"Whose plate is this?" Maya breathed over Eamon's glowing screen.
Eamon didn't move. He slept with one arm flung over his face like a shield. The streetlight cut across the cheap blanket and painted his jaw in orange strips.
Maya kept her voice down. "Eamon. Wake up."
No answer. She slid the phone higher, thumb hovering. Her hand shook, but not from sleep. She unlocked the phone by touch because she had learned the small motions people left behind: the angle they held a device, the way a thumb pressed on an edge.
A message popped: an insurance policy PDF, header B-Brand Luxury Care. There was a name that wasn't Eamon's. There was a license plate number.
She whispered, "What is this?"
She read the plate twice. It matched a photograph in a gallery app. He'd saved the photo days ago: a black sedan in rain, tail lights like two small wounds. The file name had the date they first visited the net café—three years, three months, three nights.
Maya sat up. The bedroom smelled like cheap cologne and reheated noodles. "Okay," she said to the ceiling. "Okay, you do this quietly."
She slid off the bed and padded to the door. She didn't bother waking Eamon. He slept like the city had taught him: pretending nothing could break him while everything bent inward.
In the hallway, the building's single bulb buzzed. The elevator stuttered once and then hummed. Maya kept
