Page 36 of What We Become

“Stephen’s mother remarried two years later. Married into the Davis family—Brock’s uncle. Stephen got the hyphenated name. Mercer-Davis.” I scroll through the records, connecting the dots. “So Stephen and Brock aren’t friends. They’re step-cousins. Raised in different states—Stephen grew up outside Tacoma, Brock here.”

“And at some point they developed a relationship close enough that Stephen was willing to murder for him,” Holden adds.

“Exactly.”

Holden stares at the house. I can see him rewinding—every interaction, every background check, every vetting conversation—and finding the gap.

“We searched Brock’s friend group,” he says. Flat. The voice he uses when he’s furious at himself. “His frat. His teammates. The party circuit. His family. His parents’ immediate contacts.”

“But not extended family from out of state.”

“A step-cousin.” He says it like a curse. “He was family. He probably showed up at holidays. Birthdays. And nobody in Brock’s circle would’ve flagged him because he wasn’t in the circle. He was adjacent to it.”

“Exactly. He was hiding in the space we weren’t looking. The gap between friend group and family tree. Step-cousin from a different state, different last name on the school records, different everything. The only connection is a marriage certificate from when Stephen was five.”

I watch Holden process this. His mind running scenarios, retracing steps, auditing every decision. I know the look. I’ve seen it in the mirror.

“I searched his name,” Holden says quietly. “When Sage first mentioned Jamie. I ran him through every database I had access to. And it came back clean because I was searching a ghost—a dead man’s identity worn by his son.”

“We both missed it. I ran the same check. Same result.” I lean back in my seat. “Knox ran it too. Stephen used his dead dad’s name, his stepdad’s family connections, and the fact that nobody cross-references house-sitting apps with thirty-year-old death certificates. It’s not sophisticated, Holden. It’s just patient. He literally had this identity sitting tragically in his pocket.”

Then the dates line up in my head, and I stop enjoying myself.

“Holden. The Mercer identity is eight months old.”

He doesn’t look away from the house. “Brock died in May.”

“Yeah—May.” I put the phone facedown on my thigh because my hands want a job. “So Jamie wasn’t built for Sage. Jamie was already sitting in his pocket months before any of us touched Brock. Whatever he needed a second name for, he needed it while Brock was still alive.”

“You think it’s Kennel related?”

“I think a lot of this is Kennel related.”

The car is quiet. The beach house sits beautiful and empty, holding its secrets the way rich houses do.

“So he grew up knowing Brock,” Holden says. “Family events. Summers. Whatever. They were close enough that Brock trusted him. Close enough that Stephen⁠—”

“Fell in love with him.” I finish the sentence because Holden won’t. “Step-cousins, raised apart, reunited at family shit. Brock’s the golden boy, Stephen’s the quiet one from out of state. And somewhere in there, it became something else. Something Brock kept secret because his family, his image, his whole world doesn’t allow for a boyfriend. Especially not when that boyfriend was his step-cousin.”

“And when Brock disappeared, Stephen didn’t believe the narrative because he was the only person who truly knew him.”

“And then that same person pieced it all together by sitting in a diner across from our girl, eating cherry pie and planning his revenge.”

Holden’s hand tightens on the steering wheel until the leather creaks.

“Message Fenrir,” he says. “Full profile. Stephen Mercer-Davis. I want every address, every associate, every account. School records, medical records, travel history. Where he’s been, who he’s talked to, what he drives, where he sleeps. Everything.”

“Already started.” I hold up my phone. “We also CC’d Odin’s team on the initial pull.”

“Of course you did,” Holden says.

“Thank you. I feel seen.”

While Odin’s people start tearing Stephen Mercer-Davis apart, I pull up the forwarding logs from Sage’s phone.

There’s a hole in them.

I stare at it long enough that Holden notices.