Bruce drove back to the precinct with the faint aftertaste of cheap coffee drying at the back of his tongue and the faint ache in his knees that told him he’d been on his feet too long, sitting too long, thinking too long. The sky over Billings was a heavy purple-gray, the kind of dusk that suggested snow that never quite bothered to arrive. Jac sat in the passenger seat, quiet, staring straight forward, her hands clasped too tightly around her notebook.

  She was still holding her breath from the Evan Tally interview. He could feel it. Like a hum in the air.

  Bruce turned into the precinct lot, the tires grinding over dirty slush. He cut the engine, grabbed his jacket, and stepped out into the cold air. The wind caught him in the face—sharp, metallic—and he sucked in a long breath before heading up the steps.

  Inside, the precinct felt busier than it had an hour ago. Ritter was moving between desks with a stack of folders tucked under his arm. Phones rang. Radios barked. Somewhere down the hall, a fax machine hummed with a life of its own.

  Bruce hung up his coat. Jac did the same, but more carefully, as if afraid the hook would knock it back at her.

  Ritter spotted them immediately and motioned them over.

  Bruce didn’t like the look on his face—tight, controlled, bracing. Not panic. Just a man who’d stopped pretending the situation was manageable.

  “Got something for you,” Ritter said, lifting the top sheet of a thin report folder. “Halden’s death report. Initial findings only. ME will need more time for a full ruling.”

  Jac stiffened beside Bruce but didn’t speak.

  Ritter handed Bruce the folder.

  The first photograph hit like a blunt instrument: Marla Halden’s doorway, the wood splintered just slightly above the deadbolt. Not forced—no pry marks. No tool marks. Just a surface that had taken more impact than it ever should have. The living room behind her looked scorched, fragments of burned paper scattered around the hearth.

  Bruce flipped to the next page. Chest cavity crushed inward.

  Fireplace warm when responders arrived, ash still flaking along the grate, half-burned sheets of paper on the stone hearth. They had pulled a few fragments from the mess—diagrams, equations, barely legible through the char.

  Bruce stared down at the photo of those fragments until the corners of his vision thinned.

  He heard Jac swallow beside him, a tiny, reflexive sound.

  Ritter rubbed the back of his neck. “Neighbor called it in around 7 a.m. Smelled smoke, saw the body. Door was wide open, chain still hanging. ME thinks the chest compression happened first, fire set after.”

  Bruce exhaled slowly, steadying his voice. “Establishing connection to Stall?”

  Ritter folded his arms. “We’ve got two bodies tied to the same workplace, both mangled in a similar fashion. Both linked to the leak investigation. I’m not the detective, but it seems open and shut to me.”

  Jac spoke gently. “And Ringer?”

  “Still missing,” Ritter answered. “Hasn’t been home. Work says he hasn’t called. I don’t like it. We need to find him.”

  Bruce nodded once. It was the only answer he had.

  Ritter lowered his voice. “I don’t know what we’re looking at here, Morrow. But someone’s crossing names off a list. I want you two at the center of this. Carefully.”

  Bruce closed the file. “We’ll handle it.” He meant it, but it came out hollow.

  Jac followed him back to their desks. They sat down, spreading out the photos from Halden’s scene alongside the storage unit shots from Day 1. Two scenes, two different victims, same brutality. No weapon visible. No fingerprints. Nothing that made sense.

  The weight in Bruce’s chest deepened. Had he known that Halden was in danger, she’d still be here.

  Jac leaned forward, elbows on her knees, eyes tracing the edge of the crushed ribcage photo.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “This isn’t revenge,” she murmured.

  Bruce looked at her.

  She kept going. “It feels too… systematic.”

  He almost smiled. The kid had instincts. “Feels like someone cleaning house,” Bruce said quietly.

  Jac nodded.

  They worked through the paperwork in silence for a while, Bruce typing up their notes on the Tally interview and Jac organizing the photographic comparisons. The precinct around them slowly thinned as the evening shift traded out. Ritter ducked into his office. Phones quieted.

  Bruce finished typing the last paragraph and rubbed his temples.

  “Alright,” he said. “That’s enough for tonight.”

  Jac looked up. “I can finish sorting these.”

  “No,” Bruce said. “Go home.”

  She blinked. “I’m okay, Detective. Really.”

  “You’re tired. Worse, you’re rattled. Go home.”

  She hesitated.

  He didn’t raise his voice—but his tone cut the air cleanly. “This case isn’t going anywhere in the next few hours,” he said. “But if you don’t sleep, you might.”

