The magnetic reed switch mounted inside the aluminum header above the front glass doors clicked twice.
Click-click.
The heavy double doors did not slide back on their overhead track. The black rubber weather-stripping stayed pressed flat against the aluminum threshold plate. Outside, the night rain washed down the plate glass in steady grey sheets, blurring the streetlights into greasy smears of yellow sodium.
Marcus “Mac” Cole did not need the glass to open to know something had crossed his curb.
He had driven the Route 04 night bus through New Marrow’s oil fog for twelve hard years before the Bureau took his flesh arm and bolted a ticket-punch to his bone. He knew the sound of a dry-reed switch tripping without a passenger to break the infrared beam.
That double-click was the operational tripwire for Store Rule 04.
At Register 1, the Epson TM-T88 thermal printer fired with a sharp, ugly chatter.
It did not print in black cashier ink. It spat out a strip soaked in wet purple thermal dye, the color of a fresh bruise on rotten fruit. The chemical stench of hot bisphenol-A and scorched copper filings drifted across the counter like exhaust smoke.
