CHAPTER 60
The sun wasn’t up yet. Just that dim blue pre-light that makes everything feel ghosted, like the world’s been drained of color and no one remembered to fill it back in.
I hadn’t slept. Not really. Maybe I closed my eyes for twenty minutes, but my brain wouldn’t let go. It kept looping through the alley, the sound of the bell above the bakery door, Ada’s voice in my ear — “Move.”
I sat on the floor, back against the peeling wall, USB drive pressed flat in my palm.
It felt too small to carry this much weight.
Lana was curled up on the mattress beside the desk, her jacket bunched into a makeshift pillow. She hadn’t changed clothes, just collapsed. The kind of sleep you fall into when your body shuts down before your mind can fight it. She twitched once — maybe a dream — then s
