Page 27 of Hunted in the Silence

“You built this before I called,” he said.

“I built it after Olivia texted me the address and I sat with it for a few minutes.” She stood beside the board with her arms crossed, studying it. “The Barton Industrial delivery schedule has a secondary route I missed the first time. It services the Harlan address every other Thursday, alternating with Meridian. I went back through my cross-reference this morning after Olivia’s text and there it was.” She tapped the board. “They’re not running both sites on the same night. They’re alternating. That’s why the Thursday pattern looked clean. It is clean, they just split the load between two locations.”

Cole looked at the board, then at her. The window light was behind her, catching the auburn in her hair where it fell across her shoulder, and she was looking at the board with the focused, unsatisfied expression she got when a picture was almost complete but not quite.

He looked back at the board.

“Carson Black confirmed the Harlan property independently,” he said. “He’s in. Finn Steele goes on corridor surveillance tonight.”

Brynn glanced at him. “You told Carson everything?”

“Everything. He needed the full picture to be useful, and I needed him to be useful.” He paused. “He mentioned you.”

“What did he say?”

“That he tried to manage you once and learned his lesson.” Cole watched a wry smile move across her face. “He also said you gave him the evidence that cracked a case open in the same breath you told him what to do with his suggestion.”

“He’s a good detective,” Brynn said, still smiling to herself. “He just needed to understand that I wasn’t a witness, I was a resource.” She turned back to the board. “I’m glad he’s in. He knows this town better than anyone.”

“That’s exactly why I went to him.”

She reached out and adjusted the thread between the Harlan and Meridian cards, repositioning it so the angle reflected the geographic relationship between the two properties.

“I’ve been thinking about the ledger,” she said. “About where Devlin keeps it.”

“Tell me.”

“He’s old-fashioned about certain things. Not sentimental—practical. He used paper because paper can be destroyed and digital records leave traces he didn’t trust himself to fully erase. He had a notebook, the kind with the grid paper and the hard cover, the type used for technical drafting. He always had one with him.” She paused, her eyes still on the board. “He treated it like a body part. I never saw him in a room where it wasn’t within arm’s reach.”

“So it’s always on his person or in his immediate vicinity.”

“Yes. Which means finding the ledger means being in the same physical space as Devlin.” She said it with the same flat, factual steadiness she used for things that didn’t come easy for her to say. “There’s no other way to get to it.”

Cole looked at her profile. The set of her jaw, her steadiness, the thing underneath it that she managed so consistently he’d stopped expecting to see it break through and then it did anyway, in these small moments, the places where the cost of the calm was visible to someone paying close enough attention.

He was paying too much attention and had been for over a week.

“We don’t put you in a room with Devlin,” he said. His voice came out more certain than he’d intended, more direct.

Brynn looked at him. “I’m not suggesting that.”

“Good.”

“I’m suggesting we find a way to draw him out to a location where we control the variables.” She turned back to the board. “Devlin has been looking for me for a long time. That’s leverage. I just don’t know yet how to use it without putting myself in a position where I’m the one exposed.”

“That’s the conversation we need to have with a behavioral expert before anyone decides anything.” Cole kept the rest of what he wanted to say to himself and looked at the board instead. “I’m bringing someone in from BPD next week. Profiler, behavioral analyst, worked with Silas Kane on two previous cases.”

“Kane is good,” Brynn said. “I’ve heard of his work.”

“He’s the one I’d have called directly, but Carson’s already running point on the local coordination. His team is the right channel.” Cole made a note in his pad. “In the meantime. The alternating Thursday schedule. Does the pattern tell you anything about which site handles which stage of the operation?”

Brynn was quiet for a moment before she said, “Transit happens at Meridian. I’d bet on it. The loading dock access, the van pattern, everything we documented Thursday night—that’s the movement end. Harlan is where they hold them before the transfer.” She paused. “Which means the girls we saw Thursday night came from Harlan. They were staged there, moved to Meridian for loading, and shipped out.”

Cole looked at the map. “And Caitlin’s been at Harlan for at least four days.”

Brynn held his gaze for a moment. Her eyes were steady and dark, and he could see her absorbing that information the same way he was—careful calculation held tight over a controlled, purposeful fury.

“Four days,” she said. “Which means she’s been there long enough to start mapping the space.”