“I wasn’t sure I’d get this appointment,” Carrie Lafler said. She strode into Bobbi’s office with confidence, wearing a khaki pantsuit, all three buttons fastened, and sat in the single chair by the window. “You still have some cops around, huh?”

“Yeah.” Bobbi nodded and took a seat at her desk, facing Carrie. “The investigation is ongoing.” She thought of seeing Mike and Detective Overton the previous afternoon, Wednesday, headed down to the records room. Everyone was wondering what they’d been looking at.

Carrie leaned forward and dropped her voice. “Have they found anything?”

“They don’t say much.”

Carrie sat back and nodded like this made perfect sense. She’d made an obvious effort to dress nice for the day; the pantsuit had probably run her 100 bucks at Kohl’s and fit her well. Not long ago, her hip bones would’ve been showing above the waistband of her ripped jeans.

“So, you know why I’m here,” Carrie said. “First Anita calls the cops on me, now she’s got a new plan: trying to convince everyone that my little Hailey is an emotional wreck, and it’s my fault for coming back.”

Anita hadn’t said anything like it to Bobbi, but she omitted that. “Did she give you an example?”

“Well, yeah. So, Hailey’s got this little kiddie house she shares with Mason, right? They play in it.”

Bobbi nodded – she’d seen the tiny playhouse out behind Anita’s garden. It was cute, made of real wood and cedar shakes on the roof. Windowsills with flower boxes.

“I mean,” Carrie said, “mostly she uses it and plays with her dolls but Mason uses it too. So apparently she was playing just fine and adding in her little decorations and then, according to Anita, I show up, and it’s this big fiasco now. First the flowers wilt—”

“How did you hear this? You spoke to Anita?”

Carrie wore a look of guilt. “No. Roy told me.”

“You’re speaking to Roy? Did you call him? When?”

Carrie bit her thumbnail. “Last night.”

“Carrie… showing up at Anita’s house, talking to Roy about her – this isn’t going to help you.”

“They’re our kids,” Carrie said, dropping her hand. “Mine and Roy’s. Our kids.”

“Right. But you left. And Roy had a lot of trouble. Anita has been taking care of them, giving them a home – that just can’t be undone in a day or two.”

“I’ve been back for over two weeks.”

“And you’re jumping through the hoops, you’re doing a lot of the right things – but it’s a process. Okay? Tell me more about Hailey – tell me what Anita said.”

Carrie sighed, studied her hands a bit. Her peroxide-blonde hair was fixed in a French braid, the dark roots visible. “She said Hailey’s just been freaking out over everything; this isn’t right, that’s not right, the door is sticking and won’t open properly, the flowers, moss on the roof… and you can’t help her, you can hardly help her, Anita says, it’s like Hailey’s got to do it all herself, just like she was when she was little. It’s like she’s regressed to age two or something…”

She trailed off, looked out the window, and brushed a finger over her lips. Bobbi saw she’d taken to carrying a purse, a leather bag that sat on the floor beside her. Carrie had not been a purse-carrying woman when she’d left Roy with a toddler and an infant and headed to California.

Still looking out the window, Carrie said, “I was just remembering – we went to the grocery store once, me and Roy and the kids – Mason was just, I don’t know, he was like a couple months old, I guess, but Hailey was almost two, or so, and she wanted one of the things in those machines. You know? The little red machines and they spit out the plastic bulb thingies and the little toy is inside? And in this one was this little pink teddy bear thing, and she loved it. Cutest little thing. And we took it with us, but then the next day I dropped her at Anita’s house, so I could, um, go to work, and I forgot the little pink bear. Holy shit – sorry, I mean, my God, did she freak out. She wanted that bear. Had a full-on meltdown. Would not let it go. All day she’s upset about it. And this little house… the way she’s acting, it sounds just like that. Like she’s freaking out, the flowers in the flower boxes have wilted, and somehow Anita blames me for the whole thing.”

Carrie turned toward Bobbi, her face open, expecting a solution to it all.

Then Carrie said, “I mean, you know about Roy, right? He’s a lot of things – he’s not a liar, though.”

Bobbi didn’t answer. Roy had managed with the kids for a while but was a bad drinker, made a beer run one night and got pulled over just as he was arriving back home. Cops found out he’d left his kids inside, alone.

