Caleb did not sleep after the quiet pickup took Dani.
He tried. He lay on the safe house cot with his broken arm propped on a pillow and listened to the pipes tick in the walls. Every time his eyes closed, he saw the girl in the water asking for her mother, and then he saw the other one, the man inside the Meek, standing easy behind twelve pale marks and saying some of us knocked.
Taken was one thing. Knocked was another.
Around three, Caleb gave up and went downstairs.
Marcus was already in the kitchen.
He sat at the table with Henry's ledger open in front of him. The four volumes Mira had given them were stacked at his elbow, and the last one lay spread to the final pages. A pencil rested between his fingers, unused, the way a man holds a tool because setting it down would mean admitting he has no work for it yet.
"You should be asleep," Marcus said.
"So should you."
