Chapter 10: The Lockdown
For a long moment, Amber couldn’t move. The words played on a loop in her head, syncing with the hammer of her heart. The man was standing on Daddy’s outside. Looking at the door.
Sincere had seen the feed. Live. Which meant the system was no longer looped. The intruder had been back, tonight, bold as daylight, testing the perimeter again or… or doing something else. And her son, seeking his father, had wandered into the dark office and witnessed it.
All the air left the room. The playroom walls seemed to press in.
“Okay,” she breathed, forcing her voice into a soft, concrete calm. It was the voice she used when someone nicked a cuticle to the quick. Steady. Reassuring. In control. “Okay, bug. Thank you for telling me. That was very, very important.”
She stood, lifting him with her. He wrapped his legs around her waist, his arms locking around her neck, his face still buried. She carried him out of the playroom, past the dent in the drywall. Her steps were swift and silent. She went straight to Sidnee’s room. Her daughter was a small, curled lump under the blankets, one hand splayed next to her cheek. Amber leaned down, smoothing her hair. “Sidnee-girl. Time to get up. We’re having a special sleepover in Mommy’s room.”
Sidnee whimpered, her eyes fluttering open, confused by the darkness and the urgency in her mother’s whisper. “Why?”
“Because it’s more fun,” Amber said, her smile audible in her voice. She scooped her up, blanket and BunBun and all, settling her on her other hip. Sidnee’s head dropped onto her shoulder, all trusting weight.
Amber moved through the penthouse now not as its caretaker, but as a tactician. The expansive, minimalist spaces she loved felt like enemy territory—too many sightlines, too much glass. The floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, which usually filled her with pride, were now just vast, vulnerable planes. The city glittered, indifferent.
She hit a panel by the kitchen. The motorized blackout shades throughout the main living areas descended with a soft, collective sigh, cutting them off from the night.
Master bedroom. The sanctuary. She shouldered the door open, kicked aside a stray pair of Kash’s running shoes, and used her foot to close it behind her. The lock engaged with a solid, satisfying thunk.
She placed Sidnee in the center of the vast bed. “You are the captain of this fortress,” she told her, tucking the blanket around her. “Stay right here.” Sidnee nodded, wide-eyed, clutching BunBun to her chest.
Amber set Sincere down beside his sister. He was watching her now, his earlier storm replaced by a silent, hyper-observant tension. He knew. He’d seen the man. He understood the change in the air.
“I need you to be the lookout,” she told him. “Watch the door for me.”
He gave a sharp, military nod.
She turned to the heavy, low dresser of walnut and brushed steel that stood against the wall to the left of the door. It was Kash’s, from his first apartment. Solid. She braced her shoulder against it, dug her feet into the plush rug, and pushed. It was immensely heavy. The wood groaned in protest against the floor. She pushed again, muscles in her back and legs burning, a sharp sweat breaking out on her temples. It inched forward, shuddering, until it sat angled squarely in front of the bedroom door, an effective, if not impenetrable, barricade.
Only then did she let herself breathe.
She went to Kash’s side of the bed, knelt, and pressed her thumb to the discreet biometric scanner on the small safe bolted to the underside of the nightstand. It opened with a click. Inside, nestled in foam, lay two things: a stack of passports and emergency cash, and the compact, matte-black Sig Sauer P365.
Kash had taught her on a range outside the city. It’s a tool, Am. Like your shears. Respect it, know it, and you’ll never fear it. She’d been a good student. The gun was cool and dense in her hand. She ejected the magazine, checked the chamber—clear—slapped the magazine back in with a sharp click, and racked the slide, chambering a round. The sound was brutal and final in the quiet room.
Sidnee gasped. “Mommy?”
“It’s just a… a loud lock, baby,” Amber said, her voice smooth as poured honey. She engaged the manual safety. “For the special door.”
She pulled her phone from her pocket. Her thumb hovered over Kash’s name. His text glowed up at her. I will. Love you to the core. He was deep in his hunt. Telling him now would detonate his world. He’d charter a jet immediately, reckless, his focus shattered. He might make a mistake in Lisbon. Or he’d come home frantic, blind with a fear that could get him killed.
But the man was here.
Her children were here.
She opened the security app instead, pulling up the live feed grid. She stared at the terrace camera view. It showed empty chairs, the dormant fire pit, the cityscape beyond. Normal. Had Sincere seen a ghost? A trick of the light? No. He’d described it with a chilling specificity. Standing. Looking at the door.
She selected the camera’s history, her fingers clumsy. She rewound the feed, staring at the time stamp in the corner. She scrolled back to roughly the time she’d been on the phone with Delgado.
