Damian received the text at ten forty-seven on Thursday night.
He was at the kitchen table with the Reeves call still sitting unprocessed in his chest — he'd talked to Kendrick about it for an hour, and Kendrick had said the right things, and neither of them had arrived at a decision about whether to meet Reeves, because the decision wasn't urgent and the processing was more urgent and Kendrick had understood that without being told.
The call had ended at nine forty.
The apartment had been quiet since.
The kind of quiet that happened after a significant conversation — not empty, just settled. The specific stillness of a space that had absorbed something and was holding it without requiring anything further from the person inside it.
He'd been sitting with his notes and the legal pad and the seven pages he'd filled during the Reeves documentation work, not reading them. Just — present in the space with them.
Then his phone lit up.
Unknown number.
He looked at it.
