Page 11 of Hunted in the Silence

“You’re not?”

“You’ve been right about everything so far. I’m a fast learner.” He tucked the map back under his arm and looked at her directly. “But you stay in the vehicle, and you’re wired, and if I tell you to stay down, you don’t argue.”

She considered this for a moment, chewing the inside of her cheek as she took his measure. He got the impression she was deciding whether his terms were reasonable or whether she was simply choosing to accept them in the interest of moving forward. He suspected the latter.

“Agreed,” she said.

He nodded once. “I’ll call you with a time tomorrow.”

He moved toward the door. At the threshold he stopped, because there was something he wanted to say and he was deciding whether to say it or not. In the end, he couldn’t keep it in.

“The board.” He looked back at it. “You built that in an afternoon, from memory, from two years of intake interviews that weren’t even technically your job to analyze. You know that’s not normal, right?”

Brynn looked at him steadily. “It’s my job to know these girls. All of them. Every one of them that comes through that door is the whole of my attention for as long as they need me to be. Remembering them isn’t a skill.” She paused. “It’s the least they’re owed.”

He stood in the doorway looking at her for a moment longer than he meant to. Because she was the most interesting person he’d crossed paths with in…well, maybe ever.

Then he said, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and left before he said anything else.

He sat in his car for a moment before he started it. The late-afternoon light was going gray and flat over the Blackridge rooftops, and the street was quiet. He thought about the corkboard. About three years of intake interviews kept in careful, full notes. About the way she’d said It’s the least they’re owed, with the simple conviction of someone who had decided, a long time ago, what her life was for and had not second-guessed it since.

He started the car. He had a warrant to request, a logistics company to dig up, and a Thursday stake-out to prepare for.

He had work to do.

That was, for now, the only relevant fact.

Chapter 5

The cold came in through the seams of things in November. Through the gap under the car door, through the stitching of a jacket collar, through the narrow space where the window didn’t quite seal. Brynn had been sitting in the passenger seat of Cole’s SUV for two hours and she could feel the chill settled into the bones of her hands despite the gloves, despite the coffee that had been hot an hour ago and was now serving primarily as a hand warmer.

She didn’t mind the cold. It kept her sharp.

Cole had parked on the far side of the access road that ran along the back of the Miller Road industrial corridor, behind a rusted equipment hauler that had been sitting in the same spot long enough to qualify as a landmark. From here they had a direct sightline to the rear loading dock of the Meridian Logistics property through a gap in the fence line, sixty yards out, without being visible from the building itself. It was a good position. She’d suggested it, having walked this corridor a hundred times growing up, knowing exactly where the gaps were and what you could see through them.

Cole had looked at the gap, looked at the property, and said, Good eye. Then he’d parked and killed the lights without wasting another word on it, which she appreciated. Men who needed to talk through every decision exhausted her.

They’d been sitting in silence for a while, the comfortable working kind, both of them watching the building with the patient attention of people who understood that surveillance was mostly waiting and that waiting was its own form of work. A thermos of actual coffee sat in the cupholder between them. His contribution. She’d brought the snacks, a deliberate and efficient selection of things that didn’t crinkle loudly and didn’t require conversation. He’d looked at the lineup when she produced it from her bag and said nothing, but something at the corner of his mouth had moved in a way told her he approved and that gave her stomach a tiny tickle she chose not to look too closely at.

The Meridian property had been quiet since they arrived. No movement at the loading dock. One window on the east face of the building with a faint light behind it, visible only as a thin line where the boarding over the glass didn’t quite meet the frame. Someone was inside. They were being careful about it.

“Nine-eighteen,” Cole said quietly, noting the time in the small pad he’d balanced on his knee. His voice in the dark was low and even. She’d noticed he pitched it differently in the field than in the office, stripped back to something quieter, more economical, as if he’d removed everything unnecessary.

“They’ll be late,” Brynn said.

He glanced at her, a question in his eyes.

“They’re always late on the first move of a rotation. The coordinator has to confirm the receiving end before he releases anyone. If something’s not right on the other side, the whole schedule shifts.” She kept her eyes on the building. “The girls wait in the meantime. They don’t know why. That’s intentional too.”

Cole wrote something in the pad. She watched him in her peripheral vision without turning her head, the faint movement of his hand in the dark, the line of his profile against the pale rectangle of the windshield. He had the kind of face that was easier to look at in low light, she’d noticed, when the sharp angles of it softened slightly and the gray-green of his eyes was just a suggestion of color rather than the full, direct attentiveness of it.

She returned her gaze to the building.

“You slept last night?” he asked.

“Some.”

“How much is some?”