Ezra made the call from the cabin's small porch, alone, while Lucien reviewed the day's plan one final time with Roan inside. It wasn't a call he'd told anyone he intended to make, not even Lucien, because some part of him understood that if he said it out loud first, someone who loved him might talk him into believing it was too dangerous to attempt — and he had already decided, sometime in the sleepless hours before dawn, that it was a debt he needed to settle himself, on his own terms, before whatever the day held for the rest of them arrived.

The number he dialed hadn't changed in...