"When did you see him?"
"A few times over the past couple weeks. Maybe three? Always around the same time, late afternoon. I thought maybe he was visiting someone in your building, but he never went inside. Just sat in his car."
I processed the information from my table near the counter, coffee untouched. Older man. Money. Dark car. The description eliminated Travis and Deb. This was someone with means. But it didn't point to one person. Could be Walsh. Could be someone connected to Kiser. Could be someone we hadn't considered.
Charlie thanked him and stood. Travis called after her.
"Charlie? Be careful. Please."
She didn't answer. I followed her out, and we walked half a block before she spoke.
"Your read?"
"Sad. Not dangerous." I kept my voice even. "Doesn't have the money or the temperament for what's been happening to you. That description is useful, though."
"It doesn't tell us enough."
"No. But it tells us two things. First: someone with money has been physically surveilling your building. Second —" I glanced back toward the coffee shop. "The figure I spotted outside Velvet Arrow. Average height, hoodie, amateur body language. That was Travis."
She stopped walking. "Travis was following us?"
"Following you. Lurking. Wrong body language for a professional tail, which is why I read it as low-threat." One mystery solved. A bigger one sharpened. I texted Cass the description and Travis's intel. Heartline was already digging — expected they'd have something by morning.
BACK AT HER APARTMENT, we worked.
No gala. No infiltration. No wigs or fake names. Just Charlie at the kitchen table with her laptop and her suspect files, and me across from her with Heartline's database.
She pulled her backup archive from the cloud, the files the break-in hadn't touched, and started cross-referencing. Every story she'd broken in the last year, every person she'd photographed, every lead that had gone somewhere or nowhere. She pulled threads between events that looked unrelated — a timeline here, a name there, connections I wouldn't have drawn. Her instincts were different from mine — less systematic, more lateral — but just as sharp.
"Walsh's comeback started three weeks ago," she said, pulling up a timeline she'd built. "Same week the threats started. That could be coincidence."
"You don't believe in coincidence."
"I believe in data. And right now, the data says Walsh had means and motive. But the data also says Kiser had an associate named..." She trailed off, scrolling through old case notes. "During the Kiser story, I photographed him at three different events. Never alone. Always with the same people. Political types, mostly. Campaign donors."
"Kiser's under federal watch. If someone in his orbit is operating independently..."
"Then we're looking at a bigger picture than one angry politician."
I called Cass. Relayed the description from Travis, Charlie's timeline connecting Walsh's public comeback to the start of the threats. Cass listened without interrupting.
"Give us overnight. We'll have something by morning."
I ended the call. Charlie was watching me. Her expression had shifted: less adversarial, more assessing. The way she looked at a scene before she found the shot.
"What?" I asked.
"You're good at this."
"It's my job."
"Not the protection part. The investigation part. The way you take all these fragments and build a structure." She tilted her head. "You think like a soldier, but you investigate like a journalist."
"Marine Recon. We did both."
"I bet you were terrifying."
"I was thorough."
