The flash vanished before Clara and Damien reached the front door.
Nothing but dark and quiet and trees, and the distant soft hush of the wind.
The car was missing.
No taillight. No tire track.
Just silence.
Clara stepped off the porch barefoot, the wood chilled beneath her feet. She stared down the gravel. Everything was in order. Not a print anywhere.
“They knew the layout,” Damien muttered behind her. “They knew how long it’d take us to get outside.”
Clara turned. “You think it was him?”
“I think it was someone he sent.”
“Why now?”
Damien looked past her, into the woods.
“Because we’re close.”
They didn’t sleep that night.
Clara sat curled in a corner of the library, wrapped in a blanket that smelled faintly of cedar and mothballs, laptop resting on her knees.
She scrolled
