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The smell of old coffee and cigarettes hits me. The atmosphere is off—like a cat’s hackles rising from a predator. I don’t use the overhead, relying on the penlight from my key chain.

The living room is sparse. No personal photos, no art, no evidence that someone lived here, just occupied space. The kitchen is worse than some, not as bad as others.

I navigate to the desk where six file folders sit, labels in careful, thin print. Six women. Four have red lines drawn through them. Crossed out. Apparently, he kept going until someone held his interest.

Jubilee’s folder is the thickest. My back teeth grind at the timestamped photographs and handwritten notes inside. Pattern reliable. No variation Friday nights. Hypervigilant—doesn’t conform to distraction. May present challenge.

My grip tightens on the folder until the cardboard bends. Cold and violent emotion coils low in my gut. He’s already dead, and I want to kill him again.

I was already coming. And I was late.

He had three months on her. And while I was being careful, he was learning her. She nearly paid for my delay with her life.

Jubilee York, who buried a body with me in the rain and laughed like survival had teeth. I want to know what made her run—what she keeps behind the black hair and sarcasm. And if the thing we buried together was only a body, or if a bond also took root in the mud. Will our connection fade with the blisters on her palms, or settle like a scar?

She handled herself, which I’m choosing to find impressive in the interest of functioning.

I open the black leather bag and start working. All six folders go in. The camera. Backup drives. The spiral notebook. The burner phone. The primary phone I lifted from his jacket in the woods while Jubilee was shaking against the tree. She didn’t notice.

The laptop is under the bed. I add it to the bag.

Every photo comes down. The other women’s files will become evidence eventually, when I find someone with a badge and a cleaner conscience than mine. This room doesn’t get to keep them.

By the time I finish, it’s almost ordinary.

Then I reach Jubilee’s section. I take her photographs down one at a time, careful despite myself. The last cluster is different, earlier photos—her neighborhood instead of the trail. In one, she’s crouched beside a planter, holding two fingers out to a large orange cat like she’s waiting for him to decide whether she’s worthy of acknowledgment.

She’s smiling. Not the sharp, guarded almost-smiles from earlier. This one is soft and private, the kind a mask forgets to hide.

Crouched beside a cat at two in the morning, Jubilee York let herself be a person for four seconds.

I fold the photograph twice and slip it into my jacket pocket. It doesn’t belong with the evidence, I tell myself. Truth is, no one else gets to see her like this. A warm and unfamiliar feeling rolls through my chest, loosening a knot.

On my way out, I stage the apartment to seem abandoned in a hurry. He was three months behind on rent, had no close family, and built his online life from fake names.

He was already a ghost.

I let him leave.

The Kwikset clicks back into place.

My six cats stage a formal intervention the moment I walk through the door.

Marzipan sits in the center on the hallway mat, powder-white fluff arranged around her like royal robes, pale gold eyes radiating judgment.

“I had a long night.”

She delivers one long, considered yowl.

The tension I carried up four flights and back down bleeds out of my shoulders the second I see and smell home.

The other five materialize like a coordinated heist team. Ninety seconds later, I’m in the kitchen with a bag full of evidence while Tartlet scales my leg.

“Everyone take it easy. Yes, Daddy committed several felonies. My apologies for the delayed dinner. Please release my leg.” She climbs higher. All orange female entitlement.

I wince and peel her off. Tartlet was found in a salvage-yard engine block and has decided her survival gives her diplomatic immunity. Tiny orange menace. I set her on the counter and start filling bowls. Meanwhile, Strudel winds around my ankle until I surrender and lift him beside her.

“Manipulative.” He purrs. “Exactly.”