The kids were asleep and okay, but the cops field-tested Roy, arrested him, and called child services. Here was a guy with a clear drinking problem, leaving his small children alone at ten o’clock at night while he went out for more alcohol. And, at the time, was driving with a suspended license. Roy went to court, was ordered to attend parenting classes, didn’t, got pulled over again for driving drunk two years later, this time with no license, the kids in the car, also late at night, and the kids went away. They were given temporary placement with Anita, his mother, and that placement had endured, even after he got out of jail for felony DWI and aggravated unlicensed driving.

Now Carrie had returned, having seen the light, and wanted her kids back. But, four years had gone by. The kids were secure in a loving home.

“I believe Roy observed his daughter was stressed,” Bobbi said finally. “And what you’re talking about – little Hailey, two-year-old Hailey crying about the tiny little teddy bear – it was like her heart was broken, right?”

“Oh, she was devastated. I mean, yeah, just heartbroken. Like she’d lost everything.” Then Carrie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re taking Anita’s side, aren’t you? I can see it.”

“I’m on Hailey’s side. My point is, two-year-olds haven’t learned to regulate their emotions. Losing that little toy was as bad as an adult losing their job, or their house; there’s no real sense of scale when you’re two, and that’s what we help teach them.”

Bobbi edged a little closer in her chair. Carrie had always had a hard time making eye contact, but she looked over as Bobbi said, “As the parent, you say, you know, ‘There, there, it’s alright – I’ll get the teddy and bring it back in a little bit.’ Or, you try to offer an alternative toy, or you distract them with a game or something. Right?”

“Yeah.” Back to brushing her lip again with her finger, biting her nail.

And now, carefully, “So, when there’s that situation, and the parent is not doing those things, if the parent is drunk, maybe, dismissive, and they shout, ‘What are you bawling at? Get out of here.’ Then the child is not learning how to cope, how to self-regulate. And that can continue on.”

“Roy wants them back, too.”

It took Bobbi a moment. “What do you mean?”

“He got in some big fight with Anita. I mean, like I said, he wouldn’t lie about nothin’, not when it comes to the kids…”

“Carrie. Forget Roy. He’s burned too many bridges. You have to focus on what you need to do. Don’t listen to him, don’t talk to him if you can help it. You’ve got your own work cut out for you. You want healthy, happy kids?”

Carrie nodded, her mouth working, like she was on the verge of tears.

“Then keep it straight. Keep your eye on the prize, and remember that those two kids are all that matters. You’ve got a long road ahead, but you can do it.”

The tears fell, and Carrie’s chest hitched with a sob, but it was all good growth, Bobbi thought. She wanted Carrie to succeed, completely and wholeheartedly, and thought Carrie was developing the chops to do just that. But there was no sugar-coating anything; her kids were going to be messed up from the three years they’d spent alone with a drunk father, even if they’d gone to Anita eventually.

“I know you’re grateful to Anita,” Bobbi said. “It’s tough to have your ex-boyfriend’s mother be the one who your children are with every day, saying goodnight to them, tucking them in.”

Full crying now. “I’ll never forgive myself for it…”

Bobbi decided not to remark on forgiveness. They had a plan for Carrie, and it was working. Her therapist could work on the forgiveness part.

“My parents took in foster children,” Bobbi said instead, trying to reel Carrie back in.

“Oh yeah?” She sniffed and took a tissue when Bobbi handed her the box.

“I’m actually the only biological kid my parents had,” Bobbi said. “And I was a surprise.”

Carrie wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and faced Bobbi a bit more directly.

Bobbi said, “I had foster sisters and brothers. Eight, all together.”

“At one time?”

“Different times. My parents only took on three foster children at one time. Most of my growing up was with my two foster brothers.”

“Were they, you know, screwed up? From their, um, biological parents? Or were they okay?” Carrie looked hopeful – their good news could mean good news for Hailey and Mason.

“Carrie, you’re back. That’s what’s important. And Hailey is young, just eight years old, and you’ve got a wonderful adventure ahead of yourself.”

“Because I heard this thing, um, on Dr. Phil or something, that by age five, kids are like hardwired or something. And I left when Hailey was four…”

“There’s a lot of development in the first five years, sure, but we’re still changing right through our whole lives. Look at you.”

At last, a smile.

“You’re doing it,” Bobbi said. “You got this. Okay?”

Carrie sniffed, blew her nose again, nodded. “Okay.”

