie sitting in a lawn chair, eating a granola bar, looking at a pegboard of tools. He looked up at her. Hi, he said. She looked at him. She looked at the lawn chair. She looked at the two empty granola bar wrappers on the floor. Sir, she said. I know, Finger said. He set down the granola bar and held out his wrists. She looked at the wrists. She looked at him. She put her radio away. Have you been in here the whole time? Mostly, Finger said. I went around back for a while earlier. There were some traps. Then I came in here and it was comfortable. She looked at the lawn chair. Comfortable. It's a good lawn chair, Fingers said. Quality. The kid has quality stuff. She handcuffed him. He stood up without complaint. He was, as criminals went, extremely cooperative. The boy who lives here, Fingers said as she was leading him out. The one with all the traps. Can you tell him that his workbench is very well organized? Like tell him for me. I appreciated it. I'm not doing that, she said. Fair enough, Fingers said. He looked back at the garage once more as they came outside. Nice place, he said, with what sounded like genuine feeling. The Duchess was extracted from the net by two officers who spent approximately four minutes trying to understand the net before finding the release clasp Duane had built into the frame. She did not resist. She identified herself as a professional and said she wanted to speak to an attorney. She said nothing else. She was taken to the car. One of the officers stood looking at the net in the living room for a long moment. This was a chandelier, he said. It still is, Bear said from the staircase. The officer looked at him. The net deploys and then retracts, Bear said. When it retracts, the chandelier is fine. It's on a counterweight, it took Duane three weeks to get the mechanism right. The officer looked at the net. He looked at the chandelier, he looked at Bear. How old are you? Eleven? He looked at the net again. Huh? He said. The officer in charge found Pierce on the front porch. He was an older man, patient looking with a notebook. He looked at the front of the house, the confetti on the porch, the paint stained door frame, the general condition of everything, and wrote something down. How many children are in this house? He said. Eleven, Pierce said. And the adults? Pierce thought of the best way to say this. They went to dinner. He wrote it down. Dinner. They'll be back soon. He looked at the house, he looked at Pierce. He wrote some more things down. The third individual, he said, male approximately forty. We found two of the three. The third made it out through the basement window, Pierce said. He went north on Lake Road, cut through the Henderson's yard, and was on foot when I lost visual. Dark clothes. He had maybe three minutes before your car showed up. The officer looked at him. How old are you? Twelve, Pierce said. He wrote something down. He got away, the officer said. Yes, Pierce said. Duane came and stood next to Pierce on the porch. The officer had moved on to talk to the other kids. From inside the house came the continued sound of Maddie's music, which she had refused to turn off on the grounds that the police cars had lights and the lights meant audience. Pierce and Duane stood in the night air for a moment. Fingers and the Duchess are caught, Pierce said. Yes, Duane said. Vic got away. Yes, he'll be back. Duane was quiet for a moment. Eventually, he said, What do we do about it? Duane looked at his notebook, his good notebook, the one with the zone diagrams and the gauntlet sequence and the year of calculations. It had been on the kitchen counter during the zone D sequence. He reached for it. It was not there. He checked his jacket pocket, not there. He checked the table inside. Not there. He went to the kitchen. The counter was empty. The notebook was gone. He stood very still in the kitchen. Henry came in. Duane, what? My notebook, Duane said. Henry looked at the counter. Where Vick was in the kitchen, Duane said. Before Zone D. He was on the floor and then Pierce came in and then Zone D started. He was in this kitchen for at least ninety seconds. Henry was very quiet. He took it, Henry said. Duane said nothing for a moment. He took it, Duane said. He turned and walked back to the front porch where Pierce was standing. Pierce looked at him. He knew from Duane's face. The notebook, Pierce said. He has the notebook, Duane said. He has the trap maps, the zone diagrams, the sequence codes, everything I use tonight. He paused, and Zone E. Pierce looked at him. What's Zone E? Duane looked down the dark street. Something I was building, he said. Something I hadn't told anyone about yet. He was quiet for a moment. Something that would have been ready in three months. Pierce followed his gaze down Lake Road. The street was quiet, the police car's lights were winding down. From inside, Maddie's concert was just reaching its finale. Then we have to get it back, Pierce said. Duane picked up his pen. He opened a brand new notebook to the first blank page. I know, he said, and we will. He wrote one thing at the top of the first page. Zone E