"No. I'm very careful about things like that. People might get the wrong idea."
"Of course," Noah said, watching him. He let the silence hold for a moment, then shifted. "So why did you get into this business?"
"What?" Samuel's head tilted.
"Modeling agency. I'd imagine it would be mostly females running this kind of business."
Samuel leaned back against the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. The question had caught him off guard, which was the point. "I got into the business to model myself, actually. Years ago. I saw firsthand some of the stringent rules they have to abide by. The pressure. The way girls get used up and tossed aside. I also saw the darker side of the business."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Girls that are taken advantage of. Photographers who cross lines. Agents who take too much of the cut and give nothing back. The industry is built on young women who don't know their worth yet. Some agencies exploit that. I wanted to do it differently."
"And so you wanted to save them from that?"
"I like to think I can make a difference. Give them a fair deal. Protect them from the people who would take advantage."
Noah held his gaze. The words were polished. They had the cadence of something Samuel had said in interviews, on his website, to parents who dropped their daughters off for test shoots. A mission statement. A brand. Whether it was also true was a different question.
"Can you give us a list of all the models that work here or have passed through?" Callie said, stepping back from the wall. "Current and former. We're just looking to check a few things."
"Of course. Anything I can do to help." Samuel moved behind his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a binder. He began leafing through it. "I can print you a full roster. Names, contact details, dates of engagement. I keep thorough records."
"We appreciate that," Noah added.
Samuel printed the list and handed it to her. Twenty-six names. Noah noted the thickness of it. For a small agency in the Adirondacks, twenty-six models over a few years was a lot of young women passing through one man's office.
They left the way they came, back down the steep stairs and out onto the street. The evening air was cool and the storefronts along Main Street were closing up, metal gates coming down, Open signs flipping to Closed. Noah unlocked the cruiser and they got in.
Callie wason the phone before Noah had the engine running. She listened, said "okay" twice, wrote something in her notebook, and hung up.
"Just got some intel back on Bridger. He doesn't show up in the database for any criminal incidents. Not even a traffic violation."
Noah pulled out of the space and headed north. "And yet most of the dead and missing girls so far have some connection to modeling or the deli." He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. The streetlights blurred for a second before they sharpened again. "Look, I need to get some sleep. You should too."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being true."
The Daily Grindwas quiet for a Wednesday evening. A couple was in the corner sharing a laptop. An older man was reading a paperback. The barista behind the counter was restocking cups. And Lacey Montgomery was wiping down the tables near the window, her ponytail swinging as she worked, the pen still tucked behind her ear.
Ethan sat at the counter with a coffee he'd barely touched. He waited until Lacey came back behind the register before he spoke.
"Hey. When was the last time you saw Fiona in here?"
Lacey stopped wiping the counter. "Maybe the day before she went missing? She came in with Ruby. They sat over there." She pointed at the table by the window. "Same as always."
"Did she say anything? About where she was going, who she was seeing?"
"Ethan, she ordered an iced coffee and a lemon bar. We didn't have a deep conversation. It was busy." Lacey studied him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I said I'm fine, Lace."
She held up her hands and went back to wiping the counter. Ethan stared at his coffee. The foam had collapsed into a flat white surface that reflected the overhead lights. He'd been doing this for days now. Retracing Fiona's steps. Asking people who knew her if they'd noticed anything. Going over the same ground his father's department was covering, except without a badge or a warrant or any authority beyond being the boyfriend of a missing girl. Nobody told him anything useful. Nobody had noticed anything. Fiona had been there and then she wasn't, and the space she left behind was the shape of every conversation that went nowhere.