---

Brit Silas was calling. Mike realized he’d fallen asleep in his clothes again. Come home last night after the casino and run-in with Cody Blackburn, laid down, and went out like a light, apparently.

“Brit, what’ve you got?” His mouth tasted funny.

“Mike, the River Street house is a total mess. We’re talking eighteen different individual sets of fingerprints, and that’s so far – my two best guys are still there. Oh, and that’s with all the cleaning the real estate agency claims they did on the place. That woman, Bilger, she shows up non-stop, checking on everything.”

“But the attic?”

“Nothing in the attic. First of all, it’s 120 degrees up there. Literally. That doesn’t mean my crime scene didn’t do the work; they did. But there are no prints, save for one partial we found and matched to a set I’m sure will be eliminated once we get everything in from the previous owners. But this was a family, kids – and kids have friends over… It goes on and on.”

Mike swung his legs over the bed and sat up, tried to get the knots out of his neck – they seemed to be worse, like he’d slept hard the wrong way. “Doorknob?”

“Front doorknob, nothing, probably wiped down by Bilger’s people. Rear basement doorknob, six, maybe seven different prints, never got cleaned. Skin oils are non-volatile, so again, we’re looking to eliminate these as family and friends. That’s going to take a while.”

“Vehicle…?”

“Okay, the victim’s car – 2012 Kia Sportage. This is where it gets interesting. Speaking of cleaning, we discovered a substance in the back seat, a chemical commonly found in those clean-up and protectant wipes, like Armor All.”

“He tidied up after himself,” Mike said.

“It could explain the lack of sweat secretions.”

“But that stuff – cleaning stuff – doesn’t get rid of DNA, does it?”

“Well, it can, yeah. Armor All contains diethylene glycol.”

“And that will do it?”

“Sometimes. I mean, DNA is not indelible. Bleach, hydrochloric acid, even soap and warm water can work in some cases. But we’re still looking. Otherwise, we got dirt. Bits of leaves and moss. We took samples from the woods, and they’re a match. And we’ve determined the imprint is a size twelve or thirteen work boot. So, the guy’s big; big feet anyway.”

Mike heard a key hit the lock downstairs and got up from the bed. “What about the door, breaking in?”

“So, power locks, as you know, are activated by the remote fob or standard key. The door is untouched and doesn’t really tell us anything except if he did clone the fob, it’s not hard – this is not high security but pretty standard.”

“Okay, Brit. Thanks.”

“Sorry I don’t have better news.”

“No, it’s good.” He stuck his phone in his pocket and started for the stairs, thinking about a killer with the foresight to bring protective wipes along. It might mean he was in the system and working hard to cover his tracks. Or he was just being extra cautious in general.

“Dad?”

He called down, “Yeah, up here. Hang on.”

Mike ducked into the bathroom, stuck his face in the mirror. His hair was flat on one side. He ran the tap and tried to reshape it a bit, smooth things out. He breathed into his cupped palm and made a face. Took down his toothbrush, went for the toothpaste, found the tube squashed and empty.

Did the wipes prove the killer had every intent to murder Harriet right there in her car? No. But cleansing wipes weren’t going to do much with fabric upholstery – maybe he’d known Harriet’s car had a leather interior. More points on the scorecard that he knew her, unless he always walked around in a body suit with Armor All wipes in his pocket.

Mike managed to squeeze a pea-sized dollop from the tube. He brushed with haste.

Also, the DSS building was remote, on the edge of town, tucked against the woods, but how could the killer be certain there wasn’t a nighttime cleaner hanging out inside, someone who’d see him? There were no other cars in the parking lot, but some people took the bus, or taxi. Mike knew there was no one working when Harriet was murdered – he’d looked at all the employment records for that Thursday, and the penultimate person to leave for the day was the other supervisor, Jessica Rankin, at 5:43 – but had the killer known that, too?

Did he know the typical schedule of the caseworkers? Had he been watching for a while? Sitting up in that house? In 120-degree heat in the attic? Waiting for Rankin to leave, then Harriet two hours later? Maybe not that hot as the sun fell, but still. Pretty hot. And big as he was – local PD had done all the door-to-doors – nobody had seen some large man coming and going from the vacant house. Canvassing photos revealed what Mike had seen with his own eyes: depressions in the long grass that, on further thought, could’ve been made by a dog or a deer.

