Caleb's glass was still on the table.
He'd been gone for two hours, and the water inside had gone warm and flat, the uselessness that happens when something's been forgotten. I hadn't touched it. I sat across from it and watched the condensation ring dry into the wood, slow and permanent.
Three months.
Cassin had taken the bait. The forged document had surfaced in the archive exactly as Caleb had designed it to, and within thirteen days, Cassin had found it, swallowed it whole, and restructured his entire acquisition timeline. Three months of him chasing a ghost we'd built from a dead man's sentences.
I should have felt something clean. Relief, maybe. The particular lightness that comes after a long push.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Not fear. I knew what fear felt like in my body