revised. He started writing. Chapter sixteen The Parents Come Home The parents came home at eleven forty seven. All of them together, because they had carpooled to dinner and were coming back from the same direction, which meant they turned onto Lake Road simultaneously and saw the police car simultaneously and accelerated simultaneously. By the time they reached the house, all six families worth of parents were out of the cars. They stood on the front walk and looked at the house. The porch was covered in confetti. There were feathers on the front steps, there was a paint streak on the doorframe. Every light in the house was on. From inside came music that was genuinely loud for 1145 on a Saturday night. A police officer came around the corner of the house. She looked at the collection of parents. Are you the adults? she said. Yes, she said. Several of them said All of the children are safe, she said immediately. All eleven of them, they are all fine. There were two intruders apprehended on the property and one who escaped. Your children are she paused choosing a word. Remarkable. The parents looked at each other. They went inside. The living room had paint on the ceiling, yellow and blue in distinct impact patterns that would require professional remediation. There were marbles everywhere. They had rolled to every corner, under every piece of furniture, into every baseboard gap. There was foam on the east wall from the foam blaster, white and textured, which had dried in a way that was going to be difficult to explain. There was hot sauce on the walls of the hallway, which had dried to a dark red. Annet was hanging from the chandelier, half retracted. A zip line, as an actual zip line was rigged across the room. The parents stood in the living room doorway. Nobody spoke. Bear was in the corner, updating his notebook. He had been doing this continuously since the police arrived. He looked up. Hi, the house is functionally undamaged. The paint will require repainting. The marbles can be swept. The foam is temporary. The hot sauce is going to need something acidic. He looked back at his notes. The zipline was not in the original plan but rated nine point four in operational testing. Bear's father looked at the zip line. He opened his mouth, he closed it. He sat down on the couch which still had foam on it. He sat in the foam, he did not get up. Maddie's music was still playing. Maddie was still performing. She had been going for approximately forty minutes now and showed no signs of slowing. When her mother came in, Maddie pointed at her and said, You are now also the crowd. Her mother stood in the living room with paint on the ceiling above her and marbles underfoot and a police officer behind her and said, Maddie, we're going to turn the music down. Maddie is almost at the finale, Maddie said. Her mother looked at the police officer. The police officer shrugged. They waited for the finale. It was worth waiting for. Fredberry was in the kitchen, having been returned to the floor by Henry at some point in the chaos and having not left since. He had found a piece of foam the size of his own head and was carrying it around the kitchen with enormous satisfaction, going slowly and deliberately from one end to the other, turning and going back. Duane's mother found him there. She picked him up. He was still holding the foam, she looked at the foam. She looked at the kitchen. The stuffed animals in the corner, the empty hot sauce sprinkler overhead, the general evidence of significant events. Sammy, she said, Fredberry, Baw. What happened in here? Fredberry held up the foam. She took this as the answer. Henry found a fresh beef stick in the pantry. Eta Any he had put it there at the beginning of the night as an emergency reserve which showed real strategic thinking. And ate it on the back porch while the adult chaos happened inside. Emma came and sat next to him. Gerald was in her lap jar and all. He's okay? Henry asked. Emma checked Gerald carefully. He's okay. He was scared earlier, but he's okay now. Good. Henry offered her a bite of the beef stick. Emma looked at it. That's not really my thing, she said. Fair, Henry said. They sat on the back porch in the late summer air and listened to the controlled chaos inside. You did good with the trap, Henry said. Emma shrugged. It wasn't fancy. It worked, Henry said. Fancy doesn't matter if it works. Emma considered this. Duane's was fancy, and it worked. Duane is a special case, Henry said. Emma leaned back. Gerald is going to turn into a butterfly, she said. Yeah? Caterpillars do. He'll be a butterfly eventually. Henry thought about that. That's pretty good. You go to sleep one thing and wake up something completely different. He won't actually sleep the whole time, Emma said with the authority of someone who had read about this. It's more complicated than that. Most things are, Henry said. They sat there a while longer. Inside, Tad had found another police officer and was explaining the crow situation to them at length. The officer, to their credit, appeared to be genuinely listening. Jane was giving the officer in charge an exact