There. A blip. At 8:47 p.m., the feed froze for exactly four seconds. It wasn’t a loop. It was a skip. Like a single frame had been removed. The image before the skip and after was identical—empty terrace. But someone had accessed the feed and deleted a slice of time. A slice of time that contained a man.
This wasn't a B&E. This was a message. A demonstration. I can walk in your garden and erase myself. Your systems are my playground.
The phone vibrated in her hand, making her jump. A Charlotte number. Not Delgado’s. Her mouth went dry. She accepted the call, bringing the phone to her ear, her other hand tightening on the grip of the Sig.
“Amber King.” Her voice didn’t shake.
“Ms. King.” A different male voice, older, gravelly. “This is Sergeant Vance, CMPD. Officer Delgado’s supervisor. We’ve just received an automated alert from your building’s management. A breach on your terrace door was flagged ninety seconds ago.”
“What?” The word was a puff of air.
“The sensor on the moving glass panel registered a ‘fault’ and then went offline. It’s likely a systems glitch, but given the earlier tampering, we’re not assuming. A patrol unit is on scene, and building security is moving to your floor. They will knock and announce. Do not open your door for anyone who does not verbally identify as CMPD or your head of building security, Mr. Gelman. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She was looking at the barricaded door. The children were silent, watching her. Sincere’s face was pale.
“Are you and your children in a secure location?”
“We’re in the master bedroom. The door is locked. I’ve… barricaded it.”
A pause. “Good. Stay there. We’ll have someone at your door shortly.”
The call ended. Amber stared
The call ended. Amber stared at the black screen of her phone, the afterimage of the time—8:47—still burned behind her eyes. Four missing seconds. A fault in the door. The facts arranged themselves into a cold, logical spine down her back.
Sidnee began to cry, a soft, bewildered sound muffled by BunBun’s fur. The barricade, the gun, her mother’s frozen posture—it was too much strange grammar for the night.
“Shhh, captain,” Amber said, crossing back to the bed in two strides. She laid the Sig on the nightstand, within reach but out of sight, and climbed onto the mattress. She gathered both children into the circle of her arms, pulling the duvet over them like a bunker. They burrowed into her warmth, Sincere’s hand finding its way under her shirt again, not to nurse but just to rest against her heartbeat.
“Is the man coming in?” Sincere whispered, his breath hot on her skin.
“No,” Amber said, her voice absolute. “The police are outside. They’re going to make sure the man is gone for good.”
He nodded, his small body tense against hers. He believed her because he had to.
A heavy fist pounded on the penthouse’s main door. The sound was distant, muffled by layers of wall and the barricaded bedroom door, but it vibrated through the stillness. Sidnee jumped. Another series of knocks, authoritative and rhythmic.
Then a voice, amplified and distorted by the door’s intercom system, filtered down the hall. “Charlotte Mecklenburg Police! King, please respond!”
Amber didn’t move. She counted in her head, following the protocol Kash had drilled into her. Wait. Verify. Never assume the voice is friendly.
The intercom crackled again. “Ms. King, this is Sergeant Vance. I’m here with building security head, Arlo Gelman. Your system shows a fault on the terrace. We need visual confirmation you and your children are safe.”
She knew Gelman. A retired cop with a grandfatherly demeanor who always had a Werther’s Original for the twins. She extricated herself from the tangle of small limbs, ignoring their whimpers of protest. “Stay. Don’t move from this spot.”
She picked up her phone, pulled up the live feed for the interior hallway camera. The view showed the penthouse’s foyer and the front door. Two figures stood there. One was indeed Arlo Gelman, his familiar bald head gleaming under the foyer light, his hands clasped formally in front of him. Next to him stood a broad-shouldered man in a police windbreaker, his face angled toward the door’s peephole.
It looked right. It felt correct. But the skipped footage had also looked right.
She engaged the intercom from her phone. “Arlo. What did you give Sincere for his birthday last month?”
His voice came through, slightly surprised but clear. “A little robot kit, ma’am. The solar-powered one. He tried to take it apart before he even got the wrapping off.”
A real smile touched her lips. It was him. She disarmed the main door lock with a tap. The heavy bolt thudded open. On the screen, Gelman pushed the door wide, allowing Sergeant Vance to enter first, his hand resting lightly on his service weapon. Vance’s eyes immediately scanned the room, methodical and cold, noting the closed shades.
“We’re in the master bedroom!” Amber called out, her voice carrying down the hall. “The door is barricaded. I’m coming out.”
She looked back at the bed. Two pairs of huge, terrified eyes stared back. “You are both doing so, so good. Just a little longer.”
She moved the dresser back just enough to open the bedroom door a foot, then slipped out into the dark hallway. She didn’t bring the gun. Appearances mattered now. She found the two men in the living room, Vance shining a powerful flashlight across the sealed terrace doors.
