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HARPER

The elevator panel glows at me, waiting.

“Twelve,” I say, and it chimes like I’ve said the magic word.

Denise handed me the key card this morning without looking up from her clipboard. “Two units, both on twelve. Building’s owned by one guy. Whole building.” She paused long enough that I stopped restocking my caddy and looked at her. “Also, don’t ask me what he does for a living. I asked. I got a look back that made me sorry I opened my mouth.”

And now, here I am.

The lobby has more marble than my entire apartment complex has drywall. A doorman in a stiff black uniform nods at me like I’m delivering a package instead of about to spend four hours on my knees. I nod back and don’t bother smiling, because my face is saving that for when I clock out.

I move through Unit 12B fast. There are throw pillows everywhere, the kind you have to fluff and angle just right or the owner notices, though this guy clearly never sits on any of the furniture because there’s not a single dent in the fabric. I wipe down the counters, run a cloth over windows I can see my own reflection in, and I’m done in under two hours, humming a song only I can hear because Denise’s no-earbuds rule is one I unfortunately follow.

However, Unit 12A hits different the second the door swings open. Cold air rolls out, and goosebumps climb my arms before I’ve even stepped inside.

“Somebody likes his AC,” I mutter, checking the card in my hand. Twelve A.

Yep. This is the one.

The place is dark wood, darker furniture, and books that look read rather than staged, spines cracked at odd pages as if someone actually sat with them.

I head to the kitchen first, because the kitchen always tells you who somebody really is. I open the fridge expecting nothing and find exactly that. A row of imported water bottles. One jar of caviar shoved in the door like an afterthought.

“Must be nice,” I tell the fridge, and shut it.

The living room takes longer. I spray the glass coffee table and wipe it down, and it comes back so clean I catch my own face staring up at me from the surface, unimpressed. There’s nothing on it.

Not a magazine, not a remote, nothing. I run my cloth along a shelf lined with framed photos that turn out to be all landscapes, no people, and something about that snags at me for half a second before I move on to dusting the bookshelf.

The hallway off the living room has four doors. The first one is cracked open, and I glance in without stopping: a desk, a chair, papers stacked in a way that looks arranged rather than left.

The second door doesn’t latch all the way. I nudge it with my hip while balancing my duster, and it swings open onto a wall of small screens built right into the paneling like it’s furniture.

I stop walking. What the hell?

Twelve different views blink back at me. The lobby. The parking garage. A stairwell. The elevator I rode up in twenty minutes ago, where I can see myself standing there in my claw clip, scrolling on my phone because I was bored.

My duster drops out of my hand and hits the floor.

I bend down, grab it, and back out of the room so fast I clip my shoulder on the doorframe.

“Ow. Okay. Cool,” I say to nobody, rubbing my shoulder. “Very normal amount of cameras for one guy to have in his own building. Sure.”

I dust the frame from the hallway, because I am, above all things, someone who finishes a job even while internally losing it a little.

The third door is worse. I push it open to find a closet, but the back wall is glass, and behind it are… guns.

There are several of them, lined up on a rack the way some people line up wine bottles, evenly spaced, like there’s a system to it. The cabinet door hangs open an inch.

My whole body locks up before my brain catches up to what I’m looking at.

My ears start ringing, faint and high, and for a second the room tilts, like the floor’s decided to stop being flat. I stop breathing without deciding to.

When I finally suck in air again, it comes in too fast, too loud, and I clamp a hand over my own mouth like that’ll undo the sound.

I don’t touch it. I can’t make myself get any closer, my legs already backing up on their own, and my hip catches the edge of a side table hard enough that I yelp. A lamp wobbles, and I lunge for it on instinct, catching it with both hands a second before it hits the floor, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs I can feel it in my throat.