timeline of the evening. Organized by event with timestamps, he was writing it all down. At one point he stopped writing to just look at her for a moment, and then he wrote Cooperating Witness, extremely organized. Molly had heated up the remaining queso and was offering it to the police officers. Two of them had accepted. One of them said it was the best queso they'd ever had. Molly said thank you in a way that was warm without being braggy, which was exactly how Molly said everything. Lois had not been located for the past twenty minutes. Pierce suspected she was in the attic. He decided not to confirm this. Evelyn was sitting with Fred Berry, who was falling asleep again, the foam piece tucked against him. Tad had moved from the crow conversation to asking an officer what it would take to become a detective. The officer said it took dedication and study. Tad said, What if you were already good at noticing things? The officer looked at him and said, Then you'd have a head start. Tad appeared to find this deeply satisfying. Pearce sat on the front porch steps and watched the last of the police activity wrap up. It was past midnight. The neighborhood was quiet except for the lights and the low voices. Bear came and sat beside him. Final summary, Bear said looking at his notebook. Trap activation count thirty one. Successful activations twenty eight. Three activations were partial due to evasion. Intruders captured two. Intruders escaped one. Eleven children present, zero injuries, zero medical attention required, he looked up. And one caterpillar. Gerald, Pierce said. Gerald, Bear confirmed. He closed the notebook. By the numbers, that's a win. By the numbers, Pierce agreed. They looked at the street. But he got away, Bear said. He got away, Pierce said. Bear nodded, he put the notebook away. So we'll be ready next time. Yeah, Pierce said. We will. Chapter seventeen What Duane Knows Duane sat in the corner of the living room with his new notebook and a pen, and he was already working. The parents were managing the logistics of eleven children and a house full of evidence and two police reports. Voices moved around him. Someone was talking about the marbles and someone else was talking about the paint, and a police officer was on the radio updating dispatch. Tad had fallen asleep on the floor, one arm over his face looking peaceful. Fredberry was asleep somewhere else. Maddie had finally finished performing and had also fallen asleep, sitting up in her tiara against the wall like a small queen between shows. Duane wrote, He was not writing a reconstruction of what had happened tonight. He was not writing an incident report or an after action summary. He was writing what came next. Zone E had been an early concept, something he'd been developing for eight months, still theoretical, still in the design phase. Three of its components were in the notebook Vic had taken. The other four were in his head, where Vic couldn't reach them. More importantly, Vic now had the plans, which meant Vic was going to study the plans, which meant that next time, Vic was going to come prepared in a different way than he'd come tonight. But Duane had designed the system. He knew every component, every sequence, every trigger mechanism. He had spent two years in this. The notebook was just paper. The system was in him. He wrote a new heading at the top of a clean page, things Vic learned from the notebook. He drew a line down the center, on the left, what he knows. On the right, what he doesn't. He filled in both sides. The right side was longer. He wrote for twenty minutes without stopping. Pierce came and sat on the floor beside him. Duane kept writing. Pierce didn't interrupt, he just sat there in the way he'd learned to sit around Duane, present but not demanding in the space that was available. After a few minutes, Duane said without looking up, he knows the zone C sequence and the zone D trigger points. Okay, Pierce said. He doesn't know zone E. He knows it exists because I labeled a section in the notebook, but I hadn't drawn the diagrams yet. The section was blank. So he knows there's something called zone E. And that it wasn't finished. Duane finally looked up. He's going to come back expecting a different system than what's here. He's going to come back having prepared against what he read. He paused. I'm going to build what he prepared against. I'm going to build the zone E he thinks exists, and then I'm going to build the real zone E somewhere he's not expecting. Pierce was quiet for a moment. You're going to set a trap for someone who has your trap plans, Pierce said. Yes, Duane said. By using the plans he has against him. The plans are a document, Duane said. The thinking is mine. Pierce considered this. That's almost philosophical, Pierce said. Duane wrote something in his notebook. I'm gonna need more components. Some of them I don't have. I'll need help sourcing them. What kind of help? Duane wrote a short list and tore it out and gave it to Pierce. Pierce looked at the list. Duane, he said. Yes, Duane said. This says sixty pounds of sand. That's for zone E component four, Duane