Chapter 1

The day the special police raided the scam operation, I was sitting on a small stool memorizing fraud scripts.

Captain Luke Reynolds snatched the phone from my hand, his voice sharp with anger.

"You could come and go freely. You even had your phone. Why didn't you call the police?"

I clutched my fraud notebook tightly to my chest and shook my head blankly.

"Call the police? So you could send me back home? But Captain, even breathing is a luxury there."

Luke stood frozen in place.

Since I was twelve, my grandmother had installed tiny cameras in my room — by my bed, at my desk, even in the bathroom — so she could monitor me around the clock.

Every time I showered, I watched that little red light blinking, and I could barely breathe.

I cried and begged my mother for help, but she only said:

"Evelyn, I work so hard to make ends meet. Your grandmother only does this because she cares about you so much."

When I was sixteen, I saw a guy with bleached hair on the street and walked straight into that scam den.

I couldn't stand another second in that suffocating house.

When Luke grabbed the notebook from my arms, my instinct was to lunge forward and bite his hand.

Two young officers held me back.

I kicked my legs, eyes locked on that blue-covered notebook.

"Give it back! It's mine!"

Luke flipped open the notebook and stopped.

He turned page after page.

There wasn't a single fraud script inside.

Just locks.

All kinds of locks.

Padlocks, deadbolts, security locks, combination locks.

Each one had detailed cross-section diagrams with the internal mechanisms labeled.

Even the number of pins was clearly marked.

He closed the notebook, glanced at me, and shoved me into the back seat of the police car.

The moment the door shut, my eyes swept across the corner of the ceiling.

A small black sphere with a red light on top.

A dashcam.

I pressed my back against the car door, curled into a ball, and my teeth started chattering.

"What's wrong with her?"

The young officer driving glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

Luke turned around and frowned.

"Turn off that dashcam in the back."

"But regulations —"

"Turn it off."

The red light went out.

My teeth kept chattering, but my body slowly relaxed.

At the station, a short-haired female officer poured me a cup of hot water.

Luke sat across from me, flipped through a file, and looked up.

"Your family reported you missing. Did you know that?"

I didn't respond.

"You were cleaning at that operation. You had freedom of movement. Why didn't you think to call the police?"

"What would you have done if I had?"

"Sent you home, of course."

"I didn't want to go home. Why would I call?"

Luke's pen stopped.

"You can charge me with fraud," I said.

Luke put down his pen and reopened my file.

After flipping two pages, his finger stopped on one line.

"Evelyn Carter. Social Security number marked deceased."

He turned the file around to show me.

"Two years after you disappeared, your legal guardian applied for a declaration of death."

"Legally, you're already dead."

I looked at that line and smiled slightly.

"Being dead is nice."

"What do you mean?"

"Dead people don't get watched."

Luke didn't press further.

He had the female officer take me to a single rest room.

The room was small — one bed, one table, one incandescent bulb.

The first thing I did after entering was stand on a chair, take off my jacket, and cover the smoke detector on the ceiling.

That round white thing looked too much like a camera.

After covering it, I climbed down from the chair and sat on the cot for a while.

Then I lay down.

The ceiling was stark white.

Nothing there.

No red lights.

No reflective circles.

No pinholes hidden in stuffed animal eyes.

This was a clean room.

Though it was a police station rest room, I slept soundly.

In the hallway, Luke watched through the one-way glass as I curled up on the bed.

He stayed silent for a long time.

"Contact her family. Pull the police reports from back then."

Officer Foster acknowledged on the other end of the line.

Luke glanced once more at me sleeping behind the glass and lowered his voice.

"And find out when her family filed that death declaration."