The call came at seven-fifteen on a Thursday morning, four days after the bookshop.
Damon took it in the hallway — his phone, the channel through which Sable communicated, the careful back-and-forth of information passed through layers of plausible deniability. Lena was at the kitchen table with her tea and her research notes and she heard his voice change register — not the words, just the quality, the specific shift from guarded to something looser, something that was not quite relief but was in its neighbourhood.
He appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"Iris is out," he said.
She set down her mug.
"When?" she said.
"Last night," he said. "Sable picked her up from a public location — a petrol station twelve miles from the estate. Drake arranged it through an intermediary. No direct con
