I stared at the message until the letters stopped making sense as words.
"Call it," Marcus said, already reaching for my phone like he meant to do it himself. "Whoever this is, I want to hear their voice."
"I'll call it." I pulled the phone back before he could take it, my thumb hovering over the number for a full second before I pressed it.
It rang twice. On the third ring, someone picked up, and the silence on the other end stretched just long enough that I almost hung up, certain I'd misdialed, certain this was some prank number meant to rattle me and nothing more.
"I wondered how long it would take you to call back."
The voice was a woman's, older, precise in a way that reminded me instantly of every formal dinner I'd sat through in the first year of my marriage, learning which fo
