Swipe

messaged to say it’d be another late night, and presently Erin sat on the floor of her apartment among no fewer than five empty DOME boxes, three of which had come from the Spokie office just the night before, brought home by her father and hidden deep in his bedroom closet under the irresistible label “SUPPLY ROOM—113B.”
    Their contents were bizarre, but promising. A small roll of clear tape, an ounce of chalk dust, gel, pellets, sticky beanlike things, a button . . . Erin stared at the pile with reverence, as she might a loaded gun or a rattlesnake. She knew what very little of the equipment was, and she knew even less about how to use any of it, but she was determined not to let that get in her way.
    She’d already looked again through her father’s confidential papers, and she’d caught plenty she missed the first time around about the particular “threat” Spokie faced, about who this “Peck” might be, about the spy games he employed, and about the crimes he’d committed in this quiet Corn Belt town over the last few years. She’d certainly caught enough to know that she needed a tactical advantage for her mission not to be suicide. The details of the case were horrifying, and it was little wonder that they’d brought in the big-gun Beacon talent to handle it.
    Erin rolled up her sleeves. From his hiding spot under the couch, her iguana scampered over to see what all the intrigue was.
    “You wanna help, little buddy?” She picked Iggy up, and he looked at her cockeyed, paddling his claws in the air like he was swimming. His tail swished back and forth, and he stuck his tongue out in a short, funny rhythm.
    Erin laughed. She decided to take this as a yes.
    4
    There was a rule in the Langly household about throwing anything upstairs in the yard on their roof. The rule was: don’t throw anything upstairs in the yard on the roof.
    But Dane had brought over a hoverdisk, and he had long ago convinced Logan that actually, if the Langlys had thought about it, the rule they’d really meant to lay down was “don’t throw anything off the yard on the roof, and don’t fall off yourself when you’re trying to catch it.” So the two of them stood up there now, watching the sun lower into the evening parts of the sky and tossing the disk back and forth on its lowest “fake out” setting.
    “You’re likin’ that new girl,” Dane said after a bit of small talk. His throw zigzagged back to Logan.
    “What, uh, makes you say—” Logan lunged for the catch and didn’t finish his thought.
    “You should introduce me sometime—she seems cool.”
    “Sure,” Logan said, his voice cracking over the word. “How was New Chicago, anyway?”
    “Boring,” Dane said, but he missed his catch, and the two of them watched wide-eyed as the hoverdisk floated over the roof’s edge and out of sight.
    “You broke our own rule!” Logan said.
    Dane looked down over the railing and shook his head. “To the letter of it, yes. But I’m pretty sure the spirit of that rule is actually ‘don’t hit anybody on the street with anything you throw over the side, and don’t break any neighbors’ windows.’” He smiled. “We’re blameless.”
    So the two of them set about retrieving Dane’s hoverdisk from the tree on the opposite sidewalk—guilt-free, but with every intention of finishing the job before Logan’s mom or dad saw.
    They were halfway down the outdoor spiraling staircase when Dane stopped for a moment just outside Logan’s room.
    “Hey, I meant to ask you,” Dane said. “What’s this fishing line for?”
    Logan turned around, confused.
    “I saw it on the way in but forgot to mention it.” Dane reached out over the stairwell, on his toes with his arm fully extended, and plucked the twine like a guitar string. It made a low and eerie twang that rang all the way across the street.
    “I’ve . . . never noticed it,” Logan said. He stepped back to have a look.
    The line was clear, and invisible unless the sun caught it just right. It was attached to the corner window of Logan’s room (a window that didn’t open) with a small dollop of clear superglue, and it extended, taut, into the distance, to some unidentifiable point. Beyond a few feet out, nothing could be seen of the thing, and it was unlikely anyone could spot it by looking through the bedroom window, or by using the stairs in any normal way.
    “How’d you see it?”
    Dane shrugged. “Just caught my eye on the way in. The light