The Boston air had a different kind of bite than New York’s — cleaner, colder, sharper. The kind that seeped into your lungs and made you feel like you’d been stripped bare.
Liam Hawthorne stood across the street from the quiet brownstone, hands in his coat pockets, watching the upper windows for signs of movement. He had been here for nearly an hour, watching life pass — a mailman making his rounds, a jogger with headphones, a neighbor scraping frost from a car windshield.
No security. No cameras. No guards. Just the occasional sound of a child’s laugh drifting faintly from inside.
When he finally crossed the street and climbed the steps, he wasn’t sure if his hands were cold from the air or from something deeper — nerves he wasn’t used to admitting to himself.
He knocked.
The door o
