My Neighbor Knows My Alarm - She Trusted Her with a Key. Now Someone Is Photographing Her Home from the Inside - Nathan Ashborn

INTRO - My Neighbor Knows My Alarm - She Trusted Her with a Key. Now Someone Is Photographing Her Home from the Inside.INTROThe first photograph showed my entryway. For a few seconds, I was certain I had taken it myself. My phone sometimes resurfaced old pictures at the worst possible moments - forgotten receipts, the washing machine's serial number, Franek's shoes photographed in a store before the start of the school year. So I stared at the screen while waiting at a red light on Rokicińska and tried to remember why I would ever have photographed my own shoe cabinet. Then I noticed the time. 2:17 p.m. The picture had arrived four minutes earlier. It wasn't old. The car behind me honked. I pulled away before the driver could do it again and put the phone facedown on the passenger seat. Seven minutes to home. Maybe six if I didn't hit traffic at the roundabout. Franek finished school at three twenty. It was three oh three. The house should have been empty. At the next intersection, my phone vibrated again. I didn't look. I kept telling myself there had to be a reasonable explanation. Magda might have gone in without telling me. She sometimes picked up parcels left outside my door when a courier refused to wait. She had a key. She knew the alarm code. Over the past six months, I had probably told her more about how my house worked than I had told anyone else. After the divorce, Michał no longer had a key. I changed the lock cylinder two days after he moved out his last boxes. I changed the alarm code a week later, when I discovered he still remembered the old one. Three people knew the new code. Me. Franek. Magda from next door. I turned onto our street so fast that the rear wheel scraped the curb. The row of semi-detached houses looked the way it always did: pale facades, identical graphite roofs, hedges everyone kept promising to trim before winter. Magda's white car was parked outside her house. That reassured me. For about two seconds. Then I saw Magda herself. She was kneeling on the lawn in front of her house, stuffing dry leaves into a black garbage bag. She was wearing a green jacket, gardening gloves, and headphones over her ears. She didn't look up until I slammed my car door. She waved. She didn't look like someone who had been walking through my house forty-some minutes earlier, taking pictures. "You're home early," she called. "Were you at my place today?" She pulled one headphone away from her ear. "What?" "In the house. Mine." She frowned. "No." She answered immediately. Too immediately, I thought, and then hated myself for thinking it. I took out my phone. The second message was still waiting unopened. The same unknown number. No text. I tapped the screen. This time someone had photographed the kitchen. They were standing beside the island, roughly where I put my work bag every morning. The frame showed the table, the coffee machine, part of the patio door, and my reflection in the black glass of the oven. Not my reflection now. The reflection of the person holding the phone. I zoomed in. There was no face. Just a dark shape against the window. "Alicja?" Magda had come closer. I locked the screen. I don't know why. A minute earlier, the first thing I had wanted to do was show her the photographs. Now the knowledge that she was the only person besides me and my eleven-year-old son who knew the code made me close my hand around the phone as if it were something I needed to protect. "Did your alarm go off?" she asked. I looked at her. "No." "Then why are you asking if I was inside?" "I think I left a window open." The lie came too easily. Magda glanced toward my house. "I can go in with you." "You don't have to." "Ala." "Really. I probably just remembered it wrong." I headed toward the gate. The alarm app showed a green icon. SYSTEM ARMED. Last status change: 7:41 a.m. I had armed it that morning when I left with Franek. There had been no disarming at 2:17 p.m. I stopped. Checked again. 