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“I don't know who I can trust.” He shakes his head. “I have to report it to the Chief, but that's it. Nobody else can know until we figure out what happened. I have no idea how something like this gets missed.”

Tamsin groans, pushes up from the floor. “Yeah. Definitely don’t let anyone else find out you’re actually doing your job. Honesty can be a shallow grave. Try not to be the one who’s shoved into it while the rest of the department is busy looking the other direction.” She disappears into the bathroom, and the door clicks shut behind her.

Evan turns to leave. “I’ll call you when⁠—”

The door shudders under the weight of a heavy, percussive knock.

Evan pulls it open, and Baryn is standing there.

His hair’s a little disordered from the wind, his shirt slightly wrinkled in a way that should look careless but doesn’t.

His eyes sweep the room, landing on Evan—who is very much not in uniform—before drifting to me, sitting on the bed in my pajamas. I realize he’s holding my phone, his grip tightens on it almost imperceptibly. The muscle in his jaw feathers.

Then his gaze flicks back to Evan.

The silence is agonizing.

“I was just leaving,” Evan’s tone turns stiff. He sidesteps Baryn, who doesn't move an inch to make it any easier.

“Right,” Baryn says. “Good. Great.”

He waits until Evan’s footsteps fade down the hall before he steps inside and closes the door. He’s coiled tight with a very specific, territorial hostility.

Oh.

The realization settles over me with surprising clarity.

He’s jealous.

“You left this in the car,” he tosses my phone onto the duvet. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

He looks at me, his obvious irritation shifting into something else entirely. Something that makes my stomach tighten.

I stare back at him. My mind is still foggy from the virus, but the way he is looking at me is undeniable. The tension in his jaw, the way he’s bracing his weight. Baryn—who is, as far as I’ve seen, completely unflappable—is visibly bothered by the idea of me alone with another man.

And I don’t hate it.

The bathroom door swings open. Tamsin stops, looking from me to Baryn and back again. “Oh.”

I watch the tension leave Baryn’s shoulders in a single, ragged exhale. He looks almost embarrassed, but he hides it behind a sharp, quick nod hello.

“You didn’t interrupt anything,” I find myself leaning toward him. “And I’m glad you’re here,” I add. “Because we have a lot to tell you.”

16

RESIDUAL EVIDENCE

SERENA

Still half asleep and muddled by the anti-nausea meds, and whoever is currently trying to tunnel through my bedroom door at five in the morning is officially on my list of people I would like to autopsy.

I groan, the sound muffled by a pillow I’m contemplating smothering myself with.

It’s been two days since our discovery. Two days of what I can only describe as a stalemate. Tamsin and I have exhausted combing through paperwork, audited every potentially suspicious signature, and spent an alarming amount of time engaging in community outreach—which is Tamsin’s code for eating our weight in diner fries while she tries to bait the locals into admitting they murdered a teenager in 2009.

Mostly, we’ve just been bored.

Yesterday, Tamsin convinced me that we needed to “undergo tactical reconnaissance” at the local park, which turned out to be her forcing me to watch her try to feed a very aggressive swan while she narrated a fake true-crime podcast about the bird’s obvious criminal intent.