The café wasn’t his usual kind of place — too warm, too open, too filled with people who smiled for no reason. But Wihlborg had been in the city for three days and needed somewhere to sit still without drawing attention. He’d picked the corner seat by the window, the one that gave him a clear view of both exits and a reflection of the street in the glass. His coffee sat untouched, cooling beside his hand. He didn’t drink caffeine anymore — slowed the pulse too much — but it made him look normal.

She walked in while he was pretending to read. No one else would’ve noticed her; to anyone else, she was just another civilian cutting through the noise of the morning. But she was laughing softly with the barista about the wrong order, something about oat milk, and Wihlborg found himself looking up before he meant to. There was something jarring about how unguarded she was — how the air seemed to settle differently around her, easy in a way his life never was.