Owen Castell slept badly.
The safe house gave him the back bedroom, the good mattress, and a lamp turned low enough that waking up would not feel like being dragged under interrogation lights. Caleb's mother sat with him through the first hour because the shaking came in waves and Owen kept apologizing for it, though the sheets were the only thing in the room that did not need an apology.
She fed him broth one spoon at a time. He kept half of it down.
"That's enough work for tonight," she told him when his hands started trembling too hard to hold the bowl. "Sleep if you can. If you can't, lie still and make the bed do its job."
Owen tried to smile. It broke before it became one.
By midnight he was asleep, or close to it. She left the door open a crack and came back to the kitchen, where Caleb was failing at sleep in a chair with his broken arm in its sling.
"He'll live," she said.
Caleb looked toward the hall. "That's good."
