Atlas stands across from her building, broad shoulders hunched under the streetlamp.His hood is up, hands in his pockets, jaw clenched in a way that means he’s thirty seconds from exploding.
He turns as soon as I pull up.
I toss the car into park and get out.
“What do you see?”I ask, already scanning the windows.
Atlas shakes his head once.“Nothing.No movement.No shadow.No sound.”
He hesitates, then adds quietly, “Something feels wrong.”
My stomach turns.Atlas doesn’t feel wrong unless wrong is guaranteed.
I check the time again.
8:41 PM.
Twenty-one minutes late.
Atlas steps toward the door.
“No,” I say sharply.
He stops but looks like he wants to tear the building down with his hands.
“She said she needed one night,” I remind him.
“She said she’dtext.”
The anger beneath his voice is really fear.I know the sound.It’s the same tone he used the night Wren flinched so hard she crashed into his chest.
I turn away from him and look at the building.
Lights on in a few apartments.
Someone cooking on the second floor.
A dog barking faintly somewhere.
Normal.
Except the wrongness hangs heavy.
Finn’s name flashes on my screen again.
FINN:
Kael pick up
I’m freaking out man—
ANSWER
I call him.
He answers on the first ring.“Did she text?Tell me she texted.”
“No,” I say.“Not yet.”
