Fifty-three minutes left.
I didn’t sleep. I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark with the phone in my hand and watched the numbers bleed away. Every time I closed my eyes I felt him again—the way he had held me down on the security desk, the low sound he made when he came inside me, the finality in his voice when he told me to leave.
At 11:20 I left my room.
The hallway was silent. My father’s door remained closed. I walked downstairs barefoot, the same black robe wrapped around me, and found the security room empty. The monitors glowed with empty corridors and still gardens. Marcus was not there.
I found him in the garage.
He stood beside the black SUV with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, the same way he had looked the night he corrupted the file. The moment the side door
