As soon as Damien finishes running down the Rory theory once again, Bree crosses her arms over her chest, then looks at me and Damien in turn, ignoring everyone else around the conference table. “So is this where you officially fire me or is it where you arrest me?”

“Neither,” he says. “This is where I apologize. And where I ask for your help.”

“Apologize?” Her brow furrows as she looks at me. “Is he serious?”

I nod, but say nothing.

“You passed the polygraph,” I tell her, glancing at Quincy, who administered it less than an hour ago.

“He set me up,” Bree says, her voice hard. “He made it so it looked like I could just as easily be his partner as his victim.”

Damien nods.

I see her throat move as tears form in her eyes. “I didn’t know it was Rory. He made me put that mask on whenever he was in the room. And the only time I saw him was when he grabbed us, and he was wearing that stocking.”

She hiccups, her chest shuddering from her tears. “I didn’t want to leave her. I never would have left Anne alone. I didn’t have a choice. I swear.”

“I know,” I assure her. “And Damien and I are both sorry. We should have had more faith.”

“No.” She takes a deep breath. “I get it. Those two sweet babies. You can’t take chances.” She rubs her eyes. “So what exactly are we doing here? Are you giving me my job back?”

“If you want it,” Damien says. “But right now, there’s another job we want to talk to you about.”

“Um. Okay.”

“Good,” Damien says, then takes the seat next to her. “Are you familiar with nano-technology?”

From the look on her face, she’s even less familiar with it than I was an hour ago. I’d at least heard of it. But Bree’s expression makes it clear that she’s certain that Damien is talking science fiction when he describes the crystalline quantum dots—dust, really—that can be seen only through a certain type of lenses.

“You’re serious,” she says, then adds, “Wow,” when Damien nods.

“It’s tech we’ve been developing for the military and the intelligence community, and it’s had limited, successful field testing.”

“So, what does this have to do with Rory?”

“The particles are suspended in a liquid—that way they can be sprayed on a suspected terrorist, for example, and then certain field glasses can be used to track the suspect back to his base.”

She nods, apparently watching an action movie in her head. “So you sprayed Rory?”

“We didn’t get close to Rory. We sprayed the money. And we sprayed the outside of the case.”

“Oh. Oh. I get it. So when he moves the case, some of the dust is left behind.”

“That was the idea,” Ryan said. “Had the weather been clear, we should have been able to track the particles back to him. And, we hoped, to Anne. But it rained. It diluted the particles, washed some away.”

“In other words, we were screwed,” Damien says.

“So what now?”

“Now we want you to reach out to him. Tell him we’ve finally let you out of your cell. That you miss him and can’t believe we kept you here like a prisoner when you’d been kidnapped, too. That you’re annoyed with us for not trusting you. Tell him you have to get out to clear your head. That you want to see him.”

I watch her face as she processes all of that. “You want me to get into his place. And when I do, I’m going to be looking for the quantum thingies.”

“Exactly,” Damien says. “If he opened the case and handled the money, there should be dust onsite. Even if he didn’t, we might get lucky. There might be some latent dust from when he handled the exterior of the cases. Some minute amount the rain didn’t wash away.”

She nods slowly, processing everything. “I wear glasses sometimes.”

Damien smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “We know.”

I hadn’t really believed he’d still be in town, but when Bree reached out to Rory with the concocted story, he told her how sorry he was that her boss was an asshole and invited her over to his place.

“The money won’t be there,” Damien says from where we sit in a nearby van, the team monitoring the situation with a variety of gadgets. “He’s smart enough not to raise suspicion by leaving town right away. That means he’s smart enough not to have the bulk of the money on his person. But I’m betting he couldn’t resist pocketing a little, and that means we should see the quantum residue.”

“So if Bree doesn’t see the dots, we’re out of luck.”

“Not out of luck,” Riley says. “Just on to plan B.”

Riley had gone back to his house last night, but Ryan called him back for this operation because of his hand-to-hand combat skills. We’re all hoping Riley’s going to be bored silly. But better to have him around just in case.

Charles Maynard is also in the van, along with a LAPD detective he’s worked with before.

“How much longer?” I ask, my nerves getting the better of me. “Why the hell didn’t we wire her? We need to know what’s going on in there.”

Beside me, Damien calmly twines his fingers with mine. “We couldn’t risk him finding a wire. They’re dating, remember. Whether it was real to him or a ruse, he’ll keep up pretenses. We can’t risk him pulling her close.”

“I know. I know. I just hate the waiting. I’m terrified for her.”

He squeezes my hand. “She’ll be fine,” he says, but I know he’s just placating me. He’s worried, too.

Minutes tick by, and my stomach twists into knots as I turn my phone over and over in my hand. “Isn’t it time yet?”

“One more minute,” Quincy says. “No point in calling too soon. She needs to look around.”

I know that, of course. I just want this over with. So I sit while the clock ticks down until finally—finally—Ryan signals for me to make the call.

I draw a breath, dial the number of her new phone, then close my eyes until she answers.

“What do you need, Nikki,” she says in the overly-polite voice we discussed. As far as Rory’s concerned, she’s still irritated as hell with me and Damien.

“I’m trying to find Lara’s pink party dress. Have you seen it?” It’s a pre-planned question in case he’s listening in.

“It’s hanging on the outside of her closet, as plain as the nose on your face.”

I almost sag with relief, as everyone in the van shifts to attention.

“Oh, hell,” I say. “I see it now. Sorry to bother you.”

“No problem.” As she ends the call, I hear her say, “Honestly!” to Rory, and decide that Bree deserves a bonus based solely on her acting abilities.

“That’s it,” the detective says, picking up his radio to call the uniformed backup he has waiting. “We’re going in.”