said. Don't worry about it yet. Why would I not worry about sixty pounds of later? Duane said. Pierce looked at the list. He looked at Duane. He folded the list and put it in his pocket. Okay, Pierce said. Duane went back to writing. From the kitchen, Molly brought out the last of the queso. Jane accepted a chip. Lois reappeared from wherever she had been, accepted two chips, and disappeared again. Bear looked at his notebook one more time and added a final line. Zone D legendary. He closed the notebook. It was the highest rating he'd ever given anything. He thought it was probably correct. Henry came in from the back porch and sat down next to Pierce. He had the last beef stick of the night. He looked around the room, the paint on the ceiling, the last few marbles glinting in the corner, the foam that had dried on the wall, Duane writing in the corner, Maddie asleep in her tiara, Fredberry somewhere upstairs with his foam piece, Tad on the floor, Gerald on the table. All of them here, all of them fine. You know, Henry said, Most people's Saturday nights are just nothing. They just watch stuff and go to sleep. Yeah, Pierce said. I feel bad for those people, Henry said. Pierce looked at him. Henry was completely serious. Pierce laughed. Henry took a bite of the beef stick. Next time we'll be bigger, Henry said. Yeah, Pierce said. We'll be ready, though. Yeah, Pierce said. Duane will make sure. They both looked at Duane, writing in his notebook in the corner, completely absorbed, already three moves ahead. Yeah, Pierce said. He will. Chapter eighteen. Goodbyes and Marbles Sunday morning arrived with a lot of daylight and the smell of hot sauce. The families had stayed over. It had been too late and there had been too much to sort out to drive home, so the house had twenty two people in it, which was more than it had been designed for, but which in practice was not the worst way to spend a Sunday. Tad woke up first. He walked to the kitchen, found Fredberry already awake in his high chair, and sat down across from him. Last night was interesting, Tad told him. Fredberry looked at him. I pulled a rope, Tad said. Fredberry offered him a cheerio. I know, Tad said. He took the Cheerio. I still think it was the right call. Breakfast was complicated by the marble situation, which had distributed itself to every corner and required significant effort to navigate without slipping. Pierce's father got up, stepped on a marble, caught himself on the counter, and stood very still for a moment before turning around and going back to bed. Duane's mother was already up and making coffee. With the focused efficiency of a woman who had eleven children in the house and had decided not to be emotionally undone by any of it. Jane made eggs. She made a lot of eggs. She was fourteen and she was good at eggs and she could see that someone needed to make eggs, and she did not wait to be asked. Everyone ate eggs and acknowledged in various ways that the eggs were excellent. Molly found the remaining chip supply and set it out. The queso was gone, but there were chips. Tad ate chips and looked out the window at the backyard where several traps were still technically active. If a bird came in the backyard right now, he said, what would happen? Duane, from across the table, the feather cannon would fire. Tad considered this. Would that be good or bad for the bird? The bird would be fine, Duane said. It would be confused. Tad nodded. Confused is survivable, he said. Duane looked at him. He wrote that in his notebook. After breakfast, the family started gathering their things. It took a while because there was the marble issue and the foam issue, and several items of children's clothing had migrated to unusual locations overnight, and also because Fredberry still had his foam piece and was not willing to set it down, which made dressing him significantly more complex than usual. Emma went to the kitchen to check on Gerald. Gerald was fine. He was in his jar by the window, doing whatever caterpillars do in jars on Sunday mornings. She picked the jar up and held it in both hands. You did good, she told him. She put him carefully in her bag surrounded by soft things. On the way out the front door, she stopped next to Duane. Duane, she said. He looked at her. Gerald was brave, she said. Duane looked at her. Something in his expression softened. Yes, he said. He was. Emma nodded and went out the door. Bear left with a handshake for Pierce and a nod for Duane that carried a lot of weight. Tad, leaving, stopped at the door and turned back. He looked at the house one more time. I'm going to think about that rope for a long time, he said to no one in particular. Then he left. Molly, on the way out, thank you for having us. She said it to Pierce. She said it like she meant it fully, which was how Molly said everything. Jane, on the way to the car, paused beside Pierce. Next time, she said, I want to be on the trap team. Pierce looked at her. I'll talk to Duane, he said. She nodded and got in the car. Lois left by doing a standing back tuck off the front porch step. This was simply how she left. No one commented