The night had bled into dawn without rest.
Frank sat by the window with a cigarette burning between his fingers, the smoke curling lazily in the dim gray light. The apartment was too quiet. Curtains half drawn, air stale. Nothing moved except the dust floating in the shafts of dawn light. It wasn't silence that bothered him — it was the sense that the silence was watching.
He had felt it last night too, that static hum behind the walls. His instincts — sharpened by years of dirty wars and mercenary contracts — told him when something was off. This morning, it screamed louder than ever.
He stood and scanned the room, eyes sharp, movements slow. Everything looked fine. Ordinary. But ordinary was a disguise he'd seen too many times.
The balcony door was slightly ajar. He knelt and saw faint mud tracks on the tile — small footprints, fresh, maybe an hour old. The rain had stopped long before that. Not his shoes. Not his.
Zoey's door was closed.
