CHAPTER TWOThe BookThe photograph arrived on WhatsApp at 11:47 PM, from a number SN didn’t recognise, with no message attached — just the image, sent, and then, thirty seconds later, the sender’s profile picture and status vanishing as though the account itself had been deleted the instant the file left it.A book. New — new enough that the spine hadn’t been creased, the kind of new that survives exactly one reading before it starts to look like something that’s been read. No visible title in the photograph; someone had angled the shot to avoid it, which was itself a decision,