on it anymore. Evelyn, last of Duane's family to leave, found Pierce by the door. Thank you for keeping Fredberry mostly safe, she said. Mostly, Pierce said. He ended up in sector four, Evelyn said. I know. And the kitchen. That was yes. And I think briefly in the garage. I'm not going to confirm or deny that, Pierce said. Evelyn smiled. It was quiet and genuine. He had fun, she said. Pierce looked at her. I think we all did, he said. She nodded and went to find Fred Berry, who had walked himself to the car already and was standing next to it looking ready to leave, the foam piece still in his hands. The house got quiet. Henry and Pierce stood in the front doorway. The porch was still covered in confetti. The front steps still had feathers on them. From inside came the smell of eggs and hot sauce, and a faint trace of paint. We should probably clean this up, Henry said. Yeah, Pierce said. Neither of them moved. In a minute, Henry said. In a minute, Pierce agreed. The late summer morning was warm and the street was quiet, and the neighborhood was waking up in the ordinary way that neighborhoods wake up, slow and golden and unaware of what had happened on this specific block the night before. Henry ate his first beef stick of the day. It was ten fifteen in the morning. He had no regrets. Chapter nineteen The Notebook Pierce found Duane in the garage late Sunday afternoon. The adults had taken the afternoon to assess the damage to the house, which was, as Bear had calculated, cosmetically significant but structurally fine. The marbles had been swept, the foam was coming off the wall in sheets, the paint was going to need professional attention. The zip line had been removed with some difficulty and stored in the basement because Duane asked them to keep it and provided a structural rationale that nobody fully followed but which seemed sound. The traps were being disassembled slowly, room by room. Duane supervised the disassembly personally. Each component was cataloged, cleaned, and returned to its bin on the garage pegboard. He was working through zone B when Pierce came in. Pierce sat down on the same workbench stool Fingers had used last night and said nothing. Duane kept working. After a while, Pierce said, What was in zone E? The real one. Duane was quiet for a moment. He set down a spring mechanism and picked up a different one. Zone E wasn't like the other zones, he said. The other zones are reactive. Someone comes in, they trigger something, the trap fires. Zone E was different. Zone E was about reversing the situation. What do you mean? The other zones are defense, Duane said. Zone E was offense. Instead of waiting for them to come in and get caught, Zone E was about drawing them in to a specific location at a specific time, on our schedule, not theirs. Pierce was very still. You were building a trap that works from the outside, Pierce said. Not outside, Duane said. More like from above, like the whole system, the whole approach. He picked up another component. Zone E is a controlled environment where the intruder thinks they have the advantage and they don't, and they never did, and they figure that out too late. And Vic has the concept, Pierce said. He has the concept, Duane said. He has three of the components. He doesn't have the other four. He doesn't have the sequence logic, and he doesn't have the thing that makes it work. What's the thing that makes it work? Duane looked at him. He has to believe he's winning, Duane said. For Zone E to work, Vic has to think he's figured it out. He has to think the notebook gave him everything. He has to think that when he comes back, he's got the answers. He paused. So we let him think that. Pierce looked at his best friend's younger brother, who was eleven years old and methodically cataloging spring mechanisms at a workbench on a Sunday afternoon. You want him to come back, Pierce said. I want him to come back confident, Duane said. That's different. He looked at Pierce. Confidence is when you stop checking for things you think you already know about. Pierce was quiet for a long time. When will you be ready? Pierce said finally. Duane went back to his work. Three months, he said. For if I can't source the sand. I'll get the sand, Pierce said. Sixty pounds. I know. Duane nodded. He wrote something in his new notebook. Pierce stood up to go. Pierce, Duane said. He turned. Don't tell Henry about the sand yet. Why not? Because Henry will ask what it's for, and I don't want to explain Zone E component four until I've tested it, and if I explain it without having tested it, Henry will want to test it early, and early testing will compromise the calibration. Pierce considered this. He's going to find out, Pierce said. I know, Duane said. But later is better than now. Pierce walked to the garage door. He looked back at Duane, working at his bench, notebook open, pen moving, already deep inside the next thing. Duane. He's going to come back. I know. You're actually ready for that. Duane looked up from his notebook. Pierce, he said, I've been ready for that since the first time he came. Chapter twenty Lake Road Late Summer The