Anna POV
Six days of nothing.
Six days of checking the encrypted app every morning before I got out of bed, every afternoon when Maris left the room, every night when Dorian's breathing told me he was asleep. Six days of the screen showing me nothing except the last message she sent.
At this point, it’s either Petra Halden was going to come forward or she wasn't, and there was no version of my reaching toward her that made that more likely. I knew how to wait. Five years in this house had made waiting into a skill I had not asked for and had become very good at.
On the sixth morning I came downstairs and made coffee and stood at the kitchen window and watched the driveway and did not check the app.
At eleven-fourteen, while I was sitting at the small desk in the study pretending to re
