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“Sell anything?”

“Booked two guest spots. Did six pieces. Got asked if I could tattoo a portrait of someone’s ferret as a Renaissance pope.”

He nods solemnly. “And could you?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

He smirks. “Did you?”

“I have limits.”

“No you don’t.”

He’s not wrong, but I let it pass.

The convention was loud. Too loud. All buzz and bass and people talking over each other while bodies turned into billboards under fluorescent lights. I used to enjoy that kind of noise. Or I thought I did. Turns out noise is only useful when you don’t want to hear yourself think.

I’d come home with cash, a sore hand, and a head full of the woman in 14A.

Laurel.

Black hair escaping its bun, hazel eyes piercing enough to cut through turbulence and panic alike.

She’d spent the whole flight holding herself together with sheer force of will until the plane dropped and her hand found mine.

I still haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Stupid thing to remember, maybe. A hand in turbulence. A mouth against mine, brief enough to deny it… if either of us had wanted to.

Briggs shifts in the chair. Leather creaks under him. “You’ve been quiet.”

“I’m always quiet.”

“Nah.” He studies me. “You’ve been elsewhere quiet.”

That’s a complicated distinction but annoyingly accurate, in the way Briggs usually is.

I set the tablet down and reach for the pencil instead. Paper gives me something digital never does. Resistance. A small fight. I sketch a deeper split through the trunk shape, letting the roots break around an old scar on Briggs’s arm.

“Met someone on the flight back.”

The words leave before I decide to let them.

Briggs goes very still.

Not obvious to anyone else, maybe. But I know his tells. The shift of his gaze. The way his fingers stop tapping against his ribs.

“Met someone?” he repeats.

“Don’t make it sound like that.”

“You made it sound like that, whatever that is.”

“I sat next to someone,” I confirm.

“Someone?”

I drag the pencil harder across the paper than I need to. The line goes dark. “Her sister’s missing.”