7:41 - full arming. No later activity. Someone could have taken the photograph earlier and only sent it now. That thought should have made me feel better. It didn't. I pressed my finger to the lock reader. There was a soft click. The door opened a few inches. I didn't go in. The house was silent. The steady hum of the refrigerator drifted in from the living room, and somewhere upstairs the automatic air freshener was running. I knew those sounds. They were ordinary. The entryway looked ordinary too. Shoe cabinet. Mirror. Coat rack. Franek's blue hoodie thrown across the bench despite three consecutive reminders to put his things in the closet. I took out my phone and opened the first photograph. I compared the image to what I saw in front of me. That was when I noticed the difference. In the photograph, the closet door was slightly open. Now it was closed. "Everything okay?" Magda called from behind the fence. I turned my head. She was still standing in front of her own house. "Yes." I stepped inside and closed the door. I didn't take off my shoes. First I checked the living room. Then the kitchen. The downstairs bathroom. My office. I didn't call out or ask whether anyone was there. I had no intention of warning someone who might be standing only a few yards away from me. My morning coffee mug was still on the kitchen counter. There were no muddy footprints by the patio door. The windows were shut. I went back to the entryway and opened the closet. Jackets. A coat. Franek's backpack from last year. A box of cables. Nothing else. My phone vibrated for the third time. This time the message contained a single sentence. DON'T JUST CHECK THE DOORS. Below it was a photograph. Of my bedroom. I sat down on the first stair before my legs could make the decision for me. The photographer had been standing right beside the bed. The frame showed the window, part of the wardrobe, and the bedside table. On it were a book, a charger, and the glass of water I had left there that morning. But the picture did not show the entire room. Someone had deliberately aimed the camera lower. At the open drawer of the bedside table. The one where I kept my passport, a few documents, and a small envelope of cash for emergencies. The drawer was open. I looked up toward the first floor. From where I was sitting, I could see the bedroom door. It was closed. I didn't remember closing it that morning. My phone rang. Franek. I answered immediately. "Mom, are you home already?" I could hear children and a teacher's voice in the background. "I am. Why?" "Because our teacher let us out early." I looked at the time. 3:14. "Stay at school." "But Magda texted me that she could pick me up." I didn't answer. "Mom?" I looked through the narrow window beside the front door. Magda was no longer on the lawn. Her black bag of leaves lay open beside the hedge. "Franek, listen to me very carefully. Don't leave the building. Don't go with anyone. Not even Magda." There was silence on the other end. "Why?" A fourth message appeared on the screen. No photograph. DO YOU REALLY THINK THE PROBLEM COMES IN THROUGH THE DOOR?

Chapter 1 - The Message Magda Didn't Send - My Neighbor Knows My Alarm - She Trusted Her with a Key. Now Someone Is Photographing Her Home from the Inside.Chapter 1 - The Message Magda Didn't SendFor several seconds, I couldn't hear Franek. I stared at the last message until the letters stopped forming a sentence and became nothing more than black marks on a white screen. DO YOU REALLY THINK THE PROBLEM COMES IN THROUGH THE DOOR? "Mom?" My son's voice restored the proper scale of things. The photographs, the closed bedroom, Magda disappearing from her yard - all of that could wait. Franek couldn't. "Are you still inside the school building?" "Yeah." "Where exactly?" "By the cloakroom." "Go back to the office." "But why?" "Because I'm asking you to. Go to the woman in the office and tell her you're supposed to wait inside until I come and get you." "Magda was going to pick me up." "Don't go with Magda." This time I didn't try to soften my tone. I realized too late how that must have sounded. "Did you two have a fight?" "No. Franek, listen to me. Don't leave the school. Don't leave with anyone. I'll call you right back." "Not even with Dad?" I hesitated for a second. "You can go with Dad, but only after you speak to me first. Do you understand?" "Mhm." "Say it in a full sentence." He sighed. "I have to stay in the office and not leave until you or Dad says I can." "Good. Go there now." I didn't hang up until I heard one of the teachers in the background and Franek saying, "My mom told me to wait." I called the school immediately. The secretary answered on the third ring. I introduced myself, explained that no one except Michał or me was allowed to pick Franek up, and asked her not to let him leave even if someone he knew showed up. "Has something happened?" the woman asked. I looked at the closed bedroom door. "I'm not sure yet." It sounded absurd. Someone had been inside my house. Someone had taken photographs. Someone knew where my son was. And I was still trying to behave as though I'm not sure could describe any of it. I dialed the emergency number before I even reached the bottom of the stairs. The dispatcher asked short, direct questions: Was the intruder still inside? Had I seen anyone? Were there signs of forced entry on the doors or windows? Was anything missing? Had I