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Declan’s chin brushed the top of my head. His arms tightened around me. “The snapping.”

Dad looked at him.

“She reacted to it when she was nine too.”

I turned my head enough to look at him. “What?”

Declan looked down at me. His face had gone hard. “After you came home. Sometimes somebody would snap their fingers and you’d go still.”

A beat passed. “I remember,” he finished.

Ben was watching him. His expression gave me nothing.

I thought of all those impossible little things again.

Maybe they had never been impossible. Maybe I hadn’t imagined someone standing beside my bed.

Maybe somebody really had touched me.

Maybe somebody really had taken my phone. Maybe somebody really had killed Max and laid him in the woods for me to find. Maybe a voice underneath concrete had belonged to a man who knew exactly what would happen when I heard it.

Maybe I wasn’t damaged beyond repair. Wasn’t crazy.

For the first time, the impossible things had a possible explanation, and it didn’t point to my unreliable mind.

A name. A face. Someone Dad and Riot could actually find.

I hated how close that felt to relief.

Dad crossed the space between us and put one hand on my shoulder.

“Nobody leaves,” he said. His eyes moved around the room.

The order wasn’t only for me.

“Nobody goes anywhere alone. Not across the yard. Not to a car. Not for five fucking minutes. Until we know where Wade is, both houses lock down.”

Riot nodded. “I’ll get the boys over here.”

Marion was already reaching for her phone.

Sunshine stayed beside me.

Ben hadn’t moved.

I looked at him. “You came here first thing in the morning?”

His face tightened. “Yes.”

I nodded.

It did not erase the things he hadn’t told us.

It mattered anyway.

Ben looked like he understood both.

Dad started another call.