Page 84 of Wolf Dad Energy

He pauses.

"But they made one mistake."

"What?"

"They assumed nobody would notice what was missing."

I look back at the empty picture frames lining the hallway. The missing photographs. The erased security footage. The disappearing phone records. The corrupted files. The messages that deleted themselves.

It isn't just people who are disappearing. It's history. And whoever is rewriting it…

Is running out of time.

RHETT

OCTOBER 21 ~ 10 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

The drive back to Carys's cottage is quieter than the drive over. Not because there isn't anything to say. Because there's too much.

I replay every room in the Valentine house in my head. No signs of forced entry. No struggle.

No theft. A family interrupted. An ordinary morning. Then the photographs. Someone hadn't tried to erase Timothy or Rebecca. They'd tried to erase Sayer.

Specifically his earliest years.

That isn't random. It's targeted. And I don't believe in coincidences.

Sayer sits in the back seat staring out the window, unusually quiet. Carys keeps glancing at him in the passenger seat. Not obviously. Just enough that I notice. She checks on him the way people do when they're trying not to smother someone they already care about.

It's instinct. Not obligation. She probably doesn't even realize she's doing it. Neither does Sayer.

Yet.

By the time we reach the cottage, the clouds have thickened into a solid gray ceiling. Rain threatens but never quite arrives. The air feels heavy. Waiting. I kill the engine.

"No one goes anywhere alone."