received threats? I didn't answer the last one immediately. "Messages," I said at last. "Someone is sending me pictures from inside my house." "Are you inside the building now?" Only then did I realize how stupidly I had behaved. "Yes." "Please leave and wait somewhere safe." She didn't have to say it twice. I took only my handbag from the chair in the kitchen. I didn't go upstairs again. I didn't check the bedroom. I didn't look inside the drawer shown in the photograph. When I opened the front door, Magda was just coming out of her house. She walked toward me. "What's going on?" she asked. "Franek called." I stopped just inside the gate. "He called you?" "Yes. He asked if I was coming to get him." For a moment I couldn't tell what frightened me more: her answer, or how naturally she gave it. "You texted him that you'd pick him up." Magda stopped. "No." "He said he got a message from you." "Alicja, I didn't text Franek." She took out her phone. I hadn't asked her to. She simply unlocked it and opened her conversation with him. Magda's last message was from two days earlier. Remember your umbrella. Apparently meteorologists are occasionally right. Franek had replied with a photograph of a frog. She handed me the phone. "See for yourself." I scrolled up and down through the conversation as if I might uncover a hidden section. "You can delete a message." Magda pulled her hand back. Something appeared on her face that I had never seen there before. Not wounded pride. Fear. "What happened?" I didn't answer. "Ala." "When were you last inside my house?" "I told you. Monday. I brought over milk because I'd bought two cartons." "I mean every visit. Even if I wasn't home." "Monday." "Do you have my key?" Her gaze moved toward my house. "Of course." "Show me." "What?" "The key." "It's in my house." "Bring it." "Alicja, what is this about?" We heard a car turning onto the street. A police cruiser maneuvered between the parked vehicles and stopped outside my property. Magda looked at it, then at me. "You called the police?" "Bring the key." She didn't argue a second time. Two officers came inside. A woman around forty who introduced herself as Senior Constable Joanna Kałuża, and a younger man named Wrona. I showed them the messages before we even entered the house. Kałuża didn't comment. She examined every photograph, the sender's number, the times, then told me not to delete anything and not to reply. "Have you ever had contact with this number before?" "No." "Did you call it?" "No." "Please don't call it for now." Wrona walked around the outside of the house, then we went in together. It wasn't a forensic team from a television show. They weren't dusting every surface for fingerprints or scattering powder everywhere. They checked the doors, windows, visible damage, and asked what I had touched after coming home. Too much. Door handles. My phone. The closet. The front door. The edge of the kitchen counter. "I didn't open the bedroom," I said. Kałuża went upstairs. I stayed in the hall. The bedroom door wasn't locked. She pressed the handle and disappeared inside. A moment later, she called me in. The bedside-table drawer was closed. In the photograph, it had been open. "Please check the contents without touching anything you don't need to." I put on the thin gloves she handed me. My passport was there. So was the envelope. I opened it. Two thousand two hundred złoty. Exactly what should have been there. The car documents, an old USB drive, the deed to the house, several warranty cards. Nothing was missing. "What could he have been looking for?" Kałuża asked. "I don't know." "Did he know what was in this drawer?" "Apparently." It sounded worse when I said it aloud. We went back downstairs. Wrona was standing beside the alarm panel. "There's no record of anyone entering," I said. "I checked." "Only in the app?" "Yes." "What system is it?" I gave him the company name. He wrote it down. "Do you have sensors on every door and window?" "On the ground floor. Upstairs, only the balcony windows and the motion sensors in the hallway." "And the garage?" "The garage connects to the house. It has its own sensor and door contact." "Basement?" "No." "Attic?" I looked toward the stairs. "There's a small utility attic. Access is from the upstairs hallway." Kałuża looked at Wrona. They didn't need to say anything. They went upstairs again. That was when Magda returned. She was holding a key ring with four keys. "This one," she said, pointing. I didn't want to touch it. "Do you always keep it there?" "In the kitchen drawer." "Who has access to that drawer?" "Me." "Only you?" "Alicja..." "Only you?" She pressed her lips together. "And Bartek, when he's home." Bartek was her twenty-three-year-old son. He studied in