Page 133 of What We Become

But the one I want is on a boat somewhere, and my servers can’t find what the ocean swallowed.

A knock on the door.

“Go away, Mom.”

I barely spoke to Gloria when I arrived. The moment I told her I knew about the pills, she zipped her lips tight, like she’d rather swallow glass than explain herself. I’d moved straight past her and headed for the server room, because the alternative was standing there demanding answers from a stone. I love my mother. But sometimes I also want to put her in a time-out that lasts until the heat death of the universe.

“Not Gloria.”

I spin the chair. That’s Holden’s voice. Muffled by a metal door, nine deadbolts, and a biometric pad, but unmistakable—nobody else sounds that grouchy and that sexy at the same time.

I cross the room and open the door, finding Holden, wearing his brown leather jacket and holding two takeout coffees in one hand. He looks like he just got off work.

“Busy day fighting crime?” I ask, my eyes raking over him. He’s been back at the station for barely a week, and he already has a tic in his jaw.

“You could say that,” he says.

“How’d you get past the dads?”

“Dennis let me in. He offered me lemonade and instigated a conversation about lawn care.” Holden steps inside, scanning the room before his gaze lands on the screens. “Anything?”

“A whole lot of nothing wrapped in encrypted nothing served on a bed of frustrating nothing.” I drop back into my chair and gesture at the monitors. “Trail’s dead after Annapolis. Odin’s maritime contacts came back empty. If he’s on that boat, he’s either in the Caribbean or at the bottom of the Atlantic, and I honestly can’t decide which I’d prefer.”

“Caribbean means he’s alive.”

“Atlantic means we’ll never know where he is.”

He presses his mouth into a thin line. “I checked Sage’s file. Figured if she’s back at the diner, we needed to make sure she isn’t still suspected dead.”

“Oh, fuck. I can’t believe we didn’t think about that before she went back. We suck. What was in the file?”

“Odin’s people already cleaned it up. She’s listed as located safe, and the Coast Guard report was amended once they examined the car. No evidence anyone was inside when it went over. Local police have it down as a vehicle deliberately dumped off the bluff.”

“That’s reassuringly vague.”

“It gets better. There’s an active warrant for Stephen Mercer-Davis, with Jamie Mercer listed as an alias. Kidnapping and attempted murder. The BOLO says detain immediately.”

“And if some helpful little patrol officer finds him before we do?”

Holden takes a drink. “Odin has someone in the transfer chain.”

I smile. “I love interagency cooperation.”

Holden doesn’t smile back. “It means she isn’t legally dead. It doesn’t mean she’s safe. She’s still behind a counter on a published schedule, in a town he knows.”

“Cool. Great. I’d almost gone a full minute without the creeping dread.”

Holden hands me a coffee and takes the other chair. “I stopped by the hardware store on my way here.”

“Okay?” I take a mouthful of lukewarm coffee and grimace.

“They said you left early.”

“I leave early most days. It’s a hardware store, Holden, not NASA.”

“You know, in all the years I’ve known you, I think I’ve only seen you at the hardware store once—and that was when you used the store as a cover to get into the country club. How do you even still have that job?”

“Oh. That’s easy. My stepdad owns it.”