“What’s up, boss?” Ace asked as he entered the office.

“Is my wife working in the garden?”

“Yes, sir. She’s out there with Dylan.”

I nodded. “Good. I’m working on some case stuff. I need you to text me when you see her coming back inside. I don’t want her to walk in on this. It’s not… She’s a bit sensitive about this stuff, you know?”

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

As Ace closed the office door behind him, I stared at the images on my computer screen, the screenshots I took of the comments and posts I’d found recently in the Justice for Jack Stratton Jr. Facebook group, the ones I’d hurriedly scrolled past when I searched the group in front of Laurel earlier. One post from a guy named Kevin O’Toole was especially troubling.

I found Karen’s bad grammar endearing. But I took Kevin’s threats very seriously.

I suspected that “take matters into my own hands” meant that Kevin was going to take one of three different courses of action:

1) He planned to report the group to Facebook for doxxing — or in layman’s terms, harassing someone or encouraging harassment by posting their personal contact information in a public forum. Little did he know that Mark Zuckerberg and I weren’t strangers. I’d had lunch with him the last time I was in Palo Alto.

2) He would contact authorities in Boise, Idaho and make a false harassment claim against Karen, the other Boise residents in the group, or me.

3) He was planning to get revenge or silence us with counter-harassment or violence.

Seeing as there were thousands of other Facebook groups investigating thousands of other murders and missing persons cases, Kevin would get nowhere fast if he took option one. As long as we didn’t share Kevin or Mike O’Toole’s contact information, we were well within our rights to speculate about Mike’s guilt.

He could try option two, but without being in the same state as me, he probably wouldn’t get very far, since I was the owner of the Facebook group, not Karen.

If Kevin even considered option three, he was in for the rudest wake-up call of the century.

Even though I had no reason to believe that Kevin’s threat was imminent, it didn’t hurt to let Ace and Matt know they should be extra vigilant today. Especially since I’d received an interesting email from a Detective Ava Robinson a couple of days ago.

Robinson had some interesting information about Mike O’Toole. This new lead brought into question the prevailing theory that Beth and Junior’s deaths were simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I closed the Facebook screenshots and opened up Robinson’s email again just as a call from Matt came through on my phone.

“Did you find it?” I asked.

Matt breathed heavily into the phone. “Not yet,” he replied, taking a beat to catch his breath. “But there’s still about eight more boxes I haven’t looked at, and four boxes that aren’t labeled. Should I bring in the ones that aren’t labeled?”

“No,” I replied quickly. “I don’t want Laurel knowing about this until she absolutely has to. Just set aside any boxes that aren’t labeled. I’ll look through them later.”

“Right on,” he replied.

“Finish up in there as quickly as possible. I need you watching over the house. This information I’m looking for is in relation to some new leads on the case, and… let’s just say I’m really fucking glad I decided to hire you guys when I did. If you see anyone on the property you don’t recognize, anyone at all, don’t hesitate to take action.”

“Got it.”

As we ended the call, I contemplated how to get Laurel out of the house for a while so I could look through those boxes. Maybe I should suggest that she and Dylan go out for dinner or drinks. Maybe even tell her to invite Drea to really draw the night out.

But I didn’t like the idea of sending Laurel out in public. Even with Ace by her side, I didn’t want to consider the possibility that I might be putting her in harm’s way.

I thought of asking Matt and Ace to discreetly load up the trunk of the SUV with the boxes. Then, I could pretend I needed to go to the office for a while. But I didn’t want to leave Laurel here alone, though not necessarily because of the recent threats.

Laurel had been talking in her sleep a few nights ago. I’d almost forgotten she had this habit because we hadn’t been sleeping together much for the past seven or eight months. But these last couple of weeks, I became reacquainted with her nighttime terrors and occasional sleep-talking.

It was rare that I could understand the words she mumbled in her sleep. When I did catch something resembling a word, it was usually “Junior” or “Mom” or “no.” The other night, I clearly heard her say the name “Isaac.”

I leaned back in the desk chair as I considered asking Ace to keep a watch over Laurel in my absence, to make sure she didn’t get too close to Isaac. But that wasn’t Ace’s job.

And I trusted Laurel. I had to trust her or our marriage was already over. Besides, I highly doubted she would do anything with Dylan around.

It was clear to me that Dylan was a way for her to exercise her maternal instincts. She wouldn’t want Dylan to think poorly of her.

I closed my laptop and took a deep breath as I pondered Laurel and her maternal instincts. She was so smart. She was intellectually and sexually my equal, through and through. No one could fuck or fight dirtier than Laurel. But when it came to her need to have a baby, she lost all sense of rationality.

It made me sick that I had exploited her one weakness in order to get her to come home. Her need to replace Junior and prove she could be as great as her dead mother was heartbreaking and also infuriating.

Junior could not be replaced. And Beth wasn’t the saint Laurel had turned her into posthumously.

Yes, Beth was awesome, and just as smart and beautiful as Laurel. But she was also as stubborn and lost in her own world. Laurel’s father would never win Father of the Year, but sometimes, I didn’t blame him for divorcing Beth and moving halfway across the country.

She was funny and a great conversationalist, but underneath the sharp-witted, nurturing grandma façade, she could be pretty fucking icy.

I would never forget how she refused to come to the hospital when Laurel first went into labor. I was aware that grandmothers weren’t always in the delivery room, and the hospital in Hood River was more than an hour’s drive away from Beth, but Laurel had asked for her. Beth didn’t leave for the hospital until I texted her to let her know Laurel was having an emergency C-section.

Laurel was crazy if she thought I was seriously going to entertain the idea of having another baby right now. Neither of us were ready for that.

Nevertheless, I loved my pixie more than life itself, even if she couldn’t seem to get her neighbor out of her thoughts. But I couldn’t keep having sex with her and hoping she wouldn’t get pregnant. It was too risky.

As soon as Laurel returned tonight, I was going to come clean about not being ready for another baby. It would be an excellent way to test her, to see if she would open up and tell me the whole truth about Isaac, if there was anything more to tell.

This was either going to blow up in my face, or it would be the communication breakthrough we needed.