Now they know too.
For one second nobody breathed.
Then Evelyn moved.
Fast enough that it felt rude.
He took the phone right out of Isaac's hand, looked once at the screen, and all the blood seemed to leave his face without changing the expression.
"Off," he said.
Isaac reached for it on reflex. Evelyn was already moving again.
He yanked the battery-less thing into airplane mode, powered it down, and shoved it into his own jacket pocket.
"That's my—"
"It was your phone," Evelyn said. "Now it's a beacon."
Another heavy hit shook the back of the house.
Closer.
Wood groaned somewhere below them.
Ty flinched. "Can they just do that?"
"Yes," Evelyn said.
That answer did something ugly to the room.
Marlon was breathing through his teeth now, every inhale shallow and measured like he was bargaining with the pain instead of losing to it. Ty still had one hand pressed to his thigh, the other braced on the rail. Blood had already soaked through both of them.
Jadah looked from Isaac to Evelyn to the hallway behind them where his mother still lay under the crooked lamp. Her face had gone beyond pale. She looked like somebody had taken a wet cloth to the whole inside of her.
"Move," Evelyn said again.
This time Isaac did.
Down the stairs. Past the busted table. Past the glittering teeth of glass in the living room doorway. Past the smell of bleach and old wood and blood turning the air metallic.
Two men were in the kitchen.
Not the knife man. Different. Both dark clothes, clean hands, eyes that stayed moving even when the rest of them didn't. One had the basement hatch open already, swollen wood doors propped back like the house had opened its mouth. The other was at the rear window with a pistol low and ready, watching the side yard through the gap in the curtain.
Nobody introduced themselves.
Nobody wasted a word on the kids bleeding into Evelyn's problem.
"Contact left fence, then lost," the man by the window said.
Evelyn nodded once. "We're going under."
Ty gave a weak, disbelieving laugh. "That is not a sentence people should have to hear."
The man at the hatch looked at him once. Blank. Unmoved.
Ty hated him instantly.
A fresh crack split the front of the house. Glass or frame, hard to tell. Jadah jerked and swore under her breath.
"Down," Evelyn said.
The basement steps were narrower than Isaac remembered and twice as steep. Rough concrete. Damp air. That old rot smell his mother used to hate. It hit him all at once with a memory of being six and trying to sneak down here with a flashlight and Evelyn—years younger, less gray, same hard eyes—lifting him back up by the back of his shirt before he'd made the third step.
The memory hit so wrong Isaac nearly missed one of the stairs.
Marlon did miss one. His leg buckled and he caught the wall with a raw hiss.
Ty got under his shoulder fast. "I got you."
"Congrats," Marlon muttered. "Worst ride share ever."
The joke was thin and bad and perfect enough that Isaac almost broke on it.
The basement was low-ceilinged and wet at the corners, concrete walls sweating in the weak yellow cast of one bare bulb. Rusted shelves lined one side. Old paint cans. A broken fan. Two chairs nobody had wanted badly enough to bring upstairs. At the far wall, half hidden behind shelving, a narrow metal door stood open inward.
Storm exit.
Isaac had forgotten it existed.
Of course Evelyn hadn't.
The man from the window came down last and shut the hatch doors overhead without latching them. Darkness folded heavier around the bulb.
Jadah wrapped both arms around herself and looked around the basement like the house was breathing.
"What is this?"
"Old way out," Evelyn said.
"How do you know about it?"
He looked at her once. "I said not your business."
She looked ready to spit in his face.
A muffled crash overhead cut that short.
Everybody froze.
Footsteps.
Not in the kitchen now.
Hall.
Moving through the first floor.
One set. Then another.
Slow.
Searching.
Ty's eyes flicked up to the ceiling. "Nope."
The man by the storm door said, "They're inside."
Evelyn turned to Isaac. "Key."
Isaac blinked. "What."
"The brass key. Give it to me."
For half a second his hand went to the wrong pocket.
The flash drive pocket.
Evelyn saw that. So did Marlon.
"Not that one," Evelyn said, very quietly.
Jadah heard the quiet and heard too much in it.
Her eyes sharpened again.
Isaac pulled out the brass house key and handed it over.
Evelyn gave it to the man by the door without looking. "Test."
The man stepped to the storm exit, slid the key in, and turned.
It clicked.
Clean.
Like somebody had oiled it recently.
That was worse than if it had jammed.
"Outside?"
"Alley," the man said. "Half blocked by brush."
Evelyn nodded. "Good."
Above them, a floorboard groaned.
Then another.
Over the basement stairs.
Someone had reached the kitchen.
Ty's hand tightened on Marlon's leg wound by accident.
Marlon sucked in air through his teeth. "Trying to help less would be huge."
"Sorry," Ty whispered, not sounding sorry at all, just scared.
Evelyn crouched in front of Marlon and pulled a flat black pouch from inside his jacket. He opened it quick. Gauze. Tape. Small shears. Things no normal man carried into a house unless his life had become this shape a long time ago.
He cut Marlon's jeans at the thigh without asking.
The blood was bad.
Not pouring. Deep enough.
Ty looked at it and went green.
"Oh, wow," he said faintly. "Hate that."
"Hold pressure here," Evelyn said, pressing Ty's hand down with clinical brutality.
Ty yelped. "That is my friend."
"He'll live longer if you stop narrating."
He wrapped Marlon's forearm next, tight enough to make Marlon's mouth flatten and his eyes close once.
Isaac watched Evelyn's hands move and wanted to break every finger on them.
