They returned to the penthouse past midnight to find it had already been searched—carefully, professionally, nothing obviously disturbed to the untrained eye, but Ezra clocked the wrongness within seconds of walking through the door.

"They were here," he said quietly, scanning the study with the same trained precision he'd once used to catalogue Lucien's habits from a rooftop weeks earlier. "Recently. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were looking for and knew better than to take anything obvious."

"A warning."

"Or reconnaissance for when they come back with less patience." Ezra's jaw tightened. "We can't stay here. Not with three days on the clock and Cole's people already comfortable...