Chapter 5 - The Red Horizon
From the speaker of the drone, a voice cut through the sound of the wind and the glass crunching beneath our feet.
"Mr. Sterling," the voice said. It was thin, metallic, and completely calm. It was the same voice from the unknown text messages. "The live stream currently has four thousand viewers. The local police precinct is one of them. I suggest you drop the recorder."
Tyler froze, his hand hovering two inches above the silver device. He looked up at the drone, his mouth open, his eyes wide with a total, unadulterated terror that I had never seen in him before.
"Who the hell are you?" Mark yelled, letting go of my hair as he backed away toward the corner of the room.
"I’m the person who actually works the maintenance line for this building," the voice replied. "The one whose paint bucket your daughter used to save her own life. Turn around, Tyler."
The sound of sirens—not two, but at least four separate vehicles—began to echo from the street below, their high-pitched wails growing louder with every second.
Tyler didn't try to run. He sat down on the floor, surrounded by the shattered glass of his window and his trophies, his hands covering his face as the first tears of genuine, selfish defeat began to leak through his fingers.
Six months later, the driveway of our building was still stained with a faint, pink circle where the red paint had embedded itself into the porous concrete. The building manager had tried to power-wash it twice, but the color refused to fade completely.
I liked it. It reminded me of the day the truth stopped hiding.
Tyler and Mark were currently staying in a state correctional facility three hundred miles away, awaiting their trial for federal bank fraud, conspiracy, and attempted international child abduction. The text messages and the recording from the blue bucket had been enough to deny them bail after the initial hearing.
Lily and I didn't leave the apartment. We kept it.
The firm had been dissolved, but the court had ordered the liquidation of Tyler’s personal assets to restore her trust fund. Every cent he had stolen to buy his golf clubs and his country club memberships was now sitting in a secure account that he would never be able to touch.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, exactly six months since the day of the red stain. Lily was sitting at the kitchen table, her coppery hair tied back in two little pigtails, carefully coloring a picture of a large, green house with five chimneys.
"Mommy?" she asked without looking up from her crayon.
"Yes, baby?"
"Is the man with the drone coming back?"
I paused, my hand stopping over the coffee mug I was washing. We had never found out who the sender was. The police had tracked the drone to a local hobbyist whose signal had been hacked from a vehicle parked three blocks away during the incident. The "maintenance worker" identity had been a cover.
"I don't think so, sweetie," I said, walking over to press a kiss into the crown of her head. "He just wanted to make sure we were safe."
My phone vibrated on the counter.
I picked it up, my heart giving a small, familiar thud before I saw the screen.
It was an unknown number. But this time, it wasn't a text. It was an image.
It was a photo taken from a high angle, looking down at the front entrance of our building. Lily and I were visible in the corner of the frame, walking toward the park from earlier that morning, our hands linked between us.
Beneath the photo, a single line of text was printed:
May you like
The corners are holding, Maya. Keep her away from the balconies.
I looked out the window at the clear, blue horizon. The valley was quiet, the sun was bright, and for the first time in my life, I knew that someone was watching from the lath—and this time, they were on our side.
