The clock on the kitchen wall ticked with a relentless, maddening precision, each second a tiny, almost imperceptible chisel chipping away at the silence. Liam didn't need to look to know the time. He knew it in the way the shadows stretched across his apartment, in the fading light outside the window, in the slow, cold clench in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. It was the time of day when the world wound down, when the noise of other people's lives started to recede, leavin...