“I keep thinking about what you said,” she murmured.
I kept my voice neutral. “Which part?”
She huffed a short laugh. “The part where you said it changes what we can say out loud, but it doesn’t give us a name.”
“Yeah.”
Madden’s gaze dropped again. “I don’t like not having a name.”
“No one does.”
She leaned in a fraction. “You don’t either.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an observation. The kind she’d always been good at and I’d always resented because she saw too much.
“You mentioned someone wanted a meet,” I said, because that was actionable. Because that was a door we could push on.
Her eyes widened, and she cursed under her breath. “Oh my God.”
My mouth twitched. “You forgot.”
“I forgot.” She pressed her palm to her forehead like she could physically push the thought back into place. “I have been—” She cut herself off. “Yes. I forgot.”
“You’ve had a busy day or two,” I pointed out.
Her glare was half offended, half grateful. “Shut up.”
“You going to check it?” I asked.
She pulled her phone out and unlocked it, thumb moving fast. The screen glow lit her face, and for a second she looked younger in the blue light. Not softer—Madden didn’t do soft easily—but less armored.
She frowned at the screen. “The poster pulled the thread.”
It was my turn to frown. “What? Like it’s gone entirely?”
“Yeah. No follow up, no DM. It’s just gone.”
I considered. “Did you have any sense of where they were?”
“No.”
“If they were on Hatterwick and they heard about the fire…” I trailed off, letting the implication sink in.
Her cheeks paled. “They might have gotten spooked and decided it was too dangerous to talk.”
I didn’t like the math around that or the fear the idea of it put in her eyes. “Or it might be completely unrelated. You posted to a lot of boards, right? What would be the likelihood that the person who set the fire just happened to be on one and just happened to see the request for a meet and just happened to know it was you in time to set a fire on your boat two or three hours later? That’s a lot of stretches.”
Carefully, she turned off the phone and set it facedown on the table. “Well, I guess that’s another potential lead cut off.”
Reaching across the table, I laid a hand over hers. “We’ll find another.”
She turned her palm up and curled it around mine.
The server interrupted us, sliding plates onto the table with a practiced smile before vanishing again like she didn’t want to interrupt whatever she sensed was happening at our table.
I nodded. “Eat.”
She took a bite like she was proving she could still do normal things. I followed suit, salt and heat grounding me in a way I hadn’t realized I needed.
