Page 88 of Final Drive

She takes that without arguing it or forgiving it.

Bo mutters about food and the room empties by degrees. Zane follows him into the kitchen. Cameron takes the stairs without saying anything to anyone. Jackson comes back and stands in the doorway with his arms crossed and doesn’t sit. Eli lifts the laptop off my knees without asking and starts reading the alt account thread from the top. That’s as close to sympathy as Eli gets.

Gray’s car still isn’t in the drive. Nobody has said his name in two hours, which means everybody’s thinking it.

I go up to my room.

The spreadsheet is open on the second monitor. Column A is dates. Column B is Kinsley. Column C is the account I can’t name. Column D I labeled Corroborating, which in the honest version is a list of things that are true and useless.

I add a column, title it Actionable, and sit looking at the empty cells.

Reese knocks twice and comes in without waiting. She does that with every door in this house.

“You didn’t eat.”

“I ate at two.”

“That was eight hours ago.” She shuts the door and leans on it. “Beckett’s on the porch. Jackson’s on the erg doing damage to his splits. Zane’s baking.”

“What’s he making?”

“I didn’t ask. There’s flour on the ceiling.” She comes over and reads the column headers off the monitor. She gets to Actionable and stops. “It’s empty.”

“It’s accurate.”

“Tyler.”

“I need you to understand what I mean when I say I don’t have him.” I turn the chair to face her, since I’d rather not do this sideways. “I’m not telling you I need more time. I’ve been on this since the squirrel. I found her finsta in six days and Sophia in nine. Every fast thing available to me, I did. The rest isn’t a speed problem. He built it so there’d be nothing to find, and he built it before he ever sat down next to you in Hawthorne’s class.”

“You found everything we have.”

“I found everything about Kinsley.” My voice comes out flatter than I intend. “Kinsley was never the hard part. Kinsley posted from her own phone with location services on. Anyone would have found Kinsley.”

Reese doesn’t answer that.

“You told him I was three steps ahead. The real number is zero.”

“Is that what this is?”

“What?”

“You up here with the door shut, itemizing your own failures.” She pulls the chair out from under the window, turns it around, and sits. “You want me to argue you out of it.”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

I don’t answer right away. She reaches past me and puts the second monitor to sleep.

Here’s the part I’ve never said out loud to anyone. That includes me, and I talk to myself more than anybody in this building. This pack has a shape. Gray decides. Bo holds. Jackson hits things. Beckett handles people. Eli plans. Zane keeps everyone from going under. Cameron watches the doors.

And I find things out.

Tonight I didn’t. They come to me when they need to know something. Nobody has ever come up these stairs just to sit down.

“I don’t want to be the folder,” I say.

Her expression changes a little.