Bram waited until the door closed behind him before opening the message again.
The image had been taken through a fence. Two adults stood near the entrance of a building he knew, with a third figure just visible behind the glass. Men in dark coats occupied the path on either side. One held a hand near the gate latch. The photograph showed no weapons, no struggle and no words from the people inside.
The message beneath it gave him a time and a single instruction: KEEP THE ARRANGEMENT.
He checked the corridor through the door’s narrow window. A woman was speaking to the clerk at the far end. No one was immediately behind him. He deleted the message from his phone and cleared the image from the visible thread, though he knew that doing so did not guarantee every copy was gone.
He called a number from memory. It rang four times before a man answered.
“Are they all right?” Bram asked.
“They’re being looked after.”
“I want to speak to them.”
