Classic red flags, Andi thought, exchanging a look with Duke.
“We have time in the morning,” Andi said. “Can you meet us at Gina’s apartment at eight?”
“I’ll be there.” Pam gathered her things, her hands trembling again as the adrenaline wore off. “I can’t tell you what this means to me. Just having someone believe me. Someone actually willing to look.”
As Pam walked away, Andi prayed they didn’t let her down.
CHAPTER
FIVE
After Pam left,Andi stayed still for a moment, her hands wrapped around her glass as the weight of the conversation settled over the table. The hum of the restaurant pressed in again—silverware clinking, quiet laughter from a nearby booth—but it all felt distant, muffled beneath the gravity of what they’d just agreed to take on.
Duke leaned back in his chair across from her, exhaling slowly through his nose. “We need a plan.”
His voice was steady, but Andi caught the tension he couldn’t quite hide—the way he rolled his shoulders, working loose muscles that had tightened during Pam’s story. Duke didn’t rattle easily. When he did, Andi paid attention.
“We can’t just stumble around for fifty-eight hours hoping to find something,” he finished.
Fifty-eight hours.
The number landed hard. Andi let it echo in her mind, measuring it against everything they still didn’t know. Fifty-eight hours until Los Angeles—until another city, another venue, another crowd expecting stories neatly wrapped and safely distant. Mariella, she knew, was thrilled. She’d lived there for five years and talked about it like a second home.
Andi didn’t feel the same pull.
Matthew flipped his laptop open again, the blue glow lighting his face and sharpening his focus. “I’ll dig into Colin tonight. Background, social media, employment records. If he sneezed near Wi-Fi, I’ll find it.”
“I’ll research Gina’s firm,” Andi said, already reaching for the notepad in her purse. The familiar motion steadied her. “I just want to cover all our bases.”
Even as she spoke, her mind was moving ahead—sifting through possibilities, cataloging motives, already preparing to cross names off the list. If the casewasconnected to Gina’s work, she needed to know fast. And if it wasn’t, she wanted it eliminated cleanly. False leads wasted time they didn’t have.
“Simmy and I will keep an eye on things here,” Ranger said. “Just in case this guy comes back.”
“I’d like to go with Andi to look at Gina’s apartment tomorrow morning,” Duke added.
Duke met her gaze for a brief second—an unspoken acknowledgment passing between them—before nodding.
“The rest of us can fulfill our contractual obligations,” Mariella said. “We have to get things ready for our next episode, as well as our next event.”
Andi nodded absently. Normally, their weekly episodes stayed safely in the past—old cases, closed files, tragedies already settled into history. They saved real-time investigations for the bigger, monthly deep dives. The tour had been meant as a breather from that intensity. One case per city. Controlled. Contained.
This wasn’t that.
A beat of silent acceptance passed around the table, the kind that came when everyone understood the risks—and chose to move forward anyway.
Fifty-eight hours.
That was all they had before the road pulled them somewhere else.
Andi tightened her grip on her pen and forced herself to breathe.
She hoped it would be enough.
By the time the team drifted into the lobby together, it was nearly midnight. The long day pressed down on Andi’s shoulders, fatigue settling in the way it always did right before her brain refused to shut off.
She caught Duke’s expression as they walked. He was quieter than usual, his focus angled inward, attention not fully on the conversation around them. There was a contained tension in his posture—controlled, deliberate, the kind Andi had learned meant something was weighing on him. Twice, she noticed him glance her way as if he meant to speak then stopped himself. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something he wanted to say here. Not in front of everyone.
Andi slowed—and stopped.
