The dispatcher’s voice dropped so low I almost missed it. “Sir, you already called. You told us you were locked outside and that someone inside refused to open the door. You described the house, the layout, even the way you sound when you’re scared.” My stomach clenched. I was still sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, phone pressed to my ear, and I had never left the room. Outside, the faint metallic scrape against the window frame had gone silent the instant he spoke.
I told him again that this was my first call. He didn’t argue. Instead he said, almost gently, “The previous caller is still on the other line. He’s using the same number.” A soft click followed, then my own voice, thin and shaking, came through the speaker. “Please, they’re not letting me in. I’m right here at the window. I’m freezing.” The voice matched mine down to the slight rasp from last week’s cold. I dropped the phone. It clattered against the floorboards and kept talking.
Crawling to the window, I stayed low. Rain streaked the glass. A figure stood on the narrow strip of grass, jacket soaked, phone held to one ear exactly as I had been holding mine. When the porch light flickered, I saw the side of their face—same jaw, same ear, same scar on the knuckle from the time I caught it in a car door. They turned their head as if they felt me watching. “He’s looking at me now,” my voice said from the phone on the floor. “Tell them to hurry.”
Blue and red lights swept across the yard. Two officers stepped out of the cruiser, hands near their belts. The figure raised both arms, still clutching the phone, and called out in my voice, “Thank God. He’s inside. He won’t let me in.” One officer nodded and started toward the front door. The other stayed with the figure. I unlocked the deadbolt from inside and opened the door a crack, heart hammering so hard I could taste metal. Both officers looked past the figure and straight at me.
They moved fast. The one nearest the porch raised a hand and ordered me to step back inside and keep my hands visible. Behind him, the soaked figure lowered the phone, smiled with my mouth, and walked past the officers without resistance. As the door closed behind my double, I heard my own calm voice finish the call on the line still open on the floor: “Thanks. I’ll take it from here.” The last thing I saw before the lights went out was my face, dry and unhurried, locking the deadbolt from the inside.