Wrocław and came back irregularly, usually for weekends and holidays. The last time I had seen him was probably at the end of August, when he helped Magda carry a new dresser into the house. "Is Bartek in Łódź now?" "No. Wrocław." "Are you sure?" "I spoke to him this morning." "That's not an answer." "I'm sure he studies in Wrocław. I don't track him by GPS." "Does he know my alarm code?" Magda went pale. Her silence was enough. "Magda." "He heard it once." "What does once mean?" "In June. You were at a conference in Kraków. Your alarm went off." I remembered. The living-room sensor had detected movement at two in the morning. The security company called me, and I called Magda. It turned out that the decorative branch standing in a tall vase had fallen in front of the sensor, probably because of a draft from a window left slightly open. "Bartek went with you?" "He happened to be at my place. I was afraid to go in alone." "And you gave him the code?" "He was standing next to me when I disarmed it." "Four months ago." "Ala, I don't even know if he was watching." I wanted to answer, but Wrona called from upstairs. "Ms. Alicja?" I went up. He was standing on a folding ladder beneath the rectangular hatch leading to the attic. The cover had been pushed aside. "When were you last up there?" "Never. The ventilation company, maybe in spring." "Does this hatch have a lock?" "No." "Is it covered by the alarm?" "No." He looked into the darkness above him. "Do you have a flashlight?" Kałuża took out her own. The attic was low and mostly unfinished, with insulation between the beams and cables running beneath the roof. Wrona climbed higher until half his body disappeared. A minute later he came back down. "Nothing obvious. I don't see signs that anyone came through here. There isn't an easy way outside anyway." "An easy way?" "Part of the roof structure is shared with the other half of the semi-detached building, but it looks separated by a panel." I looked through the wall. Magda's house was on the other side. For a moment, no one spoke. Then Kałuża asked, "Who built these houses?" "A development company. Eight years ago." "Do you have the plans?" "With the documents." The drawer in the bedroom. The one someone had deliberately opened for the photograph. I went downstairs and took out the deed and the technical folder. The floor plan was folded into quarters. We spread it across the dining-room table. Wrona pointed to the wall between the two houses. "There should be separation here." "There is," I said. "There should be. According to the plan." "They didn't exactly build a secret passage between the houses." I said it half-jokingly. No one smiled. Kałuża returned to the messages. "Please look at the first photograph again." She enlarged the picture of the entryway. "In the mirror." It took me three tries to see it. Part of the staircase was visible in the reflection. A wooden frame hung on the wall above it. It should have held our old family photograph from the Masurian Lakes. In the message, the frame was crooked. Now it was straight. I hadn't noticed before. I moved toward it. "Don't touch it," Kałuża said. I stopped. Behind the frame was a small round hole from a wall plug we had once used for a different picture. Nothing else. At least nothing I could see. "When was this photograph taken?" Kałuża asked. "According to the message, today." "No. I'm asking whether you can confirm that from what's inside the house." I looked more carefully. Franek's hoodie on the bench. He had left it there that morning. The paper bakery bag beside the cabinet. I had bought bread in it the night before and hadn't thrown it away yet. "Today," I said. "It had to be today." My phone rang. Michał. For several seconds I considered rejecting the call. Then I remembered Franek was sitting in the school office. "Hi." "Franek says you told him he isn't allowed to leave school. What's going on?" "Can you pick him up?" "I'm fifteen minutes away. But are you going to tell me why?" I looked at the officers. "Someone was in the house." Silence. "A break-in?" "I don't know." "What do you mean, you don't know?" "Someone took pictures inside and sent them to me." Michał stopped asking questions. That wasn't like him. "I'm going to get Franek," he said. "Bring him here." "No." "Michał." "If somebody got into your house and you don't know who, Franek is not sleeping there tonight." "The police are here." "All the more reason." "Bring him. We'll decide what to do next." He hung up without answering. When I lowered the phone, I noticed Magda watching me from the other side of the living room. "Michał?" she asked. I nodded. "Does he still have access to the alarm app?" "No." "Are you sure?" "I removed his account." "But he installed