Because he knew what he was doing.
Because he'd come late anyway.
Because his mother was upstairs cooling while Evelyn taped another man's wounds like this could balance a ledger.
Jadah moved closer to Isaac in the cramped space, close enough that her shoulder brushed his once.
Usually that would've made him move away.
He didn't.
Her voice was low. "Do you trust him."
"No."
"Are we still doing what he says."
"Yes."
That answer seemed to bother both of them.
Overhead, the basement hatch groaned.
Not open.
Weight on it.
Testing.
One of the men near the stairs raised his weapon toward the ceiling and waited without blinking.
Silence swallowed the room.
Then a new sound.
A phone ringing upstairs.
Everybody looked at Isaac.
He stared back. "He took mine."
Not his phone.
His mother's.
The thought arrived complete and cold.
Her missing phone.
Ringing somewhere above them in the house.
The ringing cut off after four pulses.
Then a voice above, muffled by wood:
"Nothing down here."
Lie or bait. Hard to tell.
A second voice answered from farther away. "Move front."
Footsteps retreated.
Not far enough.
Not safe enough.
Just not right on top of them anymore.
Nobody in the basement relaxed.
Evelyn rose. "We go now. No light outside, no talking, no names."
He looked at Isaac when he said the last part.
Isaac looked back at him like that would matter later.
One of Evelyn's men cracked the storm door open.
Night air slid in. Wet dirt. Weeds. Alley trash. Summer rot.
No shouted warning.
No gunfire.
The man opened it wider.
"Clear."
Evelyn motioned Ty first, with Marlon.
Ty got under Marlon again, jaw swelling ugly now, shirt front spotted with blood that wasn't all his own. Marlon pushed through pain and put weight where he could, less on the bad leg, more on stubbornness.
Jadah went next, fast and silent for once in her life.
Isaac hung back one second too long.
Evelyn caught that too.
"Don't."
Isaac's jaw tightened. "She's up there."
"And dead."
The words came flat as concrete.
Isaac took a half step at him.
Evelyn didn't move.
"You say that again."
Evelyn looked exhausted for the first time all night. Not soft. Just worn down in one old, hidden place.
"She died getting that out," he said, eyes flicking once—there, to the pocket. "You throw that away because you want five more seconds in the same room, she died for nothing."
Isaac hated him so much in that moment it almost felt clean.
Then a crash sounded from the front of the house. Big. Entry big.
Not testing.
In.
One of Evelyn's men hissed, "Move."
That made the choice for him.
Isaac went through the storm exit into the alley.
The brush slapped wet at his calves. The alley was narrow and half choked with overgrown weeds, old fencing, and trash bags split by raccoons days ago. Moonlight barely touched it. Somebody's security light farther down flickered on and off like it had a nervous condition.
Jadah was ten feet ahead, back against the brick wall of the next property, breathing through her mouth. Ty and Marlon were crouched near a dented trash bin, Ty still bracing him upright. One of Evelyn's men had gone ahead to the alley mouth. The other came out behind Isaac and took position facing the door.
Evelyn was last.
He eased the storm door mostly shut behind him, leaving it unlatched by a hair.
Then he turned to Isaac and said, "When we move, you stay between me and—"
From inside the house, somewhere very close to the basement now, a man shouted:
"Door!"
Everything snapped tighter.
Evelyn didn't even finish the sentence.
"Go."
They moved.
Fast.
Down the alley in a low rush, shoes slipping on damp dirt and broken gravel. Marlon nearly went down twice. Ty held him up through both with a stream of whispered profanity that somehow kept sounding offended instead of frightened. Jadah stayed close behind Isaac now, no more arguments about pride or who belonged where. Survival had finally beaten ego by a point.
At the alley mouth a dark SUV sat with the engine running.
No plates in front.
Rear passenger door already open.
"Get in," Evelyn said.
Ty threw Marlon in first, climbed after him. Jadah went next.
Isaac stopped dead one step short.
The SUV interior was dark.
Tinted.
Too much like the sedan.
Evelyn saw it on his face and got angry for real this time.
"Choose," he said.
From behind them, the storm door banged all the way open.
Men spilled into the alley.
One beam of white light cut low over the weeds.
Found Isaac's legs.
"There!"
Evelyn shoved Isaac so hard he hit the seat frame with his sore shoulder and almost blacked out again. Then Evelyn came in after him, slammed the door, and shouted at the driver—
"Go."
The SUV launched forward so hard Ty's head hit the window.
Gunshots cracked behind them.
Human, deafening, real.
The rear glass starred white in one corner but held.
Jadah made a strangled sound and ducked so low she folded into herself.
Marlon's head hit back against the seat. His face had gone waxy now. Too pale. Too quiet.
Ty grabbed at him. "Hey. Hey, no. Stay awake, bro."
"I'm awake," Marlon said, barely audible.
The SUV took a corner too fast. Everybody slammed sideways.
Isaac caught himself with one hand and felt the flash drive dig into his thigh through the pocket.
Still there.
Still hot.
Still dragging the whole night behind it.
Across from him in the dark, Evelyn was breathing hard for the first time since he'd appeared.
Not panicked.
Angry.
He wiped a smear of blood—Isaac's or somebody else's—off his jaw with the back of his hand and looked straight at Isaac.
Then at Jadah.
Then Ty.
Then Marlon bleeding out onto the seat.
And said the one thing that made all four of them go still.
"They weren't supposed to know about any of you."