evening came in warm and easy, the way late August evenings do when summer knows it's running out and is trying to make the most of what's left. Pierce sat on the back porch steps. The yard was cleared of traps now. The grass looked normal. The backpath looked like a backpath. There was no evidence of what had happened here last night except that Pierce knew, and knowing it made everything look slightly different. Like a book you've read that makes you see the place it was set in a different way. Henry came out and sat beside him. He had two beef sticks, one for each of them. Pierce took his. They sat there in the warm evening air, eating beef sticks, looking at the yard. Good summer, Henry said. Yeah, Pierce said. Eventful. That's one word for it. Henry looked at the fence line. You think about him. Some? Pierce said. Me too, Henry said. He ate some beef stick. But then I think about Duane in the garage, and it's fine. Yeah, Pierce said. They listened to the evening. Somewhere down the block, a lawnmower ran. A bike went by on the sidewalk out front. The creak, which you could hear faintly from the back porch if it was quiet enough, moved steadily over its rocks. Emma asked me today if Gerald was going to be okay, Henry said. Gerald's fine, Pierce said. That's what I told her. She said he was very brave. He was just brave. Just sitting there. Sometimes sitting there is brave, Henry said. Pierce considered that. That's actually a good point, he said. Henry shrugged. I have those sometimes. Emma came out through the back door, Gerald's jar in both hands. She sat down on the step below them. She held Gerald up to the evening light. He's going to be a butterfly, she said. Not yet, but eventually. What kind? Pierce asked. I don't know yet, Emma said. You have to wait and see. She set the jar on her knee. That's how it works. Pierce looked at the jar. Yeah, he said. I guess that's how it works. Maddie appeared in the doorway. She was in her pajamas. The tiara was still on. She looked at the three of them on the steps and apparently decided this was an acceptable audience. She sat down next to Emma. She looked at Gerald. Gerald is small, she observed. He is, Emma said. But he is brave, Maddie said. This was not a question. Yes, Emma said. Maddie nodded with great seriousness. Maddie is also brave. You are, Pierce said. Maddie knows, she said. She leaned against Emma, but Emma leaned back. The four of them sat on the back porch steps as the evening went gold, and below the yard, somewhere downstream, the creek ran on over its rocks in the unhurried way it always had. In the way it would keep doing long after this summer was over, and this night was a story they told much later. Inside, Duane was in the basement. He had cleared a space in the corner, a clean floor section precisely measured, four feet by six feet. He had set up a small work table. He had laid out the first components of Zone E. He opened his new notebook. He looked at the page marked Zone E. Revised. He had already filled three pages. He wrote a note at the top of the next one. He thinks he has the plans. He doesn't have the thinking. Those are not the same thing. He picked up the first component. He began to build. Victor Malone was in a motel room 60 miles from Bay Village. He was showered and changed. The paint and feathers and hot sauce were gone. There was a coffee on the table beside him. The notebook was in front of him. He had been reading it for an hour. He read slowly, carefully, the way he did everything. He read the Zone A diagrams, the Zone B entry protocols, the Zone C sequence. He read the Zone D trigger logic and the activation chain. All 28 traps laid out in precise order, each one annotated in the boy's tight handwriting. And at the back, a section labeled Zone E. Three pages of component lists. Then nothing. The rest of the section was blank. Vic looked at the blank pages for a long time. He thought about the 11-year-old who had built all of this, who had spent two years preparing for tonight, who had anticipated almost every move Vic and the Duchess had made, and had built responses to the moves he hadn't anticipated. He thought about the pressure plate in the basement, the thing that hadn't fired. He'd found it, tested it, moved on. He still didn't know what that one had been for. He looked at the blank pages. He was going to come back. He had said he would. Not allowed, not to anyone. But he knew it the way you know things that have become true without being decided. He was going to come back, and he was going to be ready, and he was going to have the plans. And the boy was going to have zone E. Vic closed the notebook. He picked up his phone. He dialed. When the other end picked up, he said, I have a new job. Different from the last one. It needs someone with different skills. A pause on the line. Tell me, the voice said. Vic looked at the notebook. It starts, he said, with a notebook. End of book 7. Coming in. Book eight. The Malone Files. He has the notebook, he knows the plans. But Duane already has a new one. The question is, what does Vic want the plans for? And what exactly is Zone E?