Page 104 of What We Burn

“Micah’s going to have the floor plan to us today,” I say. “So that means we can run a dry walk tomorrow night and come in cold if we have to. Unless you’re feeling twitchy about the family, in which case, we either grab the guy outside the house or wait for a calendar gap.”

“He’ll be doing term prep this week,” Eli says. “Same as me. We could grab him between the school and home. Swing him off a bridge.”

Holden swipes a hand across his stubbled jaw. “That could work. If we can get in his car, we can lie in wait. Make him drive somewhere out of the way. Note left behind in his car. No chance of kids finding him.”

“Sounds good to me. Lock it in, detective.” I slide the folder away and take another bite of my sandwich. “On to the fun stuff—I’ve been thinking about the Lodge.”

Eli frowns. “The dark web forum Fenrir’s looking into?”

I nod, setting the sandwich down. “My brain keeps getting stuck on the posts he recovered from the main forum—the conversations that happened outside those private messages Odin showed us between SMAN69 and ApexMars.”

“What about them?” Holden asks. “Most of what Fenrir found were snippets. He hasn’t pieced together any complete threads.”

“Yeah. I know that. It’s the way they were all talking. Saying shit in code so it reads clean if anyone looks.” I chew slowly. “That’s been itching at me. Because I’ve seen it before.”

Eli looks up. “Seen what?”

“Back at the cleanup. When I cloned Brock’s phone.” I dust the crumbs from my hands. “There was a group chat on it. Bunch of guys, all about dog training. Breeds. Temperaments. Which ones are ‘worth the effort,’ how to ‘break a stubborn one,’ whether a ‘bitch’ is ‘trainable’ or you ‘put her down.’” I make the air quotes and my stomach turns doing it. “I noticed it then because it felt weird, but I couldn’t tell if they were genuinely a pack of golden-retriever dads exchanging tips, or if it was something else. So I let it go since we had a body to bury and a hundred other fires.”

The table’s gone quiet.

“I went back to it last night. With what we know now—the Lodge, SMAN69, ApexMars, all of it.” I look up. “It’s not about dogs. It was never about dogs. They’re talking about women. The whole thread. Same coordination Fenrir found on the dark web, just dressed up as a buddies’ group chat so it reads clean.”

Holden’s jaw works. “You’re sure?”

“Sure enough that I can’t unsee it.” And here’s the part I’ve been sitting with since three this morning. “They talk in dogs, Holden. The whole network. And someone used a dog to get her into those hedges. A hurt little terrier, right where they needed her, right when Micah stepped away.”

Nobody says anything. The café noise swells around us—laughing, silverware—and it all feels very far away.

“And Tyler’s crew.” I lean in. “The guy still bugs me.”

Eli looks up. “He’s cleared.”

“For the attack, yeah. But remember what Amy told Sage? He wasn’t planning to confront her solo. He had a group lined up. A whole little posse ready to corner her about Brock.” I tap a finger against the table to illustrate my point. “What if Tyler’s just the loud one? The barking dog. What if the other dogs are quieter? Smarter?”

Holden frowns. “You’re saying you think we should investigate the group?”

I shrug. “It’s possible that Brock had people who helped him, right? Not just drinking buddies. A crew. The kind that covers for each other. Which might be why a few of them are kicking up a fuss. Brock disappears, and they don’t just miss him—they mobilize. Maybe because they rely on each other. Maybe because they all have blackmail material available.” I twirl the idea through my head. “I mean, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that there’s a shitty, rapist version of us sitting in a group chat and calling itself a dog club.”

Holden’s already pulling out his phone. “To be clear, you think Tyler and his friends are connected to the Lodge network?”

“I think the dog thread is the bridge. Brock’s phone, Tyler’s crew, the Lodge. Same language. I can pull the thread members, cross-reference the numbers against Tyler’s posse and whatever Fenrir’s reconstructing from the Lodge forum. We might finally have something that isn’t a ghost. We could have a coordinated group working together.”

“Explains why we can’t pin someone down,” Holden says slowly. “Multiple actors. Different skill sets.”

I nod. “And Stephen’s either the one running it or he doesn’t exist and the name’s a smokescreen.”

Eli’s face hardens. “Then we re-interview Tyler. Lean harder and see if he reacts to information from the dog group.”

“Agreed. But carefully.” Holden’s thumbs are moving. “If the crew’s connected and we spook one, the whole network goes dark. Milo, work with Fenrir and go through that data quiet. Nobody moves on Tyler till we know who he’s standing next to.”

“Carefully is boring,” I say. “But fine.”

My phone buzzes.

Kitten :

Shift over. Heading home. Was thinking we could watch… The Notebook?