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Location field is blank. Request origin is internal. No technician was assigned and there’s no completion report. It was just filed…and left.

I sit back slightly, staring at the screen.

A lock was replaced the same night Victor Halstead went over the edge.

A lock…

Vexley House. The symbol. The key worked into the walls, the railing, the stone.

Clearly it means something. Does it open something? Or close something?

I lean back in my chair. A lock was changed that night, which means…

Something was accessed…or something was sealed.

Or maybe this is insignificant. I mean, locks are changed all the time, right?

Except I can’t let it go.

My heart pounds. I inhale slowly, but it doesn’t stop. I press my thumb to my wrist where he touched me. Like I maybe can override it if I try hard enough, press hard enough.

It doesn’t work.

My body doesn’t care what I want.

It remembers him anyway.

The way he leaned in.

The way he almost?—

I exhale sharply and snap the laptop shut.

“Focus,” I say under my breath.

This is what matters.

The lock.

The request.

The timing.

Victor Halstead didn’t just die that night.

Something else happened.

Something someone didn’t want documented.

I lean forward again, reopen the laptop, and pull the file back up.

Lock replacement.

I sit there and stare at the screen. I’m missing something. Or am I seeing something that isn’t there?

“Christ,” I mutter, closing the laptop again.

I need sleep.