  Jac lowered her gaze. Then nodded, gathering her coat and notebook.

  Bruce watched her walk toward the exit, her shoulders tight, her steps too careful. She didn’t look back.

  He sighed and turned back to the desk, finishing his final notes for the night. The precinct continued to empty around him. By the time he shut off his monitor and stood, the place was mostly dark—just scattered desk lamps and the faint smell of old coffee. He grabbed his jacket and headed out.

  The drive home was quiet. Bruce left the radio off; even NPR seemed like too much noise. The night sky had deepened to a flat, clouded black, the kind that ate light instead of reflecting it. Streetlamps caught wet streaks on the pavement. Bruce could feel the day settling into his shoulders like sandbags.

  Two victims. Tremendous force. Same silence around the crime scenes. And now… Ringer somewhere out there, missing. He gripped the steering wheel harder than he needed to.

  When he pulled into his driveway, the house was mostly dark except for a single lamp glowing through the front window. Karen was awake. He felt the tension coil in his gut even before he walked inside. He shut the door behind him gently—he always tried to—but Karen was already sitting on the edge of the couch, hands folded, staring at him with something halfway between hope and dread.

  “Bruce,” she said quietly. “We need to talk.”

  He hung his coat up without looking at her. “Not tonight.”

  Her expression froze. “I’ve been thinking about what we said the other night,” she continued, voice trembling in a way that didn’t sound angry at first. “I wanted to—”

  “Karen,” Bruce repeated, rubbing the back of his neck. “Please. Not tonight. I just want five minutes of quiet.”

  That did it. The hopeful look drained away, replaced by something brittle and sharp.

  “Five minutes of quiet,” she echoed. “That’s all you ever want anymore.”

  “Karen—”

  “No,” she snapped, standing. “I sat here for an hour hoping you’d call. I sat here practicing what I wanted to say. I was going to apologize. I was going to tell you I didn’t mean the things I said before, that I didn’t want to fight anymore. But you come home and you won’t even look at me.”

  Bruce felt the exhaustion pouring down his spine. “I had a long day.”

  “You always do,” she said bitterly. “There’s always some dead stranger you connect with more than your own wife.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “Karen, two people were murdered this week. I spent hours trying to figure out how. I’m doing everything I can.”

  “And what about us, Bruce?” she said, voice cracking. “When do you do something for us?”

  He didn’t answer because he didn’t have one.

  Karen pressed her lips together, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “Fine,” she whispered. “You want quiet? Here’s quiet.”

  He turned toward her then, sensing the shift.

  She looked at him with raw pain etched across her face.

  “I can give you all the quiet in the world. I can take my noise elsewhere, like I’ve been doing. I haven’t been alone these last few months.

  Franklin, from around the corner.”

  Bruce’s stomach dropped. He stared at her, suffocated by silence. “What,” he finally choked out.

  “I tried,” she went on, tears streaking her cheek. “I tried to talk to you. But you were never here. I was invisible in my own house. So I… I made a mistake.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand and sobbed quietly.

  Bruce sat down heavily on the arm of the couch. He didn’t yell, didn’t throw anything. He didn’t even stand up.

  He just felt the weight of it all press down on him—Halden, Stall, Ducks, the case, the years of distance, the silence between them, the ghost of a daughter they’d once hoped to raise. Suzy. Her name still tasted like saltwater.

  Karen wiped her eyes and turned away, unable to meet his gaze.

  Bruce leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the floorboards.

  After a long while, Karen whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She went to the bedroom and closed the door behind her with a soft click.

  Bruce sat there in the dim light, hands clasped together, breath shallow. The house around him felt hollow and cold. Somewhere, a pipe hissed. The refrigerator kicked into a low hum.

  He finally lowered himself onto the couch, tugged the blanket down from the backrest, and lay on his side. His body felt like it had been filled with cement.

  Above him, the ceiling fan turned once, then twice, before the motor clicked quietly.

  He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. His mind drifted—Halden’s crushed chest, the charred paper, Tally’s fear, the thin line they were walking. Jac’s face when he’d told her to go home. Karen’s tears. The confession.

  Everything he touched seemed to break.

  He stared at the coffee table, where his pager sat face-up beside his badge. The low battery light blinked softly, pulsing like a tired heartbeat in the dark.

  Outside, somewhere across the city, something happened that he would learn about tomorrow—something that would widen this case into something even darker. But for tonight, Bruce lay awake on the couch, hollowed out, listening to the quiet house around him breathe.