Chapter 6

The silence inside the cabin wasn't the kind that came from an empty room. It was the heavy, pressurized quiet of an engine that had just seized at seventy miles an hour.

The recorder lay on the dashboard between us. Stellan's hand remained beside it, his thumb still curled as though he could feel the stop button beneath it.

Outside, the sleet hissed against the windshield, turning the wipers into a blur of gray motion.

"What scans, Irene?" he repeated. His voice wasn't loud. It was terrifyingly level, stripped of every defensive layer he had worn since we met at…