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"Oh yes."

The laugh that follows is fragile, but it's real.

For a few seconds, she scrolls through the photos in silence. I watch her face change with each image, grief and relief colliding together.

Finally, she presses the phone against her chest. "I want her back."

The ache behind those words cuts straight through me.

I take her hand again. "We're going to get there. Together.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Ashby

There are fourteen pages of notes spread across the hotel room table.

I know because I've counted them twice.

The habit doesn't solve anything, but sorting facts into neat stacks gives my hands a job when my head won't cooperate. Maggie Sterling refuses to fit inside any system I've built. So do the years Tom White spent hurting her. So does the grief hanging over everything connected to Ben.

I sit at the table and study the papers again anyway.

Across the room, Briggs stands by the window watching Seattle disappear behind sheets of rain. Torin occupies the armchair with a sketchbook balanced on one knee, his pencil drifting across the page whenever he thinks nobody's paying attention. Since Laurel and Maggie went for a walk, conversation has dried up. The silence isn't awkward. It's the kind that settles over people after the truth arrives and leaves everybody figuring out what to do with it.

Because now we know what happened.

Tom White abused Maggie for years.

My gaze drops back to the notes scattered across the desk. Maggie's timeline. Shelter records. The hidden message. Reports that should've helped and didn't. Every lead we've chased over the past month sits in front of me in black and red ink and highlighted margins.

It still feels incomplete.

Ben's family needed help long before any of us realized it. I can tell myself we didn't know, that we couldn't act on information we never had, but the explanation doesn't ease the knot in my chest.

The hotel room door opens.

All three of us look up.

Laurel steps inside first, carrying herself with the exhausted confidence of someone who spent the last hour holding another person together. Maggie follows a step behind.

My chest tightens.

Everything about her looks different now I understand what she's survived. Before this, she existed as a missing person case, a trail of clues, a puzzle waiting for answers. Now she's a woman standing in front of me, exhausted and wary, carrying years of pain she never should've had to carry alone.

The resemblance to Ben catches me again. I see it in the Sterling eyes, in the dark auburn hair, in the stubborn set of Maggie's jaw. Pieces of him live in both sisters, surfacing in different ways every time I look at them.

Briggs moves before anybody else has a chance to think about it. He crosses to the window, grabs a chair, and sets it beside the couch where Laurel is sitting. The whole thing takes maybe three seconds.

Just a practical problem solved.

Maggie's eyes follow the movement, and the surprise on her face hits hard. It's small enough that somebody else might miss it, but I don't. She looks at the chair, then at Briggs, as if she's trying to figure out why a stranger would think about her comfort at all.

Briggs catches the look and immediately pretends he's fascinated by the weather.

The man could wrestle a bear without blinking, but appreciation makes him deeply uncomfortable.

Maggie sits, and Laurel settles beside her with their shoulders touching. Every few seconds one of them glances at the other, checking they're still there. After everything they've been through, I can't blame them. If somebody handed me back a person I'd spent six weeks mourning, I'd probably keep them within arm's reach too.