Page 179 of What We Become

I’m so tired of being almost killed.

FORTY-ONE

MILO

“Come on, you beautiful bastard. Show me something.”

It’s nearly midnight, and I’ve been staring at the diner footage long enough for the people on-screen to feel more familiar than the ones upstairs.

Months ago, I installed cameras in the diner to keep an eye on kitten and run ID checks on everyone who so much as sniffed in her direction. Fat lot of good that did.

Ahem—Jamie.

But at least they give me plenty of angles to work with while I try to figure out whether Stephen was outside the diner today or Sage’s mind was playing tricks on her.

At this point, I’m kind of hoping she really did see him so we have a lead.

The diner feed buffers, sharpens, and gives me Sage in fluorescent misery.

Frame one: she’s carrying a bus tray loaded with the detritus of lunchtime America.

Frame two: she freezes.

I lean in so close my nose nearly kisses the monitor.

“Enhance,” I mutter, because I am legally required to say that at least once whenever doing surveillance.

The software obeys. But only because I’m pulling the original-resolution file while zooming in.

I scrub back three seconds. Play. Stop. Back. Play slower.

Sage straightens from table six with the tray balanced on one palm, turns toward the counter, and then—there. Her whole body locks. Full prey response. Like someone reached through the screen and yanked a wire in her spine.

“Okay,” I whisper. “That’s not nothing.”

I drag up the exterior angle from camera three, the one aimed through the front windows and slightly left. The image quality is trash. Sun glare washes half the frame into holy ascension, and a guy in a windbreaker chooses that exact second to lumber through my line of sight like he’s personally invested in ruining evidence.

I freeze it. Zoom. Stabilize.

A shape on the far sidewalk. Human-shaped. Brown-ish hair. Mid-height. Could be Stephen.

Could also be literally every third man in Hunter Harbor, because apparently the local male population was assembled from one factory template labeled unthreatening cardigan douche.

I tap keys and pull the traffic cam from the intersection thirty yards down. Then I start twenty minutes before the incident and run it at double speed, watching bodies blur past the frame. Dog walker. Yoga pants lady with a kid. Delivery van. Couple with an umbrella.

No floppy brown hair. No wire-rim glasses. No cardigan. No Jamie. No Stephen. No ghost.

I run it again at normal speed. Frame by frame through the sixty seconds before Sage dropped the tray. A van passes. A woman crosses from the laundromat. That’s it.

No Stephen. Damn.

Except.

I lean closer to the screen. There’s a two-second window—between the van passing and the frame clearing—where the camera’s view of the far sidewalk is partially obscured. A van-shaped blind spot. If someone was standing there and moved the moment the van passed, they’d disappear from frame before the lens caught them.

Would they? Or am I building a ghost out of pixels because Sage is scared and Holden is worried and I’d rather find a threat than find nothing?

I run the van gap six more times. Nothing materializes. No shadow. No figure stepping out of frame. Just a van, a gap, and empty sidewalk.