But the night did not stop spinning.
Gage stayed awake, working the SD card with gloves and care. He got it into a reader and we watched the salvage in a halo of lit screens. The footage was grainy, but the metadata was stubborn: someone had filmed the arson from across the street. The clip captured two men and a corner of a jacket that bore a familiar rubber logo—the contractor’s brand we’d seen before—but then the camera panned, and for two frames, the silhouette of a deputy’s shoulder was reflected in a shop window.
The room went cold.
“That’s Calloway,” Dominic said. He didn’t raise his voice. It was the kind of sentence that kills a calm into small parts.
“No,” Dad said, a whisper that sounded like it carried a dozen old loyalties. “He—”
“He’s been in and out of Julian’s charts,”
