Page 84

“It means nothing that proves anything.”

He grunts. Briggs has an efficient vocabulary. Only half of it involves actual words.

I turn the laptop slightly. “No obvious debts. No shared accounts I can legally see. No property in his name. His parents own the house. Maggie has no public assets.”

“So he holds everything?”

I can only shrug. “Possibly.”

“Possibly,” Briggs repeats, as if the word offends him.

“Possibly keeps us out of jail.”

“Jail’s not always a deal breaker.”

“It is before lunch.”

He doesn’t smile. Briggs rarely does when he’s worried. “What about the note?”

I look at the page I copied from the photo he sent me last night.

Rain city. Don’t follow the first trail.

He cries better than he tells the truth.

Lucy knows the song, but not the words.

Ben always hated it here.

If I’m gone, I chose the water before the fire chose me.

“Could reference a place,” I suggest.

“Rain city?”

“Could be a street name. Business. Statue. Old landmark. Nickname.”

Briggs’s jaw shifts. “You sound like you’ve been thinking about it.”

“I have.”

“And?”

“And thinking isn’t the same as knowing.”

He hates that. I do too.

Torin arrives at 8:24 with coffee and no expression. He sets one cup beside me, one beside Briggs, then stands at the edge of the office.

He looks rough.

Not visibly, not to most people. His hair is tied back. Clothes clean. Boots dry. But his eyes have that distant, inward focus he gets when guilt finds a sharp object and starts carving.

“Any news?” he asks.

“No.”

He nods once, eyes on the copied note. “That looks like panic.”