The Art of Staying Dead

It had been seventy-eight hours since they split up.

Tricia had perfected silence, not just the kind that comes from moving quietly, but the deeper kind: the silence of erasure. No digital traces. No comms. Burner phones used once and tossed. Even her heartbeat felt quieter as she moved beneath the false identity of Elena Volkova, a woman who technically had never existed.

She, Jared, and Luc had crossed three state lines under cover of backroad shadows. Utah loomed ahead, vast, scorched, and empty. The kind of place secrets liked to settle.

But in the dark, something stirred.

The first hint came with the birds.

Or rather, their absence.

Tricia had always noticed birdsong, tiny, bright sounds in the background of war and betrayal. But at the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats, there was nothing. Not even wind.