Page 45 of Wells

"Ronnie Louvre's panel came back. Toxicology was clean."

He exhales slowly. I hear the shift in his tone before he speaks.

"Wells."

"Never mind. I know. Forget about it."

"I told you to leave it buried."

"I said forget about it."

"And you're still digging."

I don't answer.

Ridge's voice hardens. "Whatever you think you found, it's not worth pulling the whole thing back up. Dad's gone. The business is stable. Let it stay that way."

"Understood."

I end the call.

I don't tell him about Dane, or the charter, or the address in Florida, or the dead camera on Ronnie's street.

I close the file and stand. My apartment is too quiet. The case rattles in my chest, the call with Peoria still raw underneath it, and I need to move before the pressure cracks something I can't put back together.

I grab my keys and head for the door. I don't know where I'm going, but I need to get out of here.

Wednesday morning, I get to the office by six thirty and find Cera already there.

She sits at the table in my office with her laptop open, a notebook beside it, and two cups of coffee on coasters. She glances up when I walk in.

"You're early."

"So are you. What's your excuse?"

"I don't sleep. What's yours?"

"I teach a kids' class across town on Wednesday evenings, so I go by before work to get it set up. I'm already up and caffeinated by the time most people hit snooze. Except you, apparently, who doesn't sleep at all."

She slides the second coffee toward me without looking up.

"What kind of class?" I don't know why it stops me. I know almost nothing about what she does once she leaves this floor, and I've never let myself look, which for me is its own kind of restraint.

"Yoga. Little ones at a rec center." A real smile, quick and there and gone. "Best part of my week."

It lodges somewhere I don't examine, that she has a whole life she loves, one that has nothing to do with her job or the version of herself she wears to work. It's a little piece of her that makes me want more.

I take the coffee and sit across from her. The heat soaks through the cup and into my palm. I set it down and pull up the Rotterdam file on my screen, keeping her in my periphery.

It's been days of this, since Friday, the two of us stepping around the same thing in meetings and hallways and never once putting a name to it. Today there's no meeting to hide inside, just the work and the hours and how close the chairs are. She knows it. I know it. Neither of us is going to say it.

The coffee, the coasters, the notebook squared to the edge of the table, all of it is her building a wall out of professionalism, and I respect the hell out of it. I'm doing the same thing in my own way. What happened on that desk sits in the room with us, and we both pretend it's furniture.

"Are we going to be able to put this together in two weeks? We need a working model they can stress test in real time."

Cera nods. "Piece of cake."

"You sound mighty confident."