The note from Leo was a lit fuse in the stagnant air of my cell. We have her. Bail.
The words were a mantra I repeated, a shield against the creeping dread that it was all an elaborate trick, a final, cruel hope dangled before the fall.
The hours after the note were the longest of my life, a brutal exercise in suspended animation. Each footstep in the hall, each jangle of keys, was a potential herald of either my freedom or my final condemnation.
I traced the tiny, hidden seam on the fake pen I'd returned to Elara, the memory of its weight a tangible promise in a world of abstractions. What had they found? A video? A transaction? A confession? The not-knowing was a form of torture, my mind conjuring a thousand scenarios, each more fantastical and terrifying than the last.
