Page 12 of Hunted in the Silence

“More than the night before.” She picked up the thermos and poured herself another half cup. “I’m fine, Cole. I know what tired feels like, and I know how to work through it.”

“I know you do,” he said simply. “I’m asking because I’m going to need you sharp tonight, and if you tell me you’re running on two hours, I’m going to feel guilty about that.”

“Four hours,” she said, as if that were much better. “And you don’t need to feel guilty about anything. This was my call too.”

She heard rather than saw the small exhale that served him as a concession. He poured his own coffee and settled back against the seat with the stillness she’d come to recognize as his default resting state. Not inert. Coiled, like a question that hadn’t been asked yet.

They had been sitting together in close quarters for two hours, giving an awareness that had settled around her like a sound at the edge of her hearing. Not overwhelming. Simply present. The warmth of another person in a cold car, the same way his shoulder was inches from hers and the space between them smelled faintly of coffee and something woodsy that she’d stopped trying to identify around the ninety-minute mark.

She thought about the corkboard in her office instead.

“Tell me something about the rotation schedule,” Cole said. “Something you know but haven’t told me yet.”

The unexpected question captured her attention and she looked at him. He was watching the building, still making notes in the small pad, and the question was a careful one, spoken by someone who understood that what a witness hadn’t said yet was often as important as what they had.

“He used to vary the vehicles,” she said, trying to keep her memories surface level. “Never the same type twice in a row on a given route. Box trucks, commercial vans, sometimes just an SUV with the rear windows covered. The manifest always matches something legitimate. He used to use refrigeration trucks when he could get them, because the drivers had a reason to keep the back sealed and temperature controlled.” She paused, reflecting. “I spent two days in a refrigeration truck once. In March. He had a heating unit running in the cargo area, which was worse in some ways because it meant he’d thought about it.”

Cole was still. The pen had stopped moving.

“The point is,” she continued, keeping her voice even, “the variation in vehicles is deliberate. It makes pattern recognition harder for anyone watching. So whatever you’re expecting tonight, be flexible about it.”

“Got it.” He started writing again. “How do you know he’s still using the same system after all this time?”

“Because it worked. Men like Devlin don’t change what works. They only change what gets compromised.” She watched a car pass on the road behind them, distant enough to be irrelevant, and waited for its lights to fade before she continued. “He’s a creature of habit. The creativity is in the structure, not the execution. The execution is always the same.”

Cole turned to look at her fully, and in the dark of the car she felt his attention the way she’d felt the cold—as a physical thing she couldn’t reason away. He looked at her the way he looked at evidence. Not cataloging her. Simply watching, as if what she was saying was the most important thing in the room and she was the only source of it.

She was used to being listened to professionally. She was not particularly used to being listened to like this.

She looked back at the building.

“The cold bothering you?” he asked, his voice somewhat rough. A shift in subject, deliberate, giving her space.

“No. I like the cold.” She meant it. Cold was clean. Cold was specific, uncomplicated. The nights she’d spent in hot rooms unable to open the windows were still in her somewhere, and November air through a car window seal was easy by comparison. “You?”

“Not particularly.” He stretched slightly, his long frame readjusting against the seat, and she was briefly aware of the breadth of his shoulder as he shifted. “I grew up in Minnesota. This is nothing.”

“Minnesota.” She hadn’t known that. “Long way from Blackridge.”

“Long way from a lot of places.” He resettled, and the quality of his voice changed slightly, enough that she noticed. Lighter on the surface, which usually meant something heavier underneath. “My parents still live up there. Outside of Duluth. After Abby, my dad threw himself into fishing. My mom threw herself into church. They both needed somewhere to put it.”

“And you threw yourself into this.”

“Yes.”

The word was quiet and clean and entirely without apology, and something about it settled in her chest. She understood that kind of answer. The kind that had stopped needing justification because it had existed long enough to simply be true.

“Does it help?” she asked. “Being here. Doing this.”

He didn’t reach for the easy answer. He thought about it, which she appreciated. “Most days it’s better than the alternative,” he said finally. “Some days it makes it worse because I can see hallmarks of what happened to her in every case. But I can’t stop. I tried once. Eighteen months at a desk in white-collar fraud.” He paused, the quietly added, “That was worse.”

She nodded, looking at the building. “I tried stopping once too. Three years after I got out, I was in therapy, I was doing reasonably well. My therapist said I should take a break from advocacy work, give myself a year to just be a person before I went back to it.” She felt the corner of her mouth do something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I lasted four months. Then a girl came into the emergency shelter where I was volunteering on weekends, and I watched the intake worker not know what to do with her and I thought, I know what to do. And that was the end of my break.”

Cole made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but was close to one. Quiet understanding. “Four months is pretty good.”

“It was an achievement.” She looked at him sideways, briefly. “My therapist was less impressed.”

He looked at her at the same moment, and for a second they were both on the verge of something that was almost easy, almost like the relief of recognizing someone in a room full of strangers. Then his eyes moved back to the building, and she felt the chill seep in again.