“The fault sensor has reset,” Gelman said, his voice low and apologetic. “It’s showing nominal now. But the log is clear—at 9:03 p.m., it triggered for seven seconds.”
Sergeant Vance turned. He was older than his voice suggested, with a close-cropped gray beard and eyes that didn’t seem to blink. He took in Amber’s disheveled hair, her bare feet, the t-shirt stretched from tiny, grasping hands. “You barricaded the bedroom. Smart. Where are your children?”
“In the bed. They’re scared.”
“They should be.” He said it not unkindly, a simple statement of fact. “The patrol unit swept the building’s exterior and the common roof.No one. But your terrace…” He walked to the door, his flashlight beam pinpointing the handle. “This is a MagnumLock system. Top tier. To fault the sensor without breaking the seal requires a specific, dampening frequency emitter. Police-grade or higher.”
Amber hugged herself. “The camera feed from earlier tonight was edited. Four seconds deleted.”
Vance’s head swiveled toward her. “Show me.”
She led them to the office, bringing the security portal back up on the large screen. She pulled up the terrace camera log, found the skip at 8:47. Vance leaned close, his nose almost touching the screen. “Clean job,” he muttered. “Not a loop. A surgical excision. They logged into your system, isolated that clip, and snipped it.” He straightened, looking at her. “Your husband’s business. It’s in tech security.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s currently overseas.”
“Lisbon. For a conference.” The lie was automatic, a protective membrane.
Vance held her gaze for a beat too long. He knew there was more. “Ms. King, this level of ingress isn’t random. This is a demonstration of capability. They wanted you—or more likely, your husband—to know they can touch your home. The physical breach might have been aborted because the patrol car was in the area, or because you called us. But the message was delivered.”
A cold knot tightened in her stomach. “What do I do?”
“You have a security team? Beyond the building?”
“My husband’s company handles it.”
“Get them here tonight. In person. I’ll have a car stationed outside the building entrance for the next 48 hours, but they can’t guard your private elevator.” He handed her a card. “My direct line. Any flicker, you call. Not 911. Me.”
Gelman shifted his weight. “I can put a man in the lobby, dedicated to this elevator bank, round the clock.”
“Do that,” Vance said. He gave the terrace door one last, long look. “I’d advise you and the children not to sleep in this room tonight. Keep to the secured bedroom.”
After they left, the heavy lock re-engaging, the penthouse felt different. Violated. The shadows in the open living room had texture and intention now. Amber reset the alarm, her fingers clumsy on the screen.
She returned to the bedroom. Sincere and Sidnee were exactly where she’d left them, sitting upright in the center of the bed, clutching each other’s hands. They looked like survivors of a shipwreck on a life raft.
“The police friends made the man go away,” Amber announced, forcing a brightness into her voice that cracked at the edges. “They’re going to stand guard downstairs all night long.”
“I want Daddy,” Sidnee whispered, a fresh tear tracing a path through the glitter still on her cheek.
“I know, sweet girl. Soon.” Amber crawled back into bed, pulling them close. She reached over and turned off the lamp, plunging them into a darkness relieved only by the sliver of city light peeking around the blackout curtains.
They eventually fell asleep, a tangled pile of exhausted limbs. Amber did not sleep. She stared at the ceiling, one hand resting on Sincere’s back, the other near the cool, metal shape of the gun on the nightstand.
Every creak of the building’s settling bones was a footfall. Every sigh of the climate control was a breath at the door. She replayed Vance’s words. A demonstration of capability. The intruder wasn’t after the silverware or the TV. They were after Kash. And they’d found the most effective pressure point: what he loved.
Her phone glowed on the charger. 3:17 a.m. Lisbon was eight hours ahead. Kash would be in his meetings now, a shark in a suit, hunting his leak.
She picked up the phone. Her text history with him was a tapestry of their life—funny memes, grocery lists, heated promises, pictures of the kids. She typed a new message, her thumbs moving slowly in the dark.
We had a visit tonight. Not a social one. Systems were played with. CMPD involved. All secure now, kids are safe with me. No need to board a plane. Just thought you should know the perimeter has been tested.
She sent it. She didn’t expect an immediate reply. He might be in a secure room, phones locked away.
The three dots appeared almost instantly. Her heart lurched.
They pulsed. Stopped. Started again. For a full minute, he wrote and rewrote. The response, when it came, was not the torrent of panic she feared. It was five precise words, each one a controlled burn.
I am ending this now.
The three dots vanished. The message sat there, a definitive period in the middle of the night. Amber exhaled, a long, slow release of breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Ending this. She knew what that meant, in his lexicon. It meant a scorched-earth protocol on the digital front. It meant the Lisbon problem would be buried by sunrise. But it didn’t magically erase the man on the terrace, or the four missing seconds, or the fault in the door.
It didn’t un-spook her children.
