Dante did not believe in signs.
He believed in numbers, records, behavior, and the small involuntary mistakes people made when they thought the important part of a lie had already survived. Signs belonged to poets and desperate men. Dante had spent most of his life avoiding both categories.
By the end of the week, he understood desperation better.
Noah Andrade's birth date remained open on his screen. Dante had closed the file three times and reopened it four. He told himself he was checking the timeline for accuracy. He told himself there were premature births, delayed registrations, missing details, coincidences cruel enough to look like fate. He told himself a resemblance could be invented by guilt.
Then he remembered the boy holding a plastic fork and saying he looked like he was s
