Mark noticed the silence before he noticed anything else was wrong.
Barnaby always met him at the door — always, regardless of how long Mark had been gone or how little attention he'd paid the dog in the days before. It was the one constant Mark had never had to work for, the one relationship in his life that required nothing of him but his presence, and even that, apparently, he'd managed to squander.
"Barnaby?" His voice echoed off the penthouse's expensive, empty surfaces. No click of claws on marble. No enthusiastic scramble toward the door.
He found the food bowl gone from the kitchen first — not empty, gone, the exact spot where it usually sat wiped clean, as though it had never existed at all. Then the dog bed by the window, vanished. Then the leash that usually hung by the door,
