By morning, the safe house smelled like boiled metal and burned dust.
The Hacker's people had been through before sunrise. Not in person, according to her, which Caleb did not believe and did not ask about. Small drones had crawled behind outlet plates. A signal sniffer the size of a lunchbox sat on the kitchen table with its lights blinking in ugly colors. Iris stood by the back door with coffee in one hand and a pistol in the other, which told Caleb exactly how the morning was going.
Owen slept down the hall. Caleb's mother had not gone anywhere alone. She was upstairs with him, changing a basin and pretending she had not noticed the second guard posted outside her window.
Caleb sat at the kitchen table while the Hacker rebuilt the dead channel on a clean comm.
[Hacker]: Before you ask, no camera in the broth room. No microphone either. He guessed, or he wanted us to think he guessed. Annoying distinction. I hate him professionally.
"Join the line," Iris said.
