The timing. Something was bothering her about the timing.

A wide yawn broke her train of thought. Neither of the two coffees she’d bolted down was having the desired effect. All Sara wanted in the world was to put her head down on one of the desks and grab five minutes of sleep. She looked at the clock on the wall. 7:02 p.m. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed an ominous black outside. She rubbed her eyes. Stray bits of mascara still clung to her lashes. She had washed off in the shower at the back of the morgue. Her scrubs smelled like the chemicals Gary used to scour the tables, but she’d trade that for the formaldehyde stench and U-Store damp any day.

She looked at the clock again, because she kept losing track of time. That was what happened when you drove around town all night with a blinding rush of shit in your brain. At least Tessa had gotten a good laugh out of it.

She had to look at the clock a third time.

7:03 p.m.

Sara’s only hope was that she would catch her second wind when the briefing started. Then, she would go home and fall into bed.

Whether or not Will was beside her was completely out of her hands.

“Doc.” Nick placed his rhinestone cowboy briefcase in one of the chairs. “Amanda told me you were in Grant County today.”

“For two seconds. Brock gave me access to his storage facility.”

“Find any taxidermied corpses dressed like his mother?”

Sara abhorred that kind of teasing. “I found the files we need to investigate this case, and I’m grateful that Brock was willing to help us.”

Nick’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t apologize. He unhooked his reading glasses from his shirt. He looked down at the papers on the desks. “This everything?”

“Yes.”

He ran his fingers down a few paragraphs. “It’s hard for me to accept that Jeffrey was wrong on this one.”

“You mean the Chief?”

Nick kept his eyes on the page, but she saw the sly grin on his lips. He had never called Jeffrey by that name.

“Nick, what you’re doing with Will,” Sara said. “I know that Jeffrey would’ve appreciated it, but I don’t.”

He looked at her over his glasses. He gave a curt nod. “Message received.”

“Dr. Linton.” The top of Amanda’s head entered the room first. As usual, she was typing on her phone. “I sent the Van Dorne paperwork to Villa Rica. They’ve scheduled the exhumation for five tomorrow morning. The information is on the server.”

“Great,” Sara said, because standing in a cold, dark cemetery at the crack of dawn was much better than sleeping in her warm bed.

Nick asked Amanda, “How’d it go with Zanger? Is she a victim or was that Miranda gal just blowing smoke up our asses?”

“I haven’t been updated.” She asked Sara, “Tommi Humphrey?”

Sara’s brain took a moment to catch up. It wasn’t like Faith and Will not to report in. “I couldn’t find Tommi online. Not in our database or social media. I asked my mother to do some digging around.”

“Speaking to Humphrey is a priority.”

Sara bit her lip so she would not tell Amanda that everything couldn’t be a priority. “I’ll call her again.”

“Do that.”

Sara gave into an eye-roll as she stepped out into the hallway. She leaned her back against the wall. She closed her eyes. She was vibrating with exhaustion. She was incapable of summoning her inner medical student, who had thrived on back-to-back shifts.

Her phone vibrated with a new alert. Sara had to blink her eyes several times to get them to focus. She swiped through her messages. Agents asking for reports. Gary requesting time off to take his cat to the vet. The state’s attorney wanted to schedule prep on a case that was about to go to trial. Brock had texted to make sure Sara had found everything she needed at the U-Store. The thought of responding to any of them felt overwhelming. Only guilt made her reply to Brock—

Got everything. Really helpful. Will return key soon. Thks.

Sara figured she might as well get her mother out of the way. A phone call felt like a burden. She texted in the formal style that Cathy demanded—

Hey, Mama. Did Tessie ask you to find Tommi Humphrey’s phone number or location for me? Her mother’s information would work, too. It’s for a very important case. We really need to speak with her as soon as possible. I love you. S.

Sara slid her phone into her pocket. She did not expect a quick response from her mother. Cathy’s phone was probably sitting on the kitchen counter, hooked up to the charger, which is where she usually left it when she was inside the house.

