The Delivery at 6:17

At 6:17, Nessa's delivery scanner instructed her to leave a parcel outside Flat Nine and photograph it beside the door. The building was a converted office block. Half its corridor lights were out. Flat Nine had no nameplate.

She placed the box on the mat. Before she could press the camera button, a text arrived from the customer: Make sure the whole door is visible. Do not knock.

Nessa stepped back. In the polished strip beside the lift she saw another person standing at the far end of the corridor. A man in a gray jacket. He turned away as soon as she looked directly at him.

The scanner showed an earlier delivery attempt at 5:42, recorded by a driver whose van number she knew. Nessa called him. He answered from the depot. He had never been inside this building; a dispatcher had reassigned the parcel while it was still on his route.

The customer sent another message: Take the picture now.

From inside Flat Nine came a small scraping noise. Nessa knocked. The man in the gray jacket began walking toward her.

“Courier,” she called.

A woman answered through the door. “I didn't order anything.”

The man said he was building management. He reached for the parcel. Nessa lifted it first. The label was attached with fresh clear tape over an older address. Underneath, she could feel the hard rectangle of a small metal case.

“Then I'll return it,” she said.

He caught her wrist. The scanner fell against the wall, and its emergency alarm sounded. Nessa had worn it on a wrist strap since a dog bit her two years earlier. Pulling it sharply away from the body activated the alarm; depot staff had tested the feature every month.

A door opened behind the man. Then another. He released her and walked toward the stairwell. Nessa did not follow. She told the woman in Flat Nine to keep her door shut and asked a neighbor to call the police.

The parcel contained stolen keys and a threatening note. The customer wanted a photograph proving that it had reached the woman's home. The man in the corridor had planned to wait until she opened the door. She had reported him before; she had not expected him to find her new address.

At the depot, Nessa's supervisor asked why she had ignored the instruction not to knock.

She showed him the two messages on her scanner. Nothing was wrong with either sentence by itself. Together, with the man waiting down the corridor, they had sounded less like directions than a countdown.