“That’s not my job,” I say, keeping my voice level. “It’s what you want my job to be, to make your job easier. There’s a difference.”
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth, then back up. “You’re not trained for this kind of contact.”
“I have no intention of making contact. Contact is your lane. Data is mine.” I gesture to the laptop, the sticky notes on the wall, the organized chaos that is my entire personality. “He thrives in the gaps between things. Between what people see and what they report. Between what they remember and what they admit. I live in those gaps. I map them. If you try to sideline me, you’re not protecting me, you’re just blinding yourself.”
His jaw locks. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
“Absolutely not,” I say cheerfully, because if I don’t keep a little humor in my voice, the fear might leak through. “Also, for the record, you don’t get to come into my town, drink my coffee, use my wi-fi, and tell me to go sit in a corner while the boys run off and hunt the monster who tried to turn my friends into cold cases.”
Across the room, Cotton’s gaze flicks between us, sharp and assessing, and her lips purse. I can practically see the mental spreadsheet she’s building—risk factors, emotional damage, likelihood of her cousin-in-law setting herself on fire just to prove she’s not fragile.
Spoiler: the odds aren’t in Bran’s favor.
A muscle jumps in his cheek. “You’re five feet of trouble, you know that?”
“Almost five-two,” I correct automatically. “And I’m not trouble. I’m an asset.”
“Assets can get killed.”
I tilt my head. “At least this way, you’ll know exactly where I am. Otherwise, I’ll just do the work anyway and send you notes after the fact.”
His eyes narrow. “You’d do that?”
“Have you met me?”
He has, unfortunately for his blood pressure. We’ve known each other all of, what, a day? Less? Long enough for him to watch me argue with our chief of police, hack into a secure-ish database in front of him without blinking, and tell him his profile outline was “adequate but incomplete.”
Bran closes his eyes briefly, then opens them again, some internal decision made.
“Fine,” he says. “We do this my way, then. You work here, or at the station, or somewhere with people around. No solo trips anywhere. No following leads in person without me or Jack. If I tell you something is too hot, you listen.”
I fold my arms, mirroring his stance. “You really shouldn’t try to negotiate with me.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
My shoulders sag in relief I refuse to show him. “Fine. Great. Excellent. Bring me a dozen of Karla’s donuts, and we have a deal. Now, come look at this map.”
He moves around the desk, and the room shrinks again. His presence is a pressure system; my brain starts cataloguing sensory details automatically—soap and winter air and something darker underneath, like smoke that never quite washed out of his skin.
I drag my attention back to the monitors, to the digital map of Lucy Falls and the surrounding counties, dotted with colorful pins.
“These are our knowns,” I say, pointing. “Confirmed Jason-and-Henry victims. These are our strong maybes, based on pattern overlap. And this—” I zoom in on Lucy Falls, on the pin at the top of the trail to the waterfall. “—is tonight. Fresh. Local. An outlier, maybe. Or the first sign he’s circling back.”
Bran studies the map, frowning. “If it is him, he’s sending a message.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. “And I’d really like to read it before he writes the next one.”
Cotton shifts closer on the couch, her knee brushing mine. It’s a small contact, but it pins me in place better than any seatbelt. Somewhere in the back of my head, a tiny voice notes that Brodie Gallagher’s terrifying wife is here in my crappy apartment because of me. Because of this. Because I matter to her enoughto leave her warm, safe estate and sit on my lumpy cushions while we talk about graves.
As if it heard us speaking, my laptop pings from the couch, and I see a new message window pop up from across the room. My skin goes cold.
Bran is on his feet before I am. We cross the room at the same time, him faster because, well…stride length.
Nightjar is lit up with a private message. Not Minotaur this time.
It’s a new handle without an avatar.
SmartLittleBird.
