EMBER’S POV

Move the things that mattered.

I look around the room again, this time paying attention to what Hale might have touched after Knox’s men left.

The shelves are dusty, but the search has disturbed most of that dust. Books and ornaments have been lifted, shifted and put back badly enough that I can tell where hands have been.

Then I see the second shelf.

There is a clean rectangle in the dust about the size of a shoebox. The ornaments on either side are packed closely together, with years of grey dust around their bases, but the space between them is almost clean.

Something had been sitting there...