Chapter 4: The Sound of Broken Glass

Three days passed without incident, and Elara began to convince herself that Sunday's scare had been an overreaction. The black sedan hadn't returned. No suspicious figures lurked in the shadows. Life in the Morrison District continued its peaceful rhythm, exactly as she'd envisioned when she'd first proposed the Safe Streets Initiative.

By Wednesday evening, she was almost back to normal.

"You're being ridiculous, Ellie," she muttered to herself as she deadbolted her front door—a habit she'd developed since Sunday, though she refused to admit it had anything to do with Caleb's warnings. "One random car driving through the neighborhood doesn't make you a target."

She'd spent the day in back-to-back meetings with the mayor's office, presenting preliminary data on the Morrison District's continued success. Crime rates remained low, property values were climbing steadily, and the waiting list for the affordable housing lottery had tripled. Everything she'd worked for was paying off exactly as planned.

The irony wasn't lost on her that the man responsible for making it all possible was currently hammering something in his backyard, the rhythmic pounding carrying through the walls between their houses. She'd grown accustomed to the sound over the past few days—Caleb seemed to approach home renovation with the same methodical intensity he brought to everything else.

At least his fortress-fence blocked most of the view between their properties now. She could pretend he wasn't there, thirty feet away, living his life parallel to hers like some sort of cosmic joke.

Elara poured herself a glass of wine and settled at her kitchen table with a stack of community impact reports. The numbers were impressive—teenage enrollment in after-school programs up forty percent, small business applications up sixty percent, resident satisfaction surveys showing overwhelmingly positive responses. She was building something real here, something that mattered.

The wine and the satisfaction of a job well done made her drowsy. By ten o'clock, she was yawning over the quarterly budget projections, ready to call it a night.

She was loading her wine glass into the dishwasher when she heard it.

A soft scraping sound, like metal against wood.

Elara froze, one hand still on the dishwasher door. The sound came again—deliberate, careful, coming from somewhere near her back door.

Her heart began to race, but she forced herself to think rationally. It could be anything. A raccoon getting into the garbage cans. A tree branch scraping against the house in the evening breeze. The neighbor's cat trying to get through the pet door she'd installed for the previous owner's elderly tabby.

The scraping stopped.

Elara held her breath, straining to hear over the pounding of her own pulse. The house seemed to hold its breath with her, every familiar creak and settling sound amplified in the sudden silence.

Then she heard footsteps.

Slow, deliberate, circling around to the side of the house where her bedroom window faced the narrow alley between properties. Someone was definitely out there, moving with the kind of careful stealth that suggested they didn't want to be discovered.

Elara's mouth went dry. Her phone was upstairs on her nightstand, plugged in for the night. The landline was in the living room, twenty feet away but feeling like twenty miles.

Another sound—this one unmistakably the jiggle of a door handle being tested.

Someone was trying to get into her house.

Terror flooded her system, sharp and immediate. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but where? The front door was visible from the street, and whoever was outside might see her if she tried to escape that way. The back door was obviously compromised. That left the windows, but they were old and painted shut, not exactly built for quick escapes.

The door handle jiggled again, more insistently this time.

Elara forced her frozen legs to move, creeping toward the living room where her phone charger snaked up the wall to the outlet. If she could just reach her cell phone—

The sound of splintering wood made her blood turn to ice.

They were breaking in.

She lunged for the living room, no longer caring about stealth. Her bare feet slipped on the hardwood floors as she scrambled for the coffee table where she'd left her purse. Her phone had to be in there somewhere—

The crash of breaking glass exploded through the house like a gunshot.

Elara screamed, spinning toward the kitchen where jagged fragments of her back door's window scattered across the floor like deadly confetti. A gloved hand reached through the broken pane, fumbling for the deadbolt.

She ran.

Pure panic drove her toward the front of the house, but the sound of the back door opening behind her made her stumble. Heavy footsteps echoed through her kitchen—not one person, but at least two, moving with the confidence of people who'd done this before.

"Check upstairs," a voice called out—male, gravelly, speaking with an accent she couldn't place through her terror.

"She's here somewhere," another voice replied. "Car's in the driveway."

They were looking for her specifically. This wasn't a random break-in or burglary gone wrong. These people had come for her.

Elara's hands shook as she fumbled with the front door's locks—two deadbolts and a chain that suddenly seemed impossibly complicated. Behind her, she could hear them moving through her house, opening doors, searching.