Rankin said they rarely worked late. Maybe then, if the killer wasn’t watching from the nearby vacant house, he otherwise knew Harriet would be detained. That pointed back to the Fullers; that the killer knew Harriet was staying late because of the emergency placement for the boy, Grayson. But the Fullers were locked up and had no known associates – unless they’d hired someone to kill Harriet… and that was really stretching it.

Fuck.

Or if not the Fullers – hell – maybe Pritchard had been the one to hire someone. Just because he was lying up at Marlene Blackburn’s place didn’t mean he was off the hook. He could’ve used someone else, just like Chelo had used someone to gun down Mike’s dad.

Mike set the toothbrush aside, ran some water into his palms to rinse his mouth, thinking if Harriet staying late was an anomaly, and if the killer wasn’t up at the house on River Street, how had he known when to strike?

Mike heard his daughter walking around downstairs, the floor creaking. “Dad…” Her voice drifted up. “It smells in here. Open a window…”

He spat in the sink. “Be right down!”

Maybe the guy was just down in the woods, skulking around in the trees until the time came. He didn’t have a broad view of things because he didn’t need to; he could stay hidden and just wait for the time to come.

Because maybe – and this was a big one – he had other ways of knowing who would be leaving, staying, and when. Other ways of watching.

---

Mike bounded down the stairs, giving his armpits a sniff. Good enough. Kristen was in the kitchen. She kept her back to him as she fiddled with the coffee machine. “What did you do to this thing?”

“Haven’t been using it,” he said. “Been heating water on the stove, having green tea.”

She left the appliance alone and turned around. Seeing her was always his greatest joy – and at the same time carried a familiar weight: hellos and goodbyes were when Molly’s absence was the hardest, even after all these years. He could see in Kristen’s eyes that it was the same for her.

They met in the middle of the room and he hugged her, probably too tight, and she put her head on his shoulder. “Dad, you look terrible.”

“You want coffee? We can go out for some. Or there’s instant.”

She pulled away, scrunching up her nose. “No thanks.” She backed up from him, not quite meeting his gaze until she bumped against the sink. He stayed in the middle of the room, disarmed, as ever, by his little girl. Not so little anymore.

She looked like him through the eyes, her mother through the mouth. Tall like him, though, scraping the sky at almost six feet. Not bad for a grown woman of twenty-two, hard for a school-aged girl of twelve who’d just lost her mother and for whom every normal adolescent challenge had been more acute.

“How’s the job?” he asked.

She seemed to be looking around for something and walked to the adjoining counter, picked out an apple from a wooden bowl, gave it a look, set it back. “Job’s good.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything more to eat. There’s this case that just… ah, man…”

“I know. I read about it.” She scanned him up and down. “Sleeping in your clothes?”

“You’re here before I expected. You got an early start, huh?”

“It’s after nine; I’m up early. There’s a little drool there on your sleeve.”

He walked to the sink, ran the tap over his arm.

Kristen drew closer. “Here. Let me do it.” She scrubbed the white shirt sleeve with her thumbs.

When she was finished he said, “I gotta change anyway.”

She moved to the bar stools perched where the second counter overhung. The way she sat there, Mike flashed back to her as a little girl, feet dangling. They’d bought the place in 1999, when Kristen was just three. After Molly died, he’d almost sold it. He’d wanted to start over – Molly’s ghost was everywhere. But Kristen, by then twelve, didn’t remember any other home. For her, reminders of her mother were a good thing, not something to run from.

Then the recession hit, kicked off by the housing crash, and Mike had decided to stay put. Keeping the house became a way of hanging tough, surviving the loss of Molly, surviving the severe economic downturn. Sometimes he’d felt like he and Kristen were the last two people left on earth, and their home was their refuge.

She stared at him. “You not telling me something?”

“No.”

“You said that we were always… You know what you said.”

“I’m okay.”

“But – you’re oversleeping? That’s not like you.”

“Just catching up. It’s healthy to sleep. Green tea is too. Doesn’t mean anything. You said the job is good?”

She sighed, looked into the corner. “Yeah, the job is good. It’s a job.”

“Well, it’s been keeping you pretty occupied.”

She did a slow blink, and part of his mind calculated: he’d managed to last almost a full two minutes before laying a guilt trip on her.

“Dad,” she said, and gave her head a little tilt.

