By morning, the offer had become a line on the wall.
Sam put it there under the fifty-one and the hard black *GO,* not as a number, because there was no number for it, but as a box drawn in grease pencil with one word inside.
*CENTER.*
Caleb stood beside him in the basement with the same clothes on from the night before and no sleep in his eyes. The safe house above them was beginning to move. Floorboards shifted. A kettle clicked. Someone laughed once in the kitchen, too quiet to be a real joke.
Normal sounds. Good sounds. The woman had not needed to touch any of them. She had only needed to place a door in Caleb's head and leave it open.
"I hate that you're right to put it there," Caleb said.
"I hate that you made me the person who knows why it belongs there." Sam capped the pencil, then uncapped it again and drew a hard slash across the box. Not erasing it. Marking it refused.