She lay there until the gray predawn light began to outline the blackout curtains. The twins slept on, a deep, exhausted sleep, Sincere’s fingers still curled in her shirt. Carefully, she extricated herself. Their breathing didn’t hitch. She padded to the closet, her bare feet silent on the plush carpet, and pulled out two large, flexible weekend bags, the kind she used for beach trips.
The house was a tomb. Sergeant Vance’s patrol car was a silent, dark shape down on the street, visible from the kitchen window. Her security panel glowed a soft, untroubled green. It was all a lie. The system was compromised. The safety was an illusion.
She went to their rooms first. In Sincere’s, she avoided looking at the dent in the playroom wall, a monument to his terror. She worked quickly, silently. She knew every preference, every need. She packed the dinosaur pajamas and the solar-powered robot kit from Gelman. She grabbed Sidnee’s threadbare BunBun and the new postcard of the T. rex, the smooth plastic dinosaurs she lined up before bed, the special lavender detangler for her curls. For Sincere, the thick books about engineering and his favorite soft-worn jeans. She packed medications, the beloved sippy cups, the sound machine shaped like a cloud.
Her movements were efficient, practiced. This was logistics, a problem to be solved with her hands.
In her own walk-in closet, she bypassed the couture and the sleek power suits Kash loved to see her in. She packed jeans, leggings, simple tees, a few cozy sweaters. She grabbed the small, fireproof lockbox containing their passports, birth certificates, and the stack of emergency cash from the safe. She left the Sig Sauer inside; she couldn’t take it across state lines to the townhouse without proper permits, a complication she didn’t need. Its absence felt like leaving a limb behind.
She piled the bags by the penthouse’s private elevator. Then she opened an app on her phone—the property management portal for her townhouse. She’d bought the two-bedroom in NoDa with her salon earnings, a proclamation of independence. She mostly short-term leased it to traveling nurses or relocation families. The calendar showed it was vacant. With a few taps, she blocked the next two weeks off for “family use.” No explanations. Just a hold.
She needed normalcy. She needed walls that didn’t feel like a glass cage. The kids needed to scream and run in a small, fenced backyard without a security detail analyzing their decibel level. They deserved peace more than they deserved this gilded, watched fortress.
In the sub-level garage, she passed the gleaming black Escalade and Kash’s low-slung Porsche. In the far corner, under a fitted cover, was her red Nissan Altima. She’d refused to sell it. She drove it once a month, just to keep the battery charged and the engine fluid. It was her secret totem of a simpler self.
Now, it was her best weapon. Discretion for normalcy. If they were watching—if the man on the terrace had friends—they’d expect the luxury SUV with tinted windows. They would not be looking for a seven-year-old sedan with a “Visit Lake Norman” sticker on the bumper.
She pulled the cover off. The red paint was dull under the fluorescent lights. She loaded the bags into the trunk. It smelled of old coffee and the cherry air freshener she’d always liked.
Back upstairs, dawn had properly broken, casting long, innocent shadows. She made pancakes. The normalcy of cracking eggs, the hiss of batter on buttered griddle, was a balm. The smell woke the twins. They emerged from the hallway, bleary-eyed and clingy.
“We’re going on a little adventure,” she said, flipping a pancake. “A staycation. At Mommy’s old house.”
Sincere, perched on a stool, scrutinized her. “With the porch swing?”
“With the porch swing.”
“Is Daddy coming?”
“Soon. He has to finish his work puzzle first.” She kept her voice light, syrupy as the maple she was heating. “We’re gonna go hold down the fort for him.”
Sidnee, hugging her leg, mumbled into Amber’s thigh. “Bring BunBun?”
“BunBun is already packed, captain. He’s leading the mission.”
An hour later, they were in the elevator going down to the garage. Sincere held her hand, his grip tight. “Is the man gone?”
“The police are making sure of it,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was in the packed bags and the waiting red car. The whole truth was flight.
They loaded into the Altima. The twins’ car seats looked foreign in the modest interior. Amber started the engine. It turned over with a familiar, reassuring purr. She backed out, heading not for the main exit with its security kiosk, but for the secondary, less-used ramp that fed onto a side street.
As she merged into the sluggish morning traffic, she glanced in the rearview. Sincere was staring out the window, his expression unreadable. Sidnee was already dozing again, BunBun smooshed against her cheek.
Her phone, in the passenger seat, remained silent. No word from Kash. I am ending this now. She imagined him in a sterile room, his face illuminated by lines of lethal code, his anger a cold, focused beam.
She drove toward normalcy, toward the small, unassuming townhouse with its postage-stamp yard. She drove away from the beautiful, vulnerable perch. Every block between her and the penthouse felt like a layer of armor clicking into place. The man could have the terrace. He could have the view.
He couldn’t have them.