The first thing I notice is a label turned the wrong way.
I sit at my kitchen table—also known as the Glass Roses studio—surrounded by a sprawl of tapes and legal pads. The dryers downstairs thump through the floor, a dull heartbeat; the air tastes like laundry detergent, frying oil from the takeout place on the corner, and the metallic tang of my third cup of coffee. I reach for the cassette from the audio lab, the one with Elliot’s voice cleaned up, and my fingers stop.
The white sticker I wrote on in thick black Sharpie used to sit flush with the edge. Now it leans, peeled up at the corner, like someone picked at it and stuck it back crooked. The pen strokes don’t line up with the plastic seam where I remember them.
I tell myself my brain is playing tricks. Sleep deprivation plus CPS plus Luz’s memo equals one unreliable narrator. I peel the label up, smooth it down straight, and force myself to keep working. My notes rustle, paper scratching under my hands. Salt air sneaks in through the cracked kitchen window, cool against my overheated neck.
The second day, my Post-its are wrong.
I come home from recording B-roll at the cliffs—hair stiff with aerosol, shoes still gritty from the path above the rock shelf—and drop my bag by the door. Outside, the bass from some waterfront party thuds faintly, bouncing off the postcard-perfect cliffs where kids still sneak cigarettes and selfies. Inside, the apartment smells like stale cereal and the lemon cleaner I used in a midnight panic after CPS left.
I head straight for the table. My color-coded notes—yellow for timeline, pink for quotes, blue for open questions—normally form a messy constellation I still know by heart. Today, the yellows glare from the wrong side of the laptop. The pink stack leans on the wrong notebook. A blue that used to sit under my mug ring now stares up from the edge of the table: Ask Luz about IA timeframe.
I haven’t seen Luz since I watched her carry her life in a cardboard box past the Harrow plaque in the station lobby.
“Theo?” I call. My voice echoes off the thin walls, doing nothing to hide the wobble.
“What?” His voice drifts from his room, threaded with game sound effects and the muted roar of a crowd.
“Did you touch my notes?”
A pause, then a huff. “No. You said they were radioactive, remember? ‘Podcast plutonium.’ I’m not trying to get grounded.”
I breathe out through my nose, slow, and press my hand flat on the table. The wood feels tacky from spilled coffee. The hairs on my arm stand up like someone just exhaled near my ear.
Sloppy, I tell myself. I must have moved them without noticing. I nudge the stacks back into place and straighten the pens in their chipped mug, controlling what I can, tiny acts of resistance against the chaos.
On the third day, I know it’s not me.
I unlock the door after work and freeze. The apartment smells wrong—too much air freshener, like citrus trying to drown something sour. Light slants through the blinds across the table, striping my notes. The thumb drive with the dock audio that I always tuck under my laptop now sits on top of it, catching the afternoon glare.
I never leave it out. Not with CPS circling and Luz disarmed.
My heart kicks. I reach for the drive, feeling the ridged plastic dig into my fingertips, and scan the rest of the room. Theo’s backpack leans against the couch where he dropped it this morning. A lone sock hangs from the arm like a flag of surrender. The fridge door is closed, covered in his school art and the custody hearing date circled in red.
Nothing else looks touched.
Which doesn’t mean anything.
The landlord has a key. So does the super downstairs. So do dozens of other people with lock-picking skills and a motive to shut me up. The laundromat hums below, the spin cycles vibrating faintly through my arches.
Luz’s voice from the station slides into my head: Let your phone be your body cam.
I pull out my phone with shaking hands and start a video, panning slowly across the table, the notes, the thumb drive, timestamp burned into the corner. I narrate under my breath, low, more for my future self than any court.
“Came home at four twelve p.m. Notes rearranged. Drive moved. No sign of forced entry.”
The words taste like guilt and metal.
That night, Theo kicks his bedroom wall three times before I get up the nerve to knock.
“You okay?” I ask through the cheap hollow door. “Homework, not parkour, please.”
“It’s the vent,” he says. His voice sounds smaller than this morning. “Again.”
I open the door. His room smells like boy—sweat, shampoo, old socks, and the artificial grape of some energy drink he swears he doesn’t like but keeps accepting from his friends. The glow from his monitor paints his face blue; digital cliffs crumble on screen under his avatar’s feet.
