By the time Jamal hit the attic door for the third time, I had already made my decision.

I pressed the command.

The house went white.

Every interior alarm I had installed during the renovation erupted at once, a shrieking wall of sound accompanied by pulsing emergency lights that turned the cameras into stuttering bursts of motion.

Downstairs, my mother clapped her hands over her ears.

Briana screamed. Derek spun toward the kitchen console, then toward the staircase, then back again, because men like him are most dangerous in the seconds after they realize control has left them.

I did not wait to admire it.

I shoved the old file boxes aside, opened the service hatch in the back corner of the attic, and lowered myself into the narrow maintenance shaft I had paid extra to preserve when we rebuilt the second floor.

Brick scraped my elbows. Dust filled my mouth.