The dirty hand returned without the cloth.
Five fingers opened beneath Yara's camera. The nails were split short. Fresh blood marked the middle knuckle, and white fibers from the sterile wrapper clung to the thumb.
"Can you hear me?" Yara asked.
The fingers closed once.
A man's voice came through the gap. "You still have one boot."
Yara lowered herself beside the water wall. "Odo?"
The hand pressed flat against the underside of the split tread. No face entered the view.
Olin leaned toward the fixed speaker, but Farah kept his line closed. Yara had named a possibility. A family answer from another site could not finish it.
Eri brought Odo Ire's old card beside the current feed.
The cold iron pin had returned warm enough to fog trench air. Three scratches crossed it. Two copied old evidence marks, and the third cut through metal deposited after the pin entered.
That test had proved current force and heat.
It had not proved Odo then. It did not prove the hand now.