He leaned against the sink. “I’m just saying. You’re only a couple of hours away. A little weekend trip every once in a while…”

“Uh-huh.” She reached into the bag sitting in front of her and pulled out her cell phone. He’d already lost her.

“I’m not… Look… I don’t mean to, you know…”

“It’s fine.” She poked at the screen.

He grasped for the right things to say, but, as usual, fell short.

---

They ended up getting iced coffee in town, took their plastic cups over to the park beside Mirror Lake, found a vacant bench. He felt a wash of déjà vu. Kristen caught him checking his watch.

“You don’t have to hang out, Dad. I know you’re in the middle of this thing. You getting close or what?”

“No. I don’t know.”

He told her what he could, emphasizing his theory that Harriet Fogarty’s death was tied into the disappearance of another caseworker.

“Definitely,” Kristen said, and sipped her coffee through the straw. “And I’m with this detective in Watertown – what did you say his name was?”

“Corrow.”

“I’m with Corrow that Corina Lavoie knew the perp.”

“Yeah?” He considered how Lena would get along with Kristen, how they thought alike. “Well, maybe that’s because of a case she had that involved him. There was one he mentioned about a—”

“Or her. Cops always assume the perp is a male. And what about Harriet Fogarty? The killer was in her car, right? Maybe he or she knew her, too, then.”

“Maybe. Anyway, nine times out of ten, it’s male. Is that sexist?”

“Does your lady-friend think you’re funny?”

He jerked back. “‘Lady-friend?’ What’re you talking about?”

Kristen took a long, slow sip, giving him a look out of the corner of her eye. She smacked her lips. “Ah. That’s good java. Yes, your lady-friend. The one in the paper; Overton. I know when you have one, just like I knew about Annie.”

“That was just a couple of dates.”

“I knew. So, Overton… she’s divorced, you’re working together, you’re zonked out past nine in the morning; mostly it’s the look on your face. Am I punching around the center of the bag?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He watched people at the municipal beach, kids leaping off the long dock that extended out over the shimmering water. A lifeguard blew his whistle from a big wooden chair. The air smelled like warm grass.

“Yeah, okay,” Kristen said. “I’m sure she’s very nice. You serious?”

“It just happened. Anyway, that’s what I’m supposed to be asking you. How’s Kevin?”

She fell silent, and he knew what that meant. He asked, “Relationship expired?”

“Past the sell-by date, yeah.”

“I never liked Kevin anyway.” He caught her grinning, but it worried him. Kristen had yet to keep a relationship for more than a couple of months. Maybe that was perfectly normal, but maybe she was afraid. “So how are you going to spend your time? You’re off for a week, right?”

“Actually, I gotta cut it short. Steuben had someone quit, and he’s understaffed next week, asked me if I could fill in. And I need the hours.”

Mike went from feeling sad to groping for his wallet. “Honey…”

She put up a hand. “Stop – no. I’m fine. I need the experience.”

Kristen was determined to be an arc welder and was finishing her apprenticeship. It wasn’t his first choice for her – she had the hands to be a surgeon, the patience of a school teacher, and the instincts of an investigator, but she’d never had any of those interests.

“How’s the garden coming?” she asked. “I didn’t even look out back yet.” She was also excellent at changing the course of a conversation. Maybe she’d learned it from him.

“I haven’t had the time to give it my best attentions,” he said, rising.

“Where you off to now?”

Mike looked down at his daughter on the bench, swinging a leg hung over her knee. “To meet with Overton,” he said.

Their gaze held and then Mike watched the beachgoers again. Kristen stood and brushed off her backside, sipped her coffee a minute. “You know it’s okay, right?”

He had a hard time looking at her. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t have to hide anything. It’s okay for you to see people. It’s even okay for you to—”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not the smartest thing to get involved with a colleague. I mean, there’s no cross-rank problem; she’s local and I’m state, but it can be tricky.”

Her shimmering eyes twisted his stomach. “I know it’s tricky,” she said. “But, Dad, you deserve to be happy.”

---

Lena closed the door to her office and sat down.

Mike said, “I’ve got something.” He pulled a document from his valise, pushed it across the desk to her. He watched as she studied it, scowling, then she looked up.

“You just got this?”

“I did, just an hour ago. It wasn’t the tribal police dragging their feet – it was this guy, Cody Blackburn. Marlene couldn’t confirm that Pritchard was there, but he could, because he’d been spying on her. They’re firing him – well, letting him resign quietly.”

