Chapter 5: Forty-One Months Without the Wolf

The second envelope arrived on a Thursday.

Callum knew the day because he tracked days the way other men tracked money — carefully, with a running total, aware that a single miscalculation could leave you short in a way you could not easily recover from. Thursday meant he had been awake for nineteen hours. Thursday meant the shift had run long because Priya had called in sick and there was no one else who knew the intake protocol well enough to be left alone with it. Thursday meant the light through the kitchen window was the specific grey of London at half past seven in the morning, a grey that contained no warmth and made no promises.

He found it on the mat where the first one had been.