"Bedroom's clear."

"Try the basement."

The first deadbolt finally turned, but the second one stuck. Elara yanked at it desperately, tears streaming down her face as footsteps thundered overhead. They were being systematic, methodical, and it was only a matter of time before they thought to check the front of the house.

The lock finally gave way, but as Elara reached for the door handle, a shadow fell across the frosted glass panel.

Someone was on her front porch.

She was trapped.

The realization hit her like a physical blow. They'd surrounded the house, cutting off all her escape routes. Professional. Organized. Exactly the kind of threat Caleb had tried to warn her about.

Caleb.

His house was only thirty feet away. If she could just—

The front door handle rattled as someone tested it from outside.

Elara backed away from the door, her mind racing through increasingly desperate options. The basement had a small window that opened onto the side yard, but she'd never tried to climb through it. The upstairs bathroom window faced the alley, but it was a fifteen-foot drop to the ground.

"Living room's clear," the voice from inside called out.

She was out of time.

Making a split-second decision, Elara bolted for the back of the house. The kitchen was empty now, the intruders having moved on to search other rooms, but the back door stood open, cold night air streaming through the shattered window.

She could see them in her peripheral vision as she sprinted across the kitchen—two figures in dark clothing, one coming down the stairs, the other emerging from the hallway that led to her home office.

"There!"

The shout spurred her forward, through the ruined back door and into her small backyard. Behind her, she could hear them giving chase, their heavier footsteps pounding against her deck.

The fence between her property and Caleb's loomed ahead—his new, intimidating fortress that had looked so out of place just days ago. Now it looked like salvation.

"Caleb!" she screamed, throwing herself against the wooden barrier. "CALEB!"

The fence was too high to climb, especially in her panic, but she clawed at it anyway, splinters digging into her palms as she tried to find purchase.

Behind her, the footsteps were getting closer.

"Help me!" she sobbed, hammering her fists against the wood. "Please!"

A light blazed to life in Caleb's backyard, followed immediately by the sound of his back door slamming open.

"Ellie?" His voice cut through the night, sharp with alarm.

"They're in my house!" she cried. "Caleb, please—"

The section of fence in front of her suddenly swung inward—a hidden gate she hadn't noticed, perfectly camouflaged in the wooden panels. Caleb's hand shot through the opening, grabbing her wrist and yanking her through the gap with enough force to lift her off her feet.

She tumbled into his backyard, skinning her knees on the concrete patio as he slammed the gate shut behind her and threw some kind of heavy bolt.

"How many?" he demanded, his voice deadly calm as he pulled her to her feet.

"Two, maybe three. They broke the back door window—"

"Stay behind me."

Caleb moved with fluid precision, producing a gun from somewhere as if by magic. In the harsh glare of his security lights, Elara got her first clear look at him since Sunday morning. He was wearing dark jeans and a black t-shirt, but something about his posture, his movements, the way he held the weapon made him look like a completely different person.

Dangerous. Lethal. Nothing like the man who'd once helped her paint her living room or laughed at her terrible cooking.

"Caleb—"

"Not now." His attention was fixed on the fence, listening for sounds from her property. "Call 911. Tell them we have a home invasion in progress, suspects may be armed, requesting immediate backup."

Elara's hands shook as she dialed, the numbers blurring through her tears. When the dispatcher answered, she somehow managed to relay the information, though her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

From next door came the sound of car doors slamming, followed by the screech of tires on asphalt.

They were leaving.

Caleb didn't lower his weapon until the sound of the engine faded into the distance. Even then, he kept his body between Elara and the fence, scanning the darkness for threats she couldn't see.

"They're gone," she whispered.

"For now." He finally turned to look at her, and the expression on his face made her stomach lurch. It wasn't relief or comfort she saw there, but grim confirmation of something he'd been expecting all along.

"You were right," she said, the words feeling like glass in her throat. "About everything. The threats, the danger, all of it."

Caleb's jaw tightened. "I wish I'd been wrong."

In the distance, sirens wailed, growing closer. Soon her house would be full of police officers and crime scene technicians, turning her sanctuary into evidence. The Safe Streets Initiative, her proof that good could triumph over darkness, lay in ruins along with her shattered back door.

But for the first time in five years, standing in Caleb Rourke's backyard with tears streaming down her face and terror still racing through her veins, Elara felt completely safe.