I crouched in the suffocating darkness of the attic, dust scratching at the back of my throat, a fine powder of lies and decay. Fear was a physical presence, a heavy weight pressing down on my chest, making each breath a shallow, painful effort. The world I knew had dissolved in the space of ten minutes, replaced by this cold, terrifying reality playing out in the hallway below.
Downstairs, Caleb—or the man I called Caleb—set the passports on the small hallway table with a quiet, decisive click. His movements were efficient, economical, devoid of the familiar, easygoing grace I knew. This was a different person wearing my husband’s skin.
“The Bureau moved faster than we anticipated,” the man in the raincoat said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
The Bureau. Mara’s world. My stomach sank, a sickening plummet into a bottomless abyss.
Caleb’s jaw tightened, a small, hard knot of muscle clenching near his ear. “How close are they?”
“Close enough that your wife’s sister may have already been tipped off.”
My sister. **Mara.** The protector, the warrior, the one who lived in the shadows to keep people like me safe in the light. I clutched my dead phone, a useless piece of plastic, and prayed. I prayed for it to light up again with her name, and simultaneously prayed it wouldn’t make a sound and betray my hiding place.
Caleb gestured with his chin toward my laptop. “She never checks anything. She trusts me implicitly. Even if she saw a stray file or an odd transaction, she wouldn’t understand what she was looking at. That’s why I chose her.”
