(Hailey Miller's POV)
The café was almost empty at that hour; the few remaining patrons were muffled silhouettes, their conversations reduced to breaths and the clink of cutlery. I chose a table in the darkest corner so I could watch both the entrance and the emergency exit without being obvious. The lamp over our table threw a pool of amber light across the folder and my hands. They trembled around the teacup—not with the hollow, nagging fear that had stalked me for weeks, but with a cold, focused energy I’d learned from watching Liam move through danger. It steadied me, sharpened every sense. In my bag, next to the gun I never left home without, the selected pages from El Contador’s diary lay like a loaded promise.
Díaz arrived on time, in plain clothes that did nothing to hide the mon
