Page 25

He stepped closer. “This is syndicate information. Where did she get it?”

“Fuck if I know.” My attention returned to Sofia’s cool, measured voice as she outlined the financial particulars once more. She kept listing names, figures, dates.

When the episode ended, neither of us spoke for several moments.

Finally, Trevor said, “This has to be taken down before the wrong ears hear it. If it gets out that she has information relating to those transactions, a rival faction will start trying to find whoever fed her this. And if they don’t find who did that, they’ll find her.”

It made perfect sense, so I nodded slowly. “Let me handle it.”

Trevor stayed in place, but my mind had already wandered back to her. Sofia’s voice still buzzed in my thoughts, echoing dates, money, details about the fire. Something about it felt wrong in a way that I couldn’t quite name, something deep inside my gut.

And then a question, a thought I’d tried hard to push down since I’d recognized her eyes.: who the hell was Sofia? Was it really possible that she was that little girl? There was only one way to find out.

I remained at my office once Trevor was gone, staring at the dark screen of my phone. I should have been thinking about the podcast, about the findings Sofia had come across, but my thoughts continually moved toward her—her voice, her inquiries, the way she’d spoken of the fire as though trying to grasp for something just beyond her reach.

Then I thought about her age. I calculated the number, without any intention of doing so, and an unfamiliar quiet settled within me. Eight…she’d been eight on the night of the fire.

Leaning back in my chair, I closed my eyes. For the longest time, I’d isolated certain memories and shoved them in different compartments of my mind. The fire fit in one compartment of my life, and Sofia occupied another. I’d told myself it would be ridiculous to connect them. The space separating them, however, was beginning to shrink.

Her age…that made sense. But there was something that had nagged at me for a while, a single piece of evidence that I could no longer ignore.

Her eyes. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself it was impossible, I knew I recognized them.

Fuck. Sofia was the child from the fire. I sat there for a few seconds more, frozen, the conclusion too certain to dispute. The sense of familiarity I’d had when I met her, all these separate “coincidences,” as I’d called them, now belonged together under a single undeniable umbrella of truth.

“No,” I mumbled.

My mind quickly jumped to another question. How much did Sofia remember? Had her memories of that night remained as muddled as mine, or could she recall every harrowing detail?

Could she remember the faces of those who’d been present? Could she remember me? I stood and reached for my coat; there was no question of waiting until morning. Whatever Sofia might uncover, even through the neutral lens of investigative journalism, she was skating dangerously close to a tragedy that had remained dormant for fifteen years.

And if someone already knew she was the child who’d survived, she was in very real danger. I had to find Sofia. I had to know what she remembered. I needed to know who she might have shared her suspicions with and how close she’d come to piecing the puzzle together.

***

The moment Sofia opened the door, I knew I had no chance of handling the conversation gently. She looked at me with the same warmth she always did, but it faded as soon as she noticed the expression on my face.

“Ronnie?”

I stepped inside, and I could feel her watching me as I turned toward her. I was trying to find the right words. I’d spent the entire drive rehearsing what I would say, but now that I was standing in front of her, none of it seemed adequate.

“Why are you investigating the fire? The one from fifteen years ago?”

For a moment, she simply stared at me. I could see confusion becoming suspicion, and I knew I’d already said too much.

“Why do you want to know?”

I ignored the question because answering it would only create another one.

“You need to take the episode down,” I said instead.

Her eyebrows drew together. “Excuse me?”

My jaw ticked. “You heard me, Sofia.”

“I’m not doing that until you tell me exactly what’s going on here.”

“It’s for your own good. You have no idea what you’ve exposed yourself to.”