The photos arrive three days later.
I'm in the main room, folding laundry—a basket of club shirts that need to be sorted—when Coin walks in with the mail.
He's been handling runs to the post office lately, part of the security rotation that keeps everyone busy and accounted for.
It's a mundane task, the kind of thing that would have seemed boring a month ago.
Now it feels like safety.
Routine. Normal.
"Package for you," he says, tossing a manila envelope onto the couch beside me. "No return address. Weird."
My stomach drops.
I stare at the envelope like it's a coiled snake.
My name is printed on the front in blocky, anonymous letters—the kind you'd use if you didn't want anyone to recognize your handwriting.
No return address.
No postmark.
Nothing to indicate where it came from or who sent it.
A normal person would assume it's junk mail.
A forgotten catalog. Something harmless.
I am not a normal person. And I know exactly who would send something like this.
"Vanna?" Coin's watching me now, his brow furrowed. He's picked up on my reaction, the color draining from my face. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I don't know." I pick up the envelope with trembling fingers.
It's light. Thin. Something flat inside—paper, maybe.
Photographs.
No. Please, no.
I should wait for Garrett.
I know I should.
He's in the garage, working on a bike, just a few hundred feet away.
I could walk out there, hand him this envelope, let him be the one to open it.
Let him shield me from whatever's inside.
But the not-knowing is worse than anything the envelope could contain.
The anticipation is its own kind of torture.
So, I tear it open before I can talk myself out of it.
Photos spill out onto my lap.