“What about the vent?” I ask.
He points at the rectangular metal grille near the ceiling by his bed. “It’s buzzing,” he says. “Like a bee got stuck inside a phone. It’s driving me nuts.”
I cross the room, the thin carpet muffling my steps. Theo turns the game down. The apartment quiets to a layered soundtrack: muffled bass from a waterfront party far off, dryers thumping, someone arguing in the alley, and Theo’s too-fast breathing.
I step onto his desk chair and lean in, pressing my ear near the vent. Cool air brushes my cheek, dusty and metallic. The paint around the edges flakes against my fingers.
“I don’t hear anything,” I say.
“You never hear it,” he says. He digs his heels into the rug, fists clenched on his knees. “It comes and goes, but it’s like—” He pinches his fingers close together. “High. My teeth feel weird when it happens.”
“Like a dog whistle?” I ask.
“I’m not a dog,” he snaps, then winces. “Sorry. I just… can you ask Pete downstairs to fix it or something? I can’t sleep when it starts.”
I look at the vent again. At the tiny screws. At the faint strip of shadow behind the slats.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll talk to him. For now, want to crash on the couch?”
He nods without arguing, which scares me more than the buzzing I can’t hear. Theo gathers his blanket and his battered stuffed shark, the one he pretends he’s too old for but always grabs in the middle of the night. As he passes me, he pauses.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think the CPS lady talked to Dad yet?” His eyes flick toward the vent. “Like, is she going to tell him I went to the cliffs?”
My chest tightens. I keep my face steady, my voice even.
“She said her report goes to the judge,” I say. “That doesn’t mean she tells your dad every detail. And we already told the court about the cliffs, remember? We didn’t hide it.”
He chews his lip. “I don’t want them to think you’re a bad mom,” he mumbles.
My fingers curl around the back of the chair, knuckles whitening. “I know,” I say. “Me neither.”
When he shuffles off to the couch, blanket trailing, I stay.
I stand on the chair again, lean closer to the vent, and this time I hold my breath. No buzzing, no bees in phones, just the distant rush of the building’s lungs. The metal feels cool when I press my fingertips against it. Too cool. The air hasn’t kicked on in hours.
I grab my phone and shine the flashlight through the slats. Dust motes flare white in the beam, then settle on the corrugated duct beyond.
Halfway down the metal throat, something interrupts the line. A dark shape, matte where the duct glints. A small rectangle, no bigger than a matchbox, strapped to the inside rib with a zip tie.
My stomach drops.
I angle the light, trying to convince myself it’s a chunk of insulation, a forgotten packaging scrap, anything banal. The stark edges don’t let me lie.
The buzzing Theo hears. The moved notes. The citrus overkill. The CPS report stuffed with details they shouldn’t have.
I climb down, legs shaky, and head for the kitchen. My drawer of tools is also my junk drawer, full of takeout menus and old PTA flyers. I dig past a crumpled Prom Throwback fundraiser leaflet—adults on glossy paper in ironic 90s prom dresses, a glass rose centerpiece shining proudly on their table—and find the narrow screwdriver I use for Ikea furniture and vent covers.
I go back to Theo’s room and lock the door behind me. Then I drag the desk under the vent, clear his pens and binder off with one sweep into a pile on the bed, and climb up.
“Record everything,” Luz’s voice murmurs in the back of my skull.
I prop my phone on the shelf, camera pointed up, hit record, and say quietly, “Eight forty-two p.m. Attempting to remove vent cover in Theo’s room. Possible foreign object inside.”
My palms sweat around the metal shaft as I fit the screwdriver into the first screw. The squeal of metal on metal sets my teeth on edge. One screw, then the next, then the next. Each one comes loose too easily, like someone already cracked them and didn’t bother to tighten.
That scares me more than resistance would have.
I catch the vent cover with my free hand so it doesn’t clang onto the floor, lowering it gently. Cold air kisses my face from the open duct. The dust inside smells like old cotton, metal, and something chemical I can’t name.
The flashlight beam finds the rectangle again.
Up close, it’s sleek—matte black plastic with a single pinhole on one side and a tiny etched logo on the other: a stylized waveform inside a circle. A handful of faint scratches mar the casing, like it brushed against metal on the way in.