it with you." "Magda." She raised her hands and stepped back. "I'm not suggesting anything." "You just did." "Because you've spent the last fifteen minutes questioning me and my son like we're suspects." I didn't answer. She was right. That didn't mean I should stop asking questions. The officers took down her details. They asked to see the key, then told her to keep it without using it. Kałuża told me to contact the alarm company and request the full technical event log, not merely the history available to a regular user. She also recommended replacing the lock cylinder, disabling all codes, and checking the list of devices logged into the app. "Today?" I asked. "The sooner, the better." I called the company that serviced the alarm. After twelve minutes of hold music, a consultant answered. He took me through identity verification, then confirmed that the system had not been disarmed since 7:41 a.m. "So no one got in?" I asked. "That's not what I said." "Then what did you say?" "That the control panel did not record a disarming event." "What about the sensors?" I heard typing. "Ground-floor motion, kitchen, living room, entrance - no activation after arming." "Upstairs?" "There's a hallway sensor upstairs as well?" "Yes." More typing. "Nothing." Kałuża watched my face. "Can someone enter the system in service mode?" I asked. The consultant hesitated. "Technically, service connections can occur, but that is not the same as disarming the alarm." "Was there one today?" A longer silence. "I can see a diagnostic session." I stopped breathing. "What time?" "2:12 p.m." I looked at the first photograph. 2:17. "Who started it?" "I don't have operator details at this level." "Who does?" "Technical support." "Why did someone connect to my alarm at 2:12?" "There's no service-request description." "Because I didn't report anything." "I understand." "Then who connected?" "Ms. Alicja, I genuinely cannot see that with my access." Kałuża extended her hand. I switched to speaker. "Police," she said. "Please preserve the complete logs for that session. Officers will contact your company through official channels." The consultant's voice immediately lost its routine warmth. "Of course." "And please don't reset anything," she added. After the call, no one spoke for a moment. Magda broke the silence first. "Who installed your alarm?" I looked at the panel by the entrance. "The same man who installed yours." "Radecki?" The name brought back a face. A tall, thin man around forty, always wearing his shirt sleeves rolled up, even in winter. Sebastian Radecki. He had worked as an outside installer for the company recommended to the entire development by the developer. "Yes." "Does he still work there?" "I don't know." Magda took out her phone. "I do." She looked at me. "I saw him here three weeks ago." "Where?" "On the estate." "At whose house?" "No idea. His car was parked near the end of the street." Kałuża wrote down the name. By the time the officers left, it was beginning to get dark. Magda stood by the gate. "I can stay with you." "No." "Alicja..." "Not tonight." It hurt her. I could see that. But I couldn't pretend everything between us was the same as it had been that morning. Michał arrived with Franek at 5:38 p.m. Franek ran into the house first and hugged me immediately. Michał came in more slowly. He looked around the living room, at the alarm panel, at the windows. "Pack his things," he said. "We're talking first." "No. First I'm getting him out of here." Franek pulled away from me. "Who was here?" Michał and I looked at each other. "We don't know yet," I said. "Did they steal anything?" "No." "Then why did they come in?" It was the simplest question of the day. I didn't know the answer. Franek looked at his phone. "Magda didn't text me after all." "How do you know?" He held out the device. "Because the message disappeared." I took the phone. His conversation with Magda ended with the frog from two days earlier. Exactly the same as on her phone. "You saw it?" I asked. "That message?" "Yeah." "You read it?" "'I can pick you up today, your mom will be home later.' Something like that." "You're sure it was from Magda?" "It had her picture and her name." Michał stepped closer. "Show me." I handed him the phone. "It could be spoofing," he said. I looked at him. "How do you know?" He shrugged. "You don't have to be a hacker to fake a number." "The message appeared in her existing conversation." He stopped looking at the screen. "That's worse." "Why?" He handed the phone back to Franek. "Because if it really appeared in the same thread, then whoever did this doesn't just know Magda's number. They know the two of them message each other." The living room went quiet. Franek looked at me. "Mom?" "Yes?" "How does this person know Magda has a key?" I didn't answer. Because at that exact moment, I realized something else. Not one of the messages I had received mentioned a key. Or Magda. I was the one who had connected those things. Whoever was doing this didn't need to know that I suspected my neighbor. They only needed me to start suspecting everyone who could have gotten inside. My phone vibrated. Unknown number. There was no photograph. Only five words. GOOD. YOU'RE STARTING TO LOOK PROPERLY.

