(Lena’s POV)

The clock on my laptop read 7:14 p.m.

Midnight felt both too far away and impossibly close.

I shut the flash drive inside my desk drawer — not that a lock would stop someone who wanted it — and paced my apartment like a caged animal. Every few minutes, I checked my phone, as if the unknown number might text again and somehow clarify what the hell I was supposed to do.

The woman’s voice from the voicemail still rattled around my head. Smooth. Patient. The kind of ...