Margaret's eyes moved slowly across the room before stopping on Claire.Her expression changed.Not fear.Recognition."You," she whispered.Claire went rigid in her chair. "Me? I do not understand. We have never met.""No," Margaret agreed, her voice thin and rasping, barely audible over the low hum of the garage's overhead light. "But I know your face. I have known it for longer than you have been alive to wear it."Sara moved to the table immediately, pressing two fingers gently to Margaret's wrist, checking her pulse with the same practiced calm she brought to everything. "You should not be talking. You lost a great deal of blood tonight.""I do not have the luxury of resting quietly and hoping I wake up with more time later," Margaret said. "Time is the one thing none of us actually have, Sara. You know that better than most."Andre stepped closer, careful to keep his voice low. "The medic said you kept repeating something. That someone needed to warn Claire before anyone touches

"We cannot stay here," Sara said, the moment the taillights of Diane's car vanished around the corner. "If she found this address, others can find it just as easily, and not all of them will be content with simply holding up a photograph.""Margaret cannot be moved," the medic said flatly, already back at her side, checking the dressing on her shoulder with quick, practiced hands. "Not tonight. Not for at least another day, if you want her to survive whatever infection is already trying to take hold.""Then some of us stay, and some of us do not," Andre said. He was still watching the street through the narrow gap in the glass, half expecting Diane's car to reappear, half expecting something worse. "Voss, can this place hold if it needs to?"Voss's expression was grim. "It was never built to withstand anything more determined than a burglar looking for spare parts. But I can make it harder to get into than it looks, and I can make sure anyone trying will regret the attempt long enough

Sleep did not come easily for anyone that night, though the garage settled into a rough approximation of rest, Voss taking the first watch by the blacked out window, Sara dozing fitfully in a chair angled toward Margaret's table, Mara curled tightly into herself in the far corner, still refusing the blanket Claire had offered her twice.Andre did not sleep at all.He sat with the photograph spread flat against his knee, the brass key beside it, studying the young, laughing faces of his father and a woman who would grow into someone capable of destroying a marriage to protect a thirty year old secret. He searched their expressions for some hint of what would come later, some shadow of the disagreement that had shaped everything after, and found nothing but two people who looked, in that single frozen moment, genuinely happy."You are going to wear a hole in that photograph if you keep looking at it like it owes you something," Claire said quietly, settling into the chair across from hi

Andre did not turn the phone off."Not yet," he said. "You do not get to say something like that and then ask me to stop listening."Margaret held his eyes. She looked older in the harsh light, and much weaker, but there was nothing confused about her now. She looked like a woman who had been waiting a long time and had just heard the door open."Then listen fast," she said. "The phone outside is counting down. Am I right?"Andre stiffened. "How do you know that?""Because I know how they behave when they are left for someone," Margaret said. "You have less than four minutes. Do not waste them on questions you already know the answers to.""Margaret," Sara said, stepping closer to the table. "What is the signal?""Not a what," Margaret said. "A message. I was never carrying a tracker. I was carrying something your father left with me, and I was told never to open it until the right device came near.""Told by Edward," Andre said."Yes.""Then why did you not tell us at the clock tower

"How far back?" Andre asked, not taking his eyes off the mirror."Half a block," Voss said. "Holding steady. Not closing.""Lose it.""I am trying." Voss cut the wheel hard, taking a turn Andre would not have chosen, narrow and unlit, the tires protesting against the wet road. The headlights behind them swung wide, then straightened, matching the turn a beat later, unhurried."They are not trying to catch us," Sara said, watching through the rear window. "They are trying to stay exactly where they are.""Why would anyone want to only follow?" Claire asked."Because following costs nothing," Margaret murmured from the back seat, her eyes still closed, her voice thin but present. "And it tells them everything. Where you go. Who you trust. What you are willing to risk to protect."Andre looked down at Edward's phone again. The countdown had stopped moving.[TWO MINUTES.]Frozen. Holding."It stopped," he said."Stopped, or waiting?" Sara asked.He did not know. He held it up, angling it