Chapter 2 - Nineteen Minutes - My Neighbor Knows My Alarm - She Trusted Her with a Key. Now Someone Is Photographing Her Home from the Inside.Chapter 2 - Nineteen MinutesMichał read the message twice. The first time, he looked like a man searching for a logical explanation. The second, like a man who had just realized logic didn't have to be comforting. "You're packing Franek's things," he said. "Stop giving me orders." "Alicja, someone is watching the house." "I know." "They know what you're doing." "I know." "And they probably know Franek is here." Our son was sitting on the stairs a few yards away. He was pretending to look at something on his phone, but the screen had gone dark a long time ago. "Not in front of him," I said more quietly. Michał clenched his jaw. "All the more reason I'm taking him." This time I didn't argue. For the next half hour, I packed Franek's things and tried to act as though I were preparing him for an ordinary weekend with his father. Pajamas, hoodie, charger, math textbook, the inhaler he almost never used but which we always kept close in autumn. Franek followed me around. "Are you coming too?" "No." "Why?" "I need to stay here." "What for?" I couldn't come up with a good enough lie. "The police may still need something." "You can sleep at Dad's." "I can." "So why don't you want to?" I folded his T-shirt and put it into the bag. Because someone wanted to scare me. Because if I left now and didn't come back, every message after this would decide where I slept, who I spoke to, and who I trusted. I couldn't say that to an eleven-year-old. "Because this is my home," I said. Franek watched me for a moment, then nodded as though that answer made more sense than any explanation could have. At the door, he hugged me longer than usual. "Call before bed." "I will." "And don't go into the attic." I almost smiled. "Okay." "I'm serious." "So am I." Michał heard him. "You shouldn't be here alone." "If anything happens, I'll call." "Me?" "The police." "Of course." I didn't answer. On his way out, he stopped by the alarm panel. "Can I look at it?" "Why?" "I want to check the settings." "The police said not to reset anything." "I don't have to reset it." "No." He looked at me. "Seriously?" "Seriously." "After seven years of marriage, you suddenly suspect me of breaking into your house?" "I didn't say that." "You don't have to." Franek was already standing by the car. "Go," I said. Michał left. I closed the door. I turned the mechanical lock, even though I almost never used it before because the electronic bolt locked automatically. Then I stood in the entryway and listened to the house. When the three of us had lived here together, silence had never felt complete. Someone was always moving a chair, turning on a tap, opening a cabinet, or leaving the television running in a room nobody had been in for fifteen minutes. After the divorce, I had learned a different kind of silence - one with a structure of its own. The refrigerator. Ventilation. Wood shifting in the stairs. The distant hum of passing cars. That evening, every sound felt like an exception. I called a locksmith. He arrived after seven. An older man with hands covered in tiny scars examined the cylinder, asked whether I had lost a key, and when I said no, didn't push for an explanation. He replaced the lock and handed me five sealed keys. I put one on the kitchen counter. The rest went into my handbag. I didn't take one to Magda. Then I changed the alarm code. The system allowed separate user codes. Mine. Franek's. Service. Temporary. I deleted all of them except mine. The service code showed as inactive. For a moment I stared at the word SERVICE, remembering the diagnostic session at 2:12 p.m. I tapped the details. Access denied. Information available to system administrator. I should have been the administrator. Apparently not that kind of administrator. I photographed the screen with Franek's old second phone, which had remained in the house after his last device upgrade. I didn't want to generate any changes in the app beyond the ones that were absolutely necessary. Then I sat down at the table and opened my laptop. Searching Sebastian Radecki's name brought back dozens of results. Social-media profiles, an old