There is a specific kind of silence on an unanswered phone that is different from a normal unanswered phone.
Normal unanswered: the person is busy, driving, in the shower, asleep, ignoring you because they've seen your name and have decided to deal with you later. Relatable. Fine.
The other kind: the phone rings into nothing with a quality of absence that your hindbrain registers as wrong before your forebrain has processed the data.
Zevran tried the safe house line twice.
I tried Draven.
Draven, to his credit, already had people moving — he'd had them moving since the fourth ring, because Draven operated at a speed that suggested he experienced time slightly differently from the rest of us.
"Two people at the building," he said. "Two minutes out."
"Otto is in there," I said.
A pau
