"Documentable?"
"Everything I bring you will be." He met her eyes. "My title says Contract Investigator. Not cowboy."
Emily studied the buildings. Corrugated metal, loading docks, unremarkable. Three vehicles in the lot. She catalogued them without being asked. Black Escalade, white pickup, sedan near the back. The sedan had been there longest based on the dust on the windshield. The other two had arrived recently, close together. Crew leaders checking in. Reporting to someone who wanted progress they didn't have.
Jake was watching her.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing." But amusement tugged at the edge of his expression. "Three vehicles, right? What do they tell you?"
"Sedan's been here since last night at least. Dust on the glass, parked in the far corner, which means whoever drove it doesn't expect to need it in a hurry. The other two arrived within twenty minutes of each other. Still warm, better positioning, closer to the exits. Crew leaders reporting in on progress they haven't made."
"Which means?"
"They still don't know where Costa is. They're running the same dead ends we are."
Jake turned to look at her , and his attention fixed on her in a way that had nothing to do with vehicles or parking lots.
"You know most people I've worked with take an hour to see what you saw in thirty seconds."
"I'm a prosecutor. Pattern recognition is my job."
"Different kind of pattern."
"Same principle."
"Not even close." His voice dropped, just enough to change the texture of the air between them. "Courtroom patterns are fixed. Documents, testimony, evidence that's already been collected. You're reading a book someone already wrote. Out here, everything's moving. You have to read it live."
"And how do you read it live?"
"You let your attention go wide. Stop focusing. Wait for the thing that doesn't fit." He was watching the warehouse, but she had the clear impression he was talking about something else entirely. "Everyone has a tell. The thing they do when they think nobody's watching."
"What's my tell?"
The question left her before any reasonable filter could intervene.
Jake's eyes came back to her. Stayed.
"You lean forward," he said. "When you're interested. When it catches you. Your whole center of gravity shifts toward it, like you're being pulled. You probably don't notice."
Emily became aware, with excruciating precision, that she was leaning toward the center console.
She sat back. Jake's mouth curved.
"Like that," he said.
"That's not a tell. That's called paying attention."
"Paying attention is a tell. Especially when someone's trying not to."
He looked satisfied. The expression of a man who'd made his point and was content to let it settle.
Emily let him enjoy it for about three seconds.
"You hesitated," she said.
Jake's expression didn't change. But his stillness did. The quality of it shifted, the way a room shifts when someone opens a window you didn't know was there.