installer-directory entry, a sole proprietorship that no longer existed, a photograph from a local smart-building conference. He looked exactly as I remembered him. Long face. Short dark hair. High forehead. In a photo taken six years earlier, he stood beside the booth of the company that had installed my alarm. I clicked his professional profile. He hadn't worked there for two years. Now he ran a consultancy specializing in building automation. Nothing explained why, three weeks earlier, his car had been parked on my street. I sent his name to Senior Constable Kałuża using the number she had left me. She replied a few minutes later. Thank you. Please do not contact him yourself. I had no intention of doing so. At least, that was what I thought then. At eight, Franek called. He was already in bed at Michał's. Through the camera he showed me the room his father had arranged for him after the divorce. Two posters, a shelf of building blocks, a lamp shaped like a rocket. "Did you lock the door?" "Yes." "With the new lock?" "Yes." "And the alarm?" "New code." "Then nobody can get in now." He said it with such certainty that I couldn't take it away from him. "Exactly." Michał appeared in the background. "Give me your mom." Franek rolled his eyes and left. "What have the police found out?" Michał asked. "Nothing else yet." "You're staying there alone?" "Yes." "That's stupid." "I know what you think." "No, I don't think you do. I have a spare room. You can lock yourself behind three deadbolts if that makes you feel better." "It isn't about locks." Silence on the other end. "Did he say anything else to you?" "Who?" "Whoever is sending the messages." "No." I didn't mention GOOD. YOU'RE STARTING TO LOOK PROPERLY. I didn't know why. Maybe because the message felt as though it had been meant for me alone. Like praise from a teacher watching a student complete an exercise. "I'm coming over tomorrow morning," Michał said. "You don't have to." "I wasn't asking." "Good night." I hung up. For the first time in several hours, I looked toward Magda's house. The living-room light was on. Her car was in the driveway. I could see movement through the curtain. I could have gone over and asked about Bartek, about Radecki, about everything she hadn't wanted to tell me earlier. Instead, I turned off the kitchen light. Not because I was afraid. At least that was what I told myself. At 9:17 p.m., someone knocked. I froze. They didn't ring the bell. Three short knocks. I went to the video-intercom screen. Magda. I let out a breath and was immediately annoyed with myself for feeling relieved. I opened the door but left the security chain on. Magda looked at it. "Seriously?" "What do you want?" "I checked the camera." "What camera?" "Mine by the gate." I opened the door wider. "Come in." She didn't take off her shoes. She put her phone on the table and opened the app. The camera covered her driveway, part of my fence, and a section of the street. It didn't show my front door, but anyone coming from the main street toward my house would have crossed the frame for at least a moment. "I went back to one o'clock," she said. "Everything looks normal." She scrubbed through the footage. A courier. An older man with a dog. Two girls on scooters. A delivery van. At 2:06 p.m., Magda herself appeared in the frame, returning from shopping. "See?" she said. "That's when I got home." At 2:09, she went inside. The recording continued for another three minutes. Then the screen went black. "What's that?" "The camera lost its connection." There was a gap on the timeline. 2:12 - 2:31. Nineteen minutes. The first photograph had been sent at 2:21, but the image displayed a capture time of 2:17. "Exactly then," I said. "I know." "Did your internet go down?" "No. The TV was working. I was on a video call with Bartek." "Do you have footage from any other cameras?" "That's the only one." "Why did it shut off?" "I don't know." I took the phone. "Show me the settings." "I checked. Device restart." "Who restarted it?" "The app doesn't say." We looked at each other. "What system do you have?" I asked. She told me the name. It wasn't the same as mine. "Who installed it?" Magda closed her eyes. She didn't have to answer. "Radecki," I said. "Four years ago." "And he still has access?" "He shouldn't." "That's what I thought about my alarm." We sat down. For the first time that day, I felt that Magda wasn't standing on the opposite side of the question. She was standing right beside me. "Tell me everything you didn't tell the police," I said. "I told them everything." "No." "Alicja..." "You saw him three weeks ago and only mentioned it today." "Because it didn't mean anything before." "What else didn't mean anything?" She rubbed a hand over her face. "Radecki