The morning Zane drove to Miles' penthouse he was not sober, and he was no longer thinking clearly enough to pretend otherwise. Sleep had refused him entirely the night before. He had spent the dark hours pacing his apartment and staring at the phone in his hand, his body exhausted yet unable to collapse. Hunger had followed the same pattern. He had tried to force down food sometime around midnight, but it had tasted like dust and he had pushed the plate away after two bites.
By the time morning arrived his nerves were stretched thin enough to vibrate under his skin.
His hands rested on the steering wheel as the car moved through traffic, but his mind ran somewhere darker, somewhere far less controlled. He had called Willow again and again until the call log blurred into repetition. Twenty attempts, maybe more. Each one had ended with the same mechanical sentence that had begun to feel like a blade sliding under his ribs.
"This number is no longer in service."
