The third message

Elara

Diego called before we'd even cleared the school zone.

I only caught half of it, but Kael's grip on the wheel told me most of what I needed to know before he said a word. His knuckles went white. A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he stared straight through the windshield like the road ahead had personally offended him.

"Say that again."

He glanced at the rearview mirror, though nothing was back there. Just an empty street and a kid coasting by on a bike two blocks down, completely unaware that the whole world had tilted for two people sitting in a parked car.

"You're sure."

A longer pause this time. Long enough that I started counting seconds in my head, needing to measure the silence just to feel like I was doing something instead of just sitting there.

"Don't do anything yet. I need to think." He hung up and set the phone in his lap instead of the cup holder, like he wanted it close enough to grab the second it rang again.

"Kael."

"The email came from an IP two miles from your school." His voice had gone flat, the careful kind of flat that meant he was working hard not to panic out loud in front of me. "Somebody local. Somebody who knew exactly where you'd be sitting when it landed. That's not an accident. That's someone watching."

My stomach dropped again. "That's not Wren."

"No." Quiet, like it cost him something to say out loud. "She's been out of state for ten years. Diego's had eyes on that for a long time. Longer than you'd think, actually. My father made sure of it."

"Then who."

He didn't answer, and the silence said more than words would have. I could see him running through names behind his eyes, turning each one over and not liking any of them enough to say out loud yet.

"Kael. Who."

"I don't know. Not for sure." He pulled into a coffee shop a couple blocks from school, threw it into park harder than he needed to, and finally turned to look at me. "Whoever it is knows things only family would know. The cabin. Wren. Nobody outside our house had both pieces of that at once. That's what scares me the most, honestly."

Family. The word just sat there between us in the car, heavier than it should have been for two syllables.

"You think it's someone at home."

"I think I don't want to say it until I know for sure." He scrubbed both hands over his face like he could wipe the thought away if he pressed hard enough. "Because if I'm right, everything changes. And I need to be wrong about this one. I really do."

My phone buzzed again, and I tensed before I even looked down at it, some part of me already flinching in advance.

Unknown Number: Running out of time, Elara. Ten minutes, then I send everything to your mother directly. The cabin. The photos. All of it.

I read it twice, my stomach churning worse the second time through.

"They keep acting like Mom doesn't already know part of it."

"They don't know she caught us already." His eyes narrowed at the screen, reading it again like there might be something hidden in it he'd missed the first pass. "Which means either they're not as close to us as I thought, or they know something we don't know yet."

"Great. That's so much better."

"None of this is better." He said it softly, which somehow made it land harder than if he'd snapped at me. He reached over and took my hand, thumb moving slow over my knuckles, back and forth, like he was trying to talk my pulse down through touch alone. "I need ten minutes. Can you give me that? Just ten."

I wanted every answer right then, laid out flat where I could pick through it myself and decide what to believe and what to be angry about. But something in the way he was looking at me, steady even though his hand wasn't quite steady, made me nod instead of pushing harder.

"Ten minutes," I said. "Then I want everything. Not the version you think I can handle. The real one, whatever it is."

"Deal."

He typed something fast into his own phone and hit send before I could lean over and read it, then set the phone face down on his knee like he didn't trust himself not to keep checking it every ten seconds.

"Who'd you text?"

"My sister."

That one caught me off guard. "Lila?"

"She's the only one besides you who's been around the house enough this year to actually notice things. If it's someone close to us, she might've picked up on something without even realizing it mattered at the time." His jaw tightened again, that same muscle jumping under his cheek. "I should've thought of her first. Before Diego. Before any of this."

His phone buzzed almost right away, fast enough that we both flinched a little at the sound. He flipped it, read whatever was on the screen, and went still in a way I was already starting to recognize as bad news walking through the door.

"What. Kael, what did she say."

He turned the screen toward me without a word, like he couldn't quite make himself say it out loud yet.

Lila: I think I know who it is. But you're not going to like it.

The lot suddenly felt smaller around us, and a lot farther from anywhere that felt safe. I could hear my own heartbeat over the sound of the engine ticking as it cooled in the afternoon heat.

"Ask her," I said, voice barely holding together. "Right now. I mean it, Kael. I can't sit here not knowing."

His thumbs moved fast over the screen. Neither of us breathed for a second, and somewhere across the lot a car door slammed shut, ordinary and loud and completely out of place with everything happening inside ours.

Three words came back, and the ground tilted sideways under me when I read them.

Lila: It's Aunt Reyna.