called me last month." "Why?" "He asked about the system." "What system?" "The alarm. The cameras. Whether everything worked." "Why did he call?" "He said he was auditing old installations." "For the company he hasn't worked for in two years?" Magda looked sharply at me. "How do you know he doesn't work there?" "I checked." She said nothing. "And what did you tell him?" "That everything worked." "Did he ask about me?" She took too long to answer. "Magda." "He asked if you were still living alone." Something cold moved down my spine. "Exactly that?" "He asked whether Michał had moved back. I said no." "Why did you even talk to him?" "Because I knew him. He installed our systems. It didn't sound strange." "And now?" "Now it does." I stood. "We have to tell the police." "I know." I photographed the timeline from her camera. Magda also sent me her call record. The number Radecki had used matched the number listed on his business website. It was too simple. So simple it made me uncomfortable. A man with technical access to the systems. A man who knew the estate. A man who had asked whether I lived alone. A man seen on the street recently. "Why would he do this?" I asked. Magda shrugged. "Maybe it's about money." "He didn't steal anything." "Maybe not yet." "He opened a drawer with cash. He left the money." "Then maybe it isn't theft." That frightened me more. I called Kałuża. I told her about Radecki's call and the gap in the camera footage. She told Magda to preserve the recording and make sure nothing was overwritten. "Does this mean we have a suspect?" I asked. "It means we have someone we need to speak to." "Are you going to call him?" "Ms. Alicja, I'm not going to discuss operational steps over the phone." There was no rudeness in it. Just a boundary. After the call, Magda was still sitting at the table. "Do you want me to stay?" I looked at her. A few hours earlier, I hadn't wanted to let her inside my house. Now I had footage showing that at the time the first photograph had apparently been taken, her camera had gone offline. That cleared her. Or did exactly the opposite. "No," I said. This time she didn't insist. At the door, she stopped. "Ala?" "Yes?" "Bartek is coming tomorrow." "I thought he was in Wrocław." "He is. I asked him to come." "Why?" "I want to ask him about the key." I didn't know whether I was supposed to feel relieved. "Okay." Magda left. I locked the new lock. For the next hour, nothing happened. At 11:10 p.m., I was in the bedroom. I didn't want to sleep there, but I wanted even less to let a photograph of an empty bed drive me out of my own room. I checked the drawer. Everything was there. Passport. Documents. Envelope. USB drive. I took it out. I couldn't remember what was on it. I plugged it into the laptop. A few old tax files, photographs of documents, a copy of the mortgage agreement. Last modified three years earlier. Nothing interesting. I put the drive back. Turned off the light. I had been lying there for maybe five minutes when I heard a soft crack. Not from downstairs. Above me. I sat up. The attic. I remembered the promise I'd made Franek. Don't go into the attic. I had no intention of going up there. I picked up my phone. The crack came again. Then something scraped above the ceiling. It could have been a marten. The wood. Ventilation. Every house has sounds you stop noticing during the day. I stood. The motion-activated light in the upstairs hallway came on. I stopped in the bedroom doorway. The sensor had detected me. Normal. I looked toward the attic hatch. It was closed. I took one step. My phone vibrated. Unknown number. My heart rose into my throat. I opened the message. A photograph. For a moment, I didn't understand what I was looking at. Then I recognized my own hallway. The stairs. The banister. The bedroom door. And me. I was standing in the doorway in navy pajamas, holding my phone. The photographer was above me. The picture had been taken from a high angle, as though the camera were peeking around the edge of an open attic hatch. I looked up. The hatch was closed. In the photograph, it was closed too. No. I enlarged the image. The angle wasn't from the attic. It was from the opposite side of the hallway. From the wall. From the spot just above the stairs. From the place where the wooden frame with the Masurian Lakes photograph hung. I turned my head. The frame was straight. Slowly, I walked toward it. I didn't touch it. I leaned closer. In the black gap between the frame and the wall, I saw something that had not been there that morning. A tiny point. No larger than the head of a pin. It flashed. Once. Red. I stepped back. My phone vibrated again. This time there was no photograph. I WAS IN THE HOUSE EARLIER. NOW I DON'T HAVE TO BE.