The men in black moved like a single thing, practiced and ugly. They fanned around the boathouse like predators, flashlights stabbing at the pilings. For a second everything smelled like diesel and the lake: cold and bright and wrong.
One of them pushed forward, badge-less but confident, and his voice had the kind of smoothness that comes from being paid to lie. “Mr. Shaw,” he said. “We need you to come with us for a brief debriefing.”
Dominic didn’t look surprised. He never did. He looked at me instead—the look of a man measuring how much of himself he could hand over without losing the rest.
“You want him,” I said, because sometimes naming the nothingness you’re staring at makes it less monstrous. “Take him. Just don’t hurt him.”
The man smiled as if my words were an amusing footnote
