They had been cautious—or so she had believed—but the delicate veil of secrecy they had guarded for so long now felt as though it were fraying apart, thread by thread.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice scarcely more than a whisper as the dread she had fought to contain began clawing its way upward. She looked at him, searching his face for any trace of reassurance, for some indication that he had a strategy.

But Julian’s eyes stayed locked on the road ahead, his jaw tight with focus.

“We need to identify who it was,” he said after a prolonged silence.

“And why were they there?”...