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Tamsin: It is an extraordinarily relevant part of every conversation.

Serena: Focus.

Three dots.

Tamsin: I am focusing on the fact that you cannot be left unsupervised outdoors.

I ignore that.

Serena: The car.

Tamsin: Expensive enough that whoever owns it probably doesn't consider parking fines a meaningful deterrent.

I look back down into the valley.

The black car sits motionless beside the fence, absurdly pristine against the weeds and weathered structures surrounding it.

Serena: Weird, right?

This time her answer comes immediately.

Tamsin: Halfway up a bloody mountain?

Tamsin: Extremely fucking weird.

I zoom in again, then lower my phone, but the uneasy feeling doesn't go with it.

It sits low in my stomach, faint but persistent, the same unpleasant tightening that usually means I've forgotten something important. I check automatically: phone, keys, wallet. All accounted for. I haven't left anything at the inn. There is nowhere I'm supposed to be, and no one is waiting for me except Baryn and his mother, who are currently watching footage I've already memorized every fucking frame of.

There is no reason to feel uneasy.

Fatigue, probably.

I've slept badly for days. I've been living on caffeine, inconsistent meals, and the sustained physiological stress of identifying my childhood best friend's remains before discovering she may have documented her own killer. My nervous system has sufficient justification for filing nonspecific complaints.

I put my phone back in my pocket and start walking again.

I want to go home.

The thought arrives with enough force that I stop pretending this walk is doing anything useful.

I want my own apartment. My own bed. My lab. I want to know exactly which floorboard will creak when I step on it and exactly how long the shower takes to get hot. I want to stop looking at Casey's face on a screen and start doing the part of my job I love and fully understand: bones, evidence, conclusions that don't change depending on which person in Stillwater decides to tell us the truth that day.

And I want⁠—

Baryn.

Which is inconvenient, because Baryn is at the inn.

Technically, this means returning to the inn would satisfy at least one item on the list.

I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and continue along the ridge, trying not to examine that thought too closely. Wanting to go back to him is not the same as wanting him to come home with me. It certainly isn't the same as having developed some larger expectation about what happens when this all ends.

The investigation ends. We leave Stillwater. He returns to his life, and I return to mine.

This has always been the arrangement.

The fact that my subconscious has recently begun treating this perfectly reasonable outcome like an impending bereavement is irrelevant.