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The thing about police evidence-processing rooms is that they’re all the same. It’s in the architecture, the forced utility, the absence of comfort. This one has cinderblock walls painted government-issue taupe, the color of a lingering bruise. The bulb above my table throws a circle of light so bright it could cook an egg, but the rest of the room is a cave.

Evan brought me down here after I handed him the tape.

Technically, he brought me down here after I handed him the tape, asked four questions about how it would be logged, three about who would have access to it, and twice requested confirmation that he intended to document the transfer before allowing it out of his possession.

He doesn’t need to know we made backup copies before bringing it in.

It isn’t that I don’t trust Evan. I do, probably more than I trust most people. But the man implicated by that tape is his boss, and trust is considerably easier when doing the right thing doesn’t require gambling your career, your safety, or both.

I don’t know what the Chief is capable of. More importantly, neither does Evan.

If self-preservation eventually outweighs professional obligation, I’m not sure I could even blame him for it.

So the copies stay between us.

Not because I expect Evan to betray us.

Because I refuse to make our only contingency plan dependent on him being willing to endanger himself.

None of which changes the unfortunate fact that Evan still knows me extremely well.

Well enough to recognize that after handing over the most important piece of evidence we’ve found, I was approximately three unanswered questions away from becoming intolerable.

He told me I needed something else to do.

I informed him that this was both patronizing and outside the scope of his responsibilities.

Then he unlocked the cabinet where the department keeps old training materials and left me alone.

Tonight’s specimen is a teaching cast of a left femur. Clean break, replicated remnant periosteal texture, and a spiral fracture consistent with torsional loading—maybe a planted foot during a fall, maybe something less accidental. The original belonged to a closed case, long since cleared for reproduction and instruction, which means there is no chain of custody to preserve, no active investigation to contaminate, and no prosecutor somewhere developing a stress-induced facial tic because B.R. Slate is standing within breathing distance of it.

It is, in other words, completely inconsequential.

Exactly what I need.

The break is elegant, in its way. Nature does beautiful work even when it’s violent.

I’ve spent the last two hours examining the fracture morphology of a femur I have absolutely no reason to still be examining.

It is also significantly more productive than watching Casey’s tape for the forty-third time, trying to identify the man who came to collect Pastor Scofield.

I’ve paused on the same few seconds so many times I could reconstruct them from memory. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to reconstruct. He parks beyond the reach of the streetlight and approaches with his back mostly to the camera. The closest thing I get to his face is a partial profile when he reaches for Scofield’s keys, blurred by movement and degraded further every time I enlarge it. Dark hair. Male. Probably young. Beyond that, the footage refuses to cooperate.

I’ve adjusted the brightness. Increased the contrast. Advanced it frame by frame until his face dissolved into blocks of color that could belong to almost anyone.

They have given me nothing.

So here we are.

Bones are uncomplicated.

There is a particular satisfaction in measuring something that cannot change while I’m looking at it. If I measure twice, I get the same answer.

Usually.

I’m recalibrating the calipers to determine whether the discrepancy is mine or the cast’s when Tamsin leans over my shoulder, projecting a presence so dense it almost casts its own shadow.

“Serena, you realize this is not a healthy coping mechanism,” she says, nodding toward the femur. “At least when you hide from your feelings with actual human remains, you can pretend you’re working.”