CHAPTER 29 —

The new file sat in their inbox like a fresh bruise: ORIGINAL_EDIT — J.CARTER — RAW. The words were clinical, the capital letters like someone pounding a gavel. For a second the room went quiet — that pre-noise where everyone’s brain is counting possibilities — and the world smelled then of old coffee and something metallic.

Nicole rubbed her thumb along the hospital bracelet until the ink blurred. "You want to open it or burn the internet down?" she asked, ...