Ava's POV
She was almost asleep when the car moved.
Not drove away moved. A small repositioning, the crunch of gravel under tyres as it shifted its angle, and she heard it because she had been lying in the dark listening to it idle for forty minutes and she knew its sounds the way you knew a threat you had been watching.
Leo was still at the window.
She could see his shape in the dark the way he was standing, the particular quality of his stillness. Not the operational stillness of someone managing a situation. Something different. Something that made her sit up fully.
"Leo."
"Get your shoes on," he said. Quiet. Immediate.
She got her shoes on.
She didn't ask why. She had learned that there was a version of his voice that meant we have time to discuss this and a version that meant move first and understand later, and this was the second version, and she was on her feet with her shoes on and the panic button in her hand before she had consciously decided to stand.