“So this…”

“It doesn’t exonerate Pritchard fully, but we’ve got to show it to the DA.”

“Pritchard still has to answer for the assault charge,” Lena said, “but this really knocks him out of the running…”

“Maybe,” Mike said.

“Maybe?”

“I keep thinking of… well, Brit Silas said the killer cleaned up after himself. Pretty thoroughly.”

“You think someone was hired?”

“Maybe. Brit confirmed the soil samples and bits of leaves in the back of the car. We have size thirteen boot tracks. Our killer is a big guy.”

“Hired by whom? Pritchard?”

“By Pritchard, maybe. Or even Joe. I don’t know. Maybe they’re working together on it.” Mike rubbed his jaw, realized he’d showered but forgotten to shave.

“That might be a bit out there, Mike. Joe doesn’t stand to gain anything.”

“You’re right.”

“And Steve was the one to say Rita had it coming. Joe seemed genuinely bereaved. He even admitted Steve might have it in him.”

He nodded, looking at his shirtsleeve, still a bit damp, and thought about Kristen. He said, “You need to know… I talked to Cody Blackburn, personally.”

“How? He was at the casino?”

“No. He followed me.”

“He followed you?”

“After I left, yeah. Security called him, probably the guard was a friend. So Blackburn tails me a while, then comes up on me, I pull over, he pulls over, confesses to using the badge for his own personal situation. But I wanted to wait until Perkins sent it all over and it was official.”

She crossed her arms and gave him a hard look that twisted his gut. “Mike, I’m managing this case. That’s the deal. You need to tell me what you’ve got as soon as you’ve got it.”

“Alright, I’m sorry.”

A moment passed.

“Look,” Lena said. “I’ll admit that there’s something to the idea that Pritchard hired someone. He’s a scumbag, and I can imagine him getting some other scumbag to be his proxy while he’s passed out on the res with Marlene Blackburn. Not a pro, not like these guys you’re talking about down in New York, but someone cheap, because Pritchard is a broke-ass gambler. Someone just as fucked up as he is.”

Mike opened his mouth to share more of his thoughts from that morning, but Lena held up a finger. She moved to a file cabinet and took out several thick folders – she had the chain of custody on the CPS files photocopied on the previous day. She laid them out on her desk; the most promising leads were cases occurring in the mid-2000s involving men who might seek revenge against caseworkers thereafter.

“But,” she said, “none of that involves Lavoie. These cases – and your theory about something that happened upstream – this is where our focus should be right now.”

She grabbed one of the files and held it up. “Someone who spent a long time thinking about this, someone with a personal stake.” She tapped the file with her finger. “Dodd Caruthers was at SCI Cold Brook for thirteen years. Before that, CPS investigated him twice. Once for the incident with his son in the car, and again following a domestic violence call. I want to talk to him.”

“Okay.” Mike stood up. “Let’s do it.”

She spread her hands. “Well… hold on. Take a minute. You’re always ready to blast off into space. I need to speak to my chief, you need to run it up the pole to your supervisor.”

“I’ll do that right now.”

She just watched him a moment, the corner of her mouth twitching into a sly smile. “You’re a pain in my ass, Mike.”

“You and my daughter already agree on something.”

“She’s here?”

“Yeah.”

“Poor thing.”

“One last thing,” Mike said. “Bobbi Noelle.”

Lena’s eyebrows went up, she waited.

“Placid PD has been having someone roll through each night, keeping an eye,” Mike said. “And we’re still looking for her ex.”

“Okay…”

“Until we’re sold on Caruthers, or one of these other old CPS cases, it’s still possible this was meant to be her, and Lavoie is a coincidence.”

Lena sighed, dropped her gaze, nodded. “Lavoie is a coincidence if this is Pritchard, or if this is Noelle’s ex. Which is why we’ve got to get through these cases. We have to know if she’s connected or not. If it’s Caruthers, then she is.”

“Agreed,” Mike said.

Her eyes found him again. “Where are you at with that? With Jameson Rentz?”

“Well, he managed to charm Bobbi’s mother into giving out her phone number. It crossed my mind that maybe he’s out there working that same charm on other people, getting information on Bobbi and her co-workers. That he’s a dejected lover turned psychopath.”

“My favorite kind,” Lena said dryly.