Your Safe Word Is Public

How it begins

The advertisement used the phrase Rae had taught her sister to say only if someone was listening.

Blue kettle. Open window.

Four words.

Nothing memorable.

That had been the point.

Now they played between a breakfast cereal promotion and the traffic report, spoken by a cheerful actor over music designed to make people feel safe.

Rae turned off the car radio.

Her phone rang.

Then it rang again.

By the time she pulled into a service station, six people had called.

She knew every number.

Her sister was the seventh.

"Did you hear it?"

"Don't answer any questions from anyone you don't recognize."

"I already called the number."

Rae closed her eyes.

The phrase had begun as a family arrangement. Later she had used variations in private safety workshops. Nobody was supposed to possess the complete list.

Not her employer.

Not the venue.

Certainly not an advertising agency.

"What did they ask?"

"My name. Whether I was alone. They said it was a welfare campaign."

Rae watched a delivery driver carry pastries into the service station. A woman held a small dog beneath one arm while searching for change. The world continued with its insulting talent for looking ordinary.

"Where are you?"

"At work."

"Stay with someone you trust. I'll call you back."

She opened the advertiser's website.

A smiling family.

A reassuring logo.

No company address.

At the bottom of the page, beneath a paragraph about community resilience, was a photograph of a man she recognized from a training session three years earlier.

He had said he was there for his daughter.

Rae enlarged the image.

In the reflection of the window behind him stood a camera.

Not a phone.

A mounted surveillance camera aimed directly at the workshop's registration desk.

Her phone vibrated again.

Unknown number.

She let it ring.

A message appeared.

Thank you for confirming which people matter to you.