“Shit,” I whisper. My hand trembles when I reach in.
The edge of the duct bites my wrist as I stretch my fingers, but I grab the device and snap the zip tie with the screwdriver. A thunk echoes down the duct as the broken plastic piece drops into darkness. The buzzing starts—thin, high, more sensation than sound—and cuts off the second I pull the device free.
Theo wasn’t imagining it.
I sit down hard on his bed, vent cover in my lap, little black box in my palm. It feels heavier than it should, dense with other people’s secrets. I turn it over, heart pounding.
The side with the logo hides a tiny charging port and a recessed switch.
“Hello,” I say to it, voice flat. “How long have you been listening?”
I don’t flip the switch. Not yet.
Instead, I carry it to the kitchen, where the Wi-Fi is strongest, set it on the table next to my laptop, and open a private browser window. My fingers hover over the keys for a moment, unwilling to type my own violation into a search bar.
I flip the device to read the microscopic lettering stamped along the bottom edge. Model number, FCC ID, a string of letters that mean nothing until the last ones.
HH-AUD01.
“Home Harrow Audio,” I mutter. “Of course.”
I type it in: “HH-AUD01 wireless audio module logo waveform circle.”
The results populate in under a second. The top link blooms with a glossy product page, all soothing teal and white. Harrow Home ListenSafe Mini — Because Your Family’s Safety Matters.
The photo matches the object on my table down to the exact curve of the casing.
My cursor shakes over the trackpad. I scroll. The marketing copy talks about discreet baby monitors, elder care, “monitoring vulnerable loved ones while respecting their dignity.” There’s a bullet point about advanced noise reduction, about clarity even through “older construction materials.” A smiling stock-photo mom watches a toddler play while notifications pop up on her phone.
A little box in the sidebar shows “related products”: Harrow Home smart locks, Harrow Home doorbell cam, Harrow Home Hub. Beneath that, a blurred-out image of a man on a stage, mic in hand, captioned: Our founder believes in connecting people through audio.
I don’t need to click to know it’s Elliot. I’ve stared at that PR headshot enough in other contexts.
My skin crawls. I shut the laptop with more force than I intend; the sound cracks through the apartment, making Theo call from the couch, “You okay?”
“Fine,” I lie. My voice comes out higher than usual. “Just dropped something.”
I look at the device again. Every conversation in this apartment suddenly replays in my head in jagged flashes: Theo’s whispered fears about Juliet and the cliffs, my late-night strategizing with Sadie on speakerphone, Luz’s dry voice telling me internal affairs has her badge, my own muttered monologues into the mic when I thought I was off air.
All of it, piped through my vents like a radio station from hell.
Someone had to come in here to plant it. Maybe they posed as a maintenance check, maybe they sweet-talked the super, maybe they just picked the lock between loads of laundry and the muffled echo of bass from the waterfront. However they did it, they stood where I’m standing now, breathed the same mix of detergent and salt air, and reached into the duct above my son’s bed.
The paranoia that’s been nibbling at the edges of my brain finally bares its teeth.
My first instinct is to smash the thing with the butt of the screwdriver, grind it into plastic dust and scatter it like cremains. My second is to run with it to the station, shove it into whichever detective’s hands will take it, and scream that the Harrows put a wiretap in my kid’s room.
Then I remember Luz’s box, her empty holster, the memo calling me a “civilian media actor,” and the CPS worker’s careful notes.
The system already wrote me down as dangerous content.
I pick up the bug instead.
It sits warm in my hand, like it holds the residue of all the words it’s swallowed. I feel my breathing slow, pulse settling into a new rhythm—not calm, not by any stretch, but something focused. Cold clarity hardens in the space where shock sat a moment ago.
Someone listening this closely thinks they’re writing my story for me.
I turn the device over, glance at the tiny switch, and wonder how many walls in Crescent Bay are whispering right now—how many vents, how many ducts, carrying the town’s curated secrets straight to Harrow-branded hubs.
Luz told me to record everything.
I close my fingers around the bug, the plastic edges digging into my palm, and realize I finally know who’s been listening in my walls.
The better question—the one that makes the tiny hairs on my arms lift again—is what I’m going to say into their ears now that I know they’re there.