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“I love your optimism, but you don’t know that.” His mouth tries to curve but doesn’t manage it.

Theo returns from checking the window beside the dock. He sets the shotgun within reach, then places one broad hand at the back of my neck. “You’re shaking.”

“I can shake and work.”

His thumb strokes beneath my curls. “I need you close while we figure this out.”

The words come out too hard. I feel Theo flinch behind me. The last twenty-four hours have left him standing inside his worst fear, and he’s trying his best to keep his alpha instincts in check.

I turn under his hand and meet his eyes. “I promise I won’t leave without you and Ezra.”

His shoulders lower by a fraction. “Thank you.”

He kisses my forehead and goes back to the camera feed.

The house knocks behind Ezra’s shelves. One hard tap. Then two. I spin toward the sound.

Ezra looks at the wall. “The house wants to help.”

“I’d appreciate any help we can get.”

The wall knocks again. Higher this time. It draws my eyes to the shelf holding the printed photographs from the false grave.

I pull down the stack. All right, what do we actually know?

Sawyer used Crossroads data. Crossroads treated some people Hammer sent there. Sawyer warned me to leave the cemetery when I asked about Saints access to that work. Hammer keeps quoting someone he calls Doc. And now he says the omega is the key. None of that proves Sawyer is Doc. But it’s enough to freak me out.

My fear comes back hot enough to make my vision pulse. I shove it into motion. “What does Dr. Sawyer think I unlock?”

Ezra rolls closer to the worktable. “My condition?”

“She already had a treatment plan for you before we ever told her anything about the Vines records.”

“And that means?” Ezra asks.

“I don’t know. The Saints have the stolen green route ledger, so they may know a lot about the old routes. But we found things after that theft they may never have seen—the false-grave cache, Josephine’s reconstruction, the witness instructions. So it’s hard to say what they know. I don’t know which pieces overlap.”

Theo drives a screw into the last window brace. “The cemetery?”

I grab Josephine’s notebook and pull my green-spined field notes closer with the other hand. “Why would my body matter to a cemetery?”

“You’re a Vines witness,” Ezra says.

“Yes, but that explains why I can carry the stone. It doesn’t explain why someone connected to GatorX would care.”

The house knocks again.

I force myself to refocus.

Josephine’s pages hold the old evidence. The field notebook Theo gave me holds everything we have learned since I came through the cemetery gate. It’s got more arrows and question marks than any respectable scientist should admit to using. It’s too many pieces stretched across too many generations, and I still don’t understand how they fit.

“What happened first?” I ask.

Ezra watches me. “Historically?”

“Yes.” I spread the route map across the center of the table.

Theo comes to stand on my other side. “Why does that matter?”