The bar was quiet on the night everything changed.
Not the heavy quiet of fear or the tense quiet of waiting—just the comfortable quiet of a place that was at peace. The jukebox was playing something soft, something old, something that made Maya think of summer nights and slow dances and the kind of love that lasted forever. The regulars were scattered at their usual tables, nursing their usual drinks, their usual conversations humming in the background like white noise, a familiar rhythm that wrapped around her like a warm blanket. It was a night like any other, a night that should have been unremarkable, a night she would have forgotten by morning if not for what was about to happen.
And yet, Maya knew something was different.
She felt it in the way Knox looked at her, his eyes holdin
