The east garage gate was still swinging when we arrived.
It moved in the afternoon wind with the particular, useless rhythm of something that had already failed at its purpose, back and forth, back and forth, the electronic lock hanging open where the magnetic seal had been bypassed with the kind of precision that didn't belong to a six-year-old girl acting alone.
Someone had taken her.
Lucian stood at the gate with his phone to his ear and his body carrying the specific, contained stillness that I had learned to read as his most dangerous state, not the cold fury of the boardroom, not the operational precision of the PCH, but something older and more fundamental. The stillness of a man who has lost something before and has organized his entire existence around ensuring it never happens
