“Send them to me.”
“No.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
He snaps his notebook shut. “I know how this goes. You look once and then you don’t sleep and then you dive down a rabbit hole so deep I don’t see you for three days unless I physically drag you out of your apartment. You just had a serial killer at your window, Twig. You do not need more images to loop in your head.”
“I’m already looping plenty,” I snap. “Let me work.”
“You will work,” he says evenly. “With the information I give you, not with things that are going to retraumatize you for fun.”
“It’s not fun.”
“I know.” His voice softens a fraction. “That’s my point.”
He’s not wrong. It pisses me off that he’s not wrong.
“I can handle it,” I say anyway.
“You shouldn’t have to handle it at all,” he replies. “But that ship sailed the day you started sticking your nose in case files when you were nineteen.”
“Fourteen,” I mutter.
He stares. “You’re not helping your case here.”
I bite into the donut hard enough that jelly squirts onto my wrist. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll work with what you give me.”
For now. I smile around the donut.
Jack watches me eat for a second, like he’s making sure I’m not going to choke out of sheer spite.
“Any noise online?” he asks finally. “Other than the usual forum idiots?”
I swallow and set the donut down, wiping my fingers on a napkin.
“Plenty,” I say. “The story hit the local news sites around midnight. The longer they go without saying it’s just an accident, the more people start throwing Thurston’s name around. Especially once I dropped it.”
He scowls. “You just had him at your window and you’re stirring the pot?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” I say, saluting him with my coffee cup. “We need him agitated. Agitated people make mistakes. Quiet ones are harder to find.”
“Agitated people also kill faster,” he says. “In case that escaped your notice.”
“It didn’t.” My chest tightens. “He’s not a ghost, Jack. He’s a man. Men leave trails.”
“And you’re good at finding them.” He nods once. “Which is why I’m not telling you to stop. Just…be smart.”
“That’s my whole brand,” I say. “Miss smarty pants.”
He doesn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth quirks like he wants to and is refusing on principle.
He pushes off the counter. “Brodie called me at stupid o’clock after you talked last night.”
I groan. “Of course he did.”
“He’s losing his mind,” Jack says. “I had to talk him out of driving over here and stuffing you into his trunk and carting you away to Ireland or some shit.”
“I would have hacked the trunk from the inside,” I mutter. “He should know that by now.”
