She laughed at something I said about Rodriguez's ongoing war with the budget office. That surprised laugh—the one that escaped before she could catch it.
The sound cracked something open in my chest.
Dangerous. This is dangerous.
The files blurred in front of me. The fire patterns. The ownership records. The web of corruption that stretched from Queens landlords to City Hall.
The files blurred in front of me.
She'd tucked the pen behind her ear again. That thing she did when the connections were coming faster than her hand could write. I used to pull it out and hand her a fresh one just to watch her blink back to the world.
She looked like she belonged here.
I turned back to the documents before that thought could finish becoming something.
Stop.
I pulled myself back. Focused on the documents. On the case. On the professional partnership that was absolutely not an excuse to sit beside a woman I'd never learned how to stop wanting.
"This connection here." Sloane tapped a highlighted section, voice shifting back to business. "The shell company that owns these three properties also shows up in the city's deferred maintenance program. They're collecting tax breaks for 'affordable housing' while letting the buildings rot."
"Double dipping. Profit on both ends."
"And when something goes wrong—a fire, a collapse, someone gets hurt—they dissolve the shell company and walk away clean." She shook her head. "This is bigger than a few bad landlords. This is a system."
She fell quiet, staring at the web of connections we'd mapped across my coffee table.
I watched her think, the way her fingers traced invisible lines between documents, the slight furrow of her brow, the way she bit the corner of her lip when something didn't quite fit.
I used to tease her about that.You're going to chew right through if you're not careful.She'd swat my hand away and keep working, and I'd kiss the spot she'd chewed just to watch her lose her train of thought.
"We need to cross-reference the arson targets with tenant complaints," she said. "Anyone who filed grievances, anyonewho tried to fight back. If our arsonist is motivated by revenge, they might have left a trail."
"I can pull incident reports from the last five years. Fires, injuries, near-misses in any of these properties."
"And I'll dig into the owners. Campaign contributions, political connections, anyone in City Hall who might be protecting them."
We worked for another hour, building connections, mapping the web. By eleven, we had a working theory and a list of follow-up questions that would take weeks to answer.
Sloane gathered her notes. Slid them into her messenger bag.
"Same time tomorrow?"
"If you want."
"I want."
The words hung in the air between us. Too simple to mean what they sounded like. Too loaded to mean anything else.
She paused at the door. Hand on the frame. Not quite looking at me.
"Garrett."
"Yeah?"
A breath. Two.
Whatever she was going to say, she swallowed it.