Of its own accord, Sara’s hand reached back into her pocket. The phone came out. Her thumb swiped up. She was like an addict. Hours had passed since her last hit. She could no longer resist the temptation.

She opened the Find My app.

Instead of Lena’s address, the map showed an actual pin.

Will had made himself visible to her again. He was inside the building. Sara almost wept with relief. She held the phone to her chest even as she berated herself for being so desperate.

At that very moment, the stair door banged open. Will stepped aside, letting Faith stomp down the hall ahead of him. Sara’s first thought was that Faith looked worse than Sara felt. Her shoulders were bowed. She was gripping her purse to her chest like a football. Her usual air of cheerful disgruntlement had been replaced by a crushing anguish.

She took a left into the briefing room, telling Sara, “Fuck my job.”

Will looked as haunted as Faith. Instead of speaking to Sara, he shook his head.

She followed him inside.

Amanda asked, “Well?”

“Well, this.” Faith hurled her purse at one of the desks. The contents spilled onto the floor. She paced a few steps toward the window. Her hands went into her hair. Everyone but Will was stunned. Faith never acted out. Sara had always thought of her as unflappable.

She looked to Will, but he had knelt down to gather Faith’s things back into her purse.

Amanda told him, “Speak.”

Will set the purse upright on the desk. He said, “We called Callie Zanger from the car outside her office building.”

He carefully relayed Faith’s phone conversation with the lawyer. Will had always been uncomfortable leading briefings. Now, his voice had turned monotone, almost rote. Sara sat down in the front row. Will was directing his words toward Faith, though she clearly already knew the details. Sara realized that he was watching his partner, ready to step in if she needed him.

He continued, “Zanger sat at the bar with Faith. I was at a table about ten feet away.”

Sara heard a roughness enter his tone. He was just as bruised by Callie Zanger’s story. He laid it all out in painful detail. The abduction. The woman’s certainty that her ex-husband was the man who had harmed her, who had raped her, who had left her for dead.

As Will spoke, he worried his thumb over his wounded knuckle. Fresh blood slid down his fingers. By the time he had finished telling them what Callie Zanger thought was the truth of her abduction, the carpet beneath his hand was stained with dots of blood.

Will said, “Zanger is sure it was her husband. We didn’t tell her any different.”

He said we, but Sara knew from the story that Will had never spoken to the woman.

“The bartender told me he’d make sure she didn’t drive herself home,” Will said. “And then we left. That’s it.”

“I couldn’t tell her.” Faith had sagged into a chair. She looked haunted by the weight of the day. “Callie thinks she won. That’s what she said. ‘I won.’”

No one spoke in the immediate.

Nick pulled at a string on the corner of his briefcase.

Will leaned his back against the wall.

Amanda let out a long, slow breath. She was the most hardened officer of them all, but she was also closely tied to the Mitchell family. Early in her career, she had been partnered with Evelyn, Faith’s mother. She had dated Faith’s uncle. Jeremy and Emma called her Aunt Mandy.

“Nick,” Amanda said. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of my desk.”

Nick left at a sprint.

Faith said, “I don’t want a drink.”

“I do.” Amanda was always on her feet, but she sat at the desk beside Faith. She asked Will, “Rod Zanger?”

Will said, “We located him in Cheyenne. He’s been in the Laramie county lock-up for the last three months. He beats his new wife, too.”

Faith put her head in her hands. “I couldn’t tell her. She’s barely holding it together. I’m barely holding it together.”

Amanda asked Will. “The transceiver on her car?”

He said, “We couldn’t ask for it without telling her why.”

“I wasn’t going to do that to her,” Faith said. “I couldn’t take that away from her.”

Amanda nodded for Will to continue.

He said, “Rod’s got an extensive social media presence going back ten years. During the week of the Grant County attacks, he was in Antwerp with Callie Zanger for some kind of tax conference. There are photographs of them on an orange, wooden escalator that’s well-known in the city.”