Lucas didn't answer his phone that night, or the next morning, or the morning after that.
Mia told herself there were explanations. He'd gone somewhere to lie low after the break-in. He was avoiding his phone deliberately, wary of being tracked. She told herself these things on the walk to work, in the elevator, at her desk over paperwork she couldn't focus on, and none of them made the cold, steady dread in her chest sit any quieter.
It was the note that finally undid the careful calm she'd been holding onto.
She found it on the third morning, tucked into the drawer of her own desk where it had no business being, folded once and pushed far enough back that she wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't been searching the drawer for a stapler. No envelope. No signature. Just a single line, in
