Daylight hit him clean, and it belonged to the service court. Heat lay over the asphalt, the black sedan waited mid-lane, and Detective Stone stood with his palms up at shoulder height like a man reassuring a spooked horse. Brooks had angled off to his right, weight on the balls of her feet, sunglasses lifted so her eyes could do the math. Ms. Parker's tote sat open on gravel, papers huddled inside like they didn't like wind.
He didn't run. He didn't posture. He stepped forward exactly one pace and let his empty hands be visible.
"Mr. White," Stone said, steady. "Welcome back."
Brooks's pupils ticked over his shirt, his hands, his pockets, his stance, then to his face. "Status."
"Vertical," Caleb said. "No holes."
A breath of silence. The day pretended to be ordinary.
[EXIT COMPLETE][ITEM CONTROL: VERIFIED]
Stone didn't look at the text. His gaze cut to Caleb's right pocket, where the rectangle sat like a law he hadn't voted for. "Station," the detective said. "Now."
"Okay," Caleb said.
Ms. Parker blinked. "Okay?"
"I'd prefer a chair and a table to a curb and a sunburn," he said.
Brooks frowned as if the answer were a little too easy. "Stipulations?"
"No touching," Caleb said. "And whoever drives does not surprise me."
"I never surprise anyone," Stone said.
"Disagree," Brooks said. "But I can drive."
Stone's mouth twitched. "Fine. Brooks drives. I ride with our guest. Ms. Parker—"
"I'm coming," she said, with the tone of someone who had already sat through the argument in her head.
"You'll follow," Stone said. "Not a convoy, just… behind."
She nodded once, grateful to have been given a verb.
A golf cart whined somewhere beyond the parapet, then gave up, the sound swallowed by building angles. A gull angled through the slice of sky and mocked nobody in particular. The vending machine by the dock ticked as its compressor changed loyalties.
Caleb took two steps toward the passenger side of the sedan and stopped short of the door. "One thing," he said.
"Say it," Stone said.
"If the timer starts, I'm going to tell you. Then you're going to step back and let me do my job and not test folklore with bones."
"Sold," Stone said. "Do not vanish under my front seat."
"I'll aim for the tasteful middle."
Brooks snorted, already moving to the driver's door. She glanced at his hands again. "Palms."
He showed them. Clean. The rectangle was a weightless idea at his thigh.
Ms. Parker scooped her tote up like it needed rescuing. "If you get hungry," she said to no one, then caught herself and shook her head. "Sorry. Stupid."
"I'm always hungry," he said, just to give her a line.
The card hummed once against his leg, patient and impersonal.
[ENTRY SCHEDULED][T—00:45]
"Forty-five," Caleb said, calm.
"Copy," Brooks said, already slotting the key fob and coaxing the engine to obedient life.
Stone's gaze flicked to the space above Caleb's shoulder as if he could see numbers there; he did not ask to. "Seatbelt," he said. "For the time you are here and not elsewhere."
Caleb opened the passenger door and slid in. The sedan smelled like departmental coffee and old armor-all, with a ghost of someone's winter jacket. The buckle clicked across his chest with a sound that felt like a promise if you were generous and a joke if you weren't.
Stone got in beside him, careful with knees and distance, careful with everything. He kept his hands where Caleb could see them and placed one flat on the dash, palm empty. "Talk to me," he said, as Brooks eased them forward and out of the lane. "What did you touch this time."
"Bridge. Two doors, two people, one choice," Caleb said. "Then a switchyard. Train toys scaled up. I routed a cart out without meeting its loud friend."
"Loud friend," Stone said.
"Collision," Caleb said.
Brooks took the turn out of the service lane with the caution of a woman who knows all the ways an afternoon can end in paperwork. "Any injuries."
"Not mine," he said. "Yours are still an open question."
Ms. Parker's sedan slid into view in the rearview, two car lengths back, cautious, law-abiding. She gripped the wheel like someone praying with muscles.
"Timer," Stone said, quiet.
[T—00:32]
"Thirty," Caleb confirmed.
"Brooks," Stone said.
"I heard," she said. They merged onto the campus ring road. Students parted like a school of polite fish. A guy with a longboard looked up, decided not to make eye contact with law enforcement, and coasted into a convenient philosophy.
Stone faced forward, voice low. "When it starts, I'm going to talk. Not grab. If you go and come back with your hands where I can see them, we're good. If you come back with your hands where I can't, we'll re-evaluate good."
"My hands will be boring," Caleb said. "If we're lucky."
Ms. Parker's voice came from the phone on Stone's knee—he'd toggled the car-to-car without ceremony. "Is there something I should do," she asked, breathy but not panicked.
"Drive sane," Stone said. "If he… leaves… you pull over. Do not get out. Do not call anyone except me. We'll regroup."
"Copy," she said, because facts like to feel military when the day doesn't.
The campus slid by—brick, oak, sun beating itself flatter on glass. A groundskeeper pushed a barrel on rubber wheels and judged the sedan with eyes that had seen too many budget meetings.
Caleb let the seat take his weight just enough to look like a passenger. "Detective," he said softly, "if something tries to reach for me from the ceiling again, don't."
"You've had ceilings try to help," Stone said.
"They try to help like ponds help drowning men," Caleb said.
"Good to know," Stone said, drily.
[T—00:18]
Brooks brought them to a light and didn't try to beat it. The car idled with that impatient smoothness that says nothing about patience. A flyer taped to a light pole flapped, announcing a concert that would be someone's best night and someone else's first disaster.
Stone glanced at Caleb's pocket, then at his face. "You get paid for this," he said.
"I get words," Caleb said. "Sometimes a question. Sometimes a risk credit that isn't worth lunch."
"So you're a contractor," Stone said.
"I think I'm a denominator," Caleb said. "And a small one."
The light changed. Brooks rolled them forward. The air through the vent was cooler than the day and smelled faintly of other people's fabric.
[T—00:08]
"Hands where I can see them," Stone said, almost conversational.
Caleb rested his palms open on his thighs. The seatbelt lay across his chest, good posture enforced by nylon. "Do not touch me," he said, not as a warning, as a request to the future.
"Wasn't planning to," Stone said, which could have been humor and could have been policy.
Brooks cut left toward the avenue that would take them to the station without asking permission from the stadium traffic. She checked the mirror, checked it again, then checked the road like it had a habit of lying.
[T—00:03]
The temperature leaned toward a different idea. Pressure pricked his ears. The rectangle cooled through denim with the pale certainty of a rule.
"Here we go," Caleb said.
Stone's hand hovered, palm up, inches from empty air, and stayed there.
The seatbelt bit into Caleb's shoulder as if it were a hand that couldn't help itself. The dashboard's texture sharpened to the wrong kind of detail. Brooks's knuckles tightened a degree on the wheel and didn't know why. The line where the windshield met sky crept toward a shape his eyes didn't want.
He kept looking straight ahead. He kept his hands open on his thighs. He let the day take its breath and didn't give it posture.