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The picture was taken from above. Second floor, maybe, looking down at an angle, and in the lower corner of the frame there’s the edge of a window. Old dark wood. A sash. And on the sash, half out of focus, a little brass lock shaped like a crescent moon.

I know that lock. I’ve flipped it open myself, on the window behind Dez’s desk, so I could hear Billy Bob if he barked.

I sit up.

Merek’s eyes open. “What is it?”

I hand him the phone.

He looks at the picture. His ember lines go out, all of them, and then come back up a deep red, like coals left in the grate after the fire has burned down.

He enlarges the photo with two fingers, to the corner of the window. “Dez’s office.”

I take the phone back from him. I look at my socks hanging from the Corolla’s window, and the little brass lock in the corner of the picture.

Under the photo, there’s one line of text.

Go home, Tara.

Chapter twelve

Tara

At noon on Friday, all four of them are standing in Dez’s office, and it’s too small for any one of them.

Merek sent the photo to Lenart and William at 5:20 this morning. Then he made me sleep, which I didn’t think I’d be able to do, and I slept for five hours with his tail across my legs. Now the picture is on William’s laptop on Dez’s desk, blown up to fill the screen, and nobody’s talking.

Tav is closest to the screen. His ears are pinned flat against his head, and he’s looking at my socks hanging off the Corolla’s window like they’ve personally offended him.

“Can you trace the number?” I ask.

“Prepaid phone. I’ve already asked.” He turns the laptop so I can see a second window, a list of numbers and times. “I’ve saved the original from your phone, the file and the metadata.”

Lenart is standing at the edge of the window, out of the strip of daylight coming through the half-open blind. He hasn’t taken his eyes off the photograph.

“Sunday afternoon,” he says. “Who was in this office on Sunday afternoon?”

“I was.” I point at the desk. “Before that, I don’t know. Who has a key?”

“I do,” Lenart says. “Corinne does. She kept Dez’s records after he died. Grady has the master set.” He pauses. “The cleaning service, on Tuesdays and Saturdays.”

“No card reader,” William says. “Second-floor offices are on the original locks.”

Merek hasn’t said anything since we walked in. He’s leaning against the bookshelf with his arms crossed, and the ember lines on his forearms are the deep, banked red they went at five this morning. They haven’t changed color since.

“Somebody stood here,” he says, “and took a picture of her car.”

Nobody answers him.

I look at the four of them. Four big, furious monsters in an office built for one human, all of them trying to work out how to keep me safe.

“Well,” I say. “Somebody took that picture from this office. So I’m going through every damn drawer in it.” I look around at all of them. “You can help, or you can go be angry somewhere with a higher ceiling.”

Tav’s ears come up.

“I’ll help,” he says.

Dez’s office isn’t much. A scarred wooden desk with three drawers on the left side. A gray filing cabinet. A wall of oath ledgers bound in dark green leather, each one stamped on the spine with a year. A coffee mug full of pens, all of them the same cheap black ballpoint. A desk calendar from a bank on Burnside, still turned to May.