Chapter 3

The woman on the other end of the phone had sounded real.

That was the part Elias couldn't get past.

Even after the line went dead, even after he stood in the upstairs hallway with his phone pressed so tightly against his ear that the edge of the case hurt, his mind kept returning to the first few seconds of the call. The faint crackle of the connection. The distant tapping of a keyboard. The woman's calm, mildly hurried voice asking for his address and telling him officers were being sent.

All the little sounds that belonged to the ordinary…