Saul leaned forward, scanning the list. The names meant nothing to him, but the pattern was unmistakable. "Someone's been funding the kidnappings. Using the stolen money from the company.""It looks that way." Kim rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I can't prove it yet. The connections are circumstantial. But the timing is too consistent to be coincidence." She dropped her hands and looked at him, and for a moment, the mask slipped. He saw the exhaustion underneath, the grief, the desperate hope she was trying so hard to contain. "We need to talk to Cross. She has access to the official investigation. She'll know when the kidnappings started, who the first victims were, how the pattern evolved. We have pieces, Saul. We have so many pieces! But we need context to make them fit."Saul nodded. "We agreed we'd reach out to her in the morning. It's morning now.""It's morning," Kim echoed. She looked down at the notebooks scattered around her, at the hours of work she had pou

"I was just thinking." She cleared her throat and walked into the kitchen, her bare feet cool against the tile floor. Edging closer she let her eyes linger on the plates of food."You…. made breakfast.""Eggs. Toast. Coffee." He gestured at the table with the spatula, a small, almost sheepish motion. "I wasn't sure how you liked your eggs, so I went with scrambled. That seemed like the safest option.""Scrambled is fine." She pulled out a chair and sat down. The flower in the vase caught the morning light, its petals a deep, bruised purple. "Scrambled is what I always eat." She murmured flippantly but saul gave her a slightly relieved look all the same."Good." He slid a portion of eggs onto a plate and set it in front of her. "Because I don't actually know how to make them any other way."Kim nodded, mind still distant.Tentatively, she picked up her fork and took a small bite.The eggs were perfect. Fluffy and golden, seasoned with something she could not quite identify. She took

Saul's jaw tightened. He looked toward the living room again, toward the sofa where Kim lay buried under the cream duvet, her breathing still deep and even. This was not his home. It was hers. And she was asleep, completely unaware that he was about to invite a police detective through her front door. She might not want Cross here. She might wake up, still groggy and disoriented, and find a stranger in her living room asking questions she was not prepared to answer. She might look at him the way she had looked at him last night, after he had told her about Veronica. (and a small part of him was not sure he would be able to handle that again so soon.)But the alternative was leaving her alone to meet Cross somewhere else, and that was worse."Fine," he said, and the word came out rougher than he intended. "I'll send you the address of somewhere we can meet up. How long?""Soon."The line went dead before he could respond. He lowered the phone and set it on the counter, staring at

Kim's pen stopped moving as soon as the words landed and her jaw tightened, the muscle flexing beneath her skin. Saul saw her take a breath and hold it, saw her shoulders rise and then fall with deliberate control. Kim was steadying herself from lashing out at the other woman, and it was taking everything she had not to at cross's condescending tone.Trying to descalate the situation, heleaned forward, interrupting Kim before she could speak. "It's worth your time," he drawled, eyes meeting the detective's with defiance. "But it's going to take a minute to lay it all out. So if you're quite done being in a hurry, we'll tell you what we know."Cross held his gaze for a long moment. Her eyes were the color of winter slate, cold and unblinking. Then she nodded once, a small, almost imperceptible dip of her chin. "I'm listening."Saul nodded sharply, before turning to Kim, “You start." Kim exhaled slowly, the breath escaping through her nose, and following his urging, she began.She

"She can't do this," Kim continued, turning towards Saul abruptly and her voice was rising already, the control she had been clinging to since the hospital beginning to fracture into nothingness. "She fucking can't!"Saul said nothing. He had risen to his feet as well, standing before her with his hands limp by his sides.The afternoon light caught the side of his face, and she could see his jaw working, could see the muscle in his cheek flexing as he ground his teeth together. " Kim,” He groused, "Wait a-,” but the woman snarled at him, cutting him off."How can you just stand there?!" she demanded, turning away from him and pacing toward the sofa. "How can you be so…so calm about this? My brother is out there somewhere. He could be in one of those warehouses right now, and the one person who has the resources to find him just walked out that door like we were nothing. And you're just standing there." She felt something like a sob grow in her throat and the feeling of it choked her,