The fog had been present since before she left the depot, and it remained now — not lifting, not thickening, simply persisting in the way coastal fog did when the tide had not yet turned.
She was three-quarters through the perimeter stretch when it happened. Not a sound. Not a stumble. A shift — lateral and dense, the kind of displacement that travels up through a strap and arrives at the shoulder as information rather than discomfort. Something inside the satchel had changed.
Elena stopped walking. She stood at the bend where the perimeter path curved toward the residential streets, the fog closing every direction to roughly four meters, and set her palm flat against the outer face of the bag. The leather carried a chill distinct from the ambient damp.
And behind them, flush against the inner back panel, was a parcel. Brown paper. Dimensions consistent with a small hardcover volume. She did not touch it immediately. She observed it the way she would observe a discrepancy in a column.
