Ellie's gaze was a laser, fixed intensely on Stanley's face. She wasn't just looking at him; she was searching for a sign of life, a twitch of a muscle, a flicker of an eyelid, anything to prove that the man before her hadn't been hollowed out from the inside.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone.
"He doesn't drink," she whispered.
It wasn't a statement of fact; it was a desperate plea to the universe, a fragile hypothesis she was casting out into the heavy air, needing the silence to confirm or deny it. Her voice was so thin it felt as though the slightest breeze might shatter it into a thousand jagged pieces.
Mike's eyes remained hard, his body coiled like a spring, his massive muscles tensed for a violence that hadn't yet arrived. He didn't look at her; his focus was a predatory sweep of the room, calculating the threat.
"He drank tonight," Mike said.
