“I’ll handle this,” Marcus said. He didn’t fully know why. He filed the feeling and said nothing more. Marsh appeared at the estate the following morning, uninvited, with a folder of printed articles about unverified animal behaviourists who had caused harm. He spread them on the kitchen table.
Priya brought the folder to Marcus that evening. He promised he would look through it. The articles were real but generic—none related to Wren specifically. It was the kind of dossier assembled to create ambient doubt rather than to prove something specific.