Twenty-nine hours left.
I woke to the soft vibration of my phone on the nightstand. No message. Just the secure app still showing the same delayed buffer, the countdown ticking in cold white numbers. Somewhere in the house Marcus was awake too. I could feel it the way animals feel storms before the sky changes.
I didn’t see him until late morning.
My father had a meeting at the downtown office and insisted I come along so we could have lunch afterward. Marcus drove. I sat in the back seat directly behind him, watching the hard line of his shoulders, the controlled way his hands rested on the wheel. Every few minutes our eyes met in the rear-view mirror. Neither of us looked away first.
The meeting ran long. My father stayed inside the glass building while Marcus and I waited in the pri
