Page 31 of Hunted in the Silence

“Good.” He held her gaze for one more beat. “Tell me where.”

She told him. He wrote it on his phone, not on the board, she noticed, which meant he was thinking about who else read the board and calculating what to share where. Good instincts.

Olivia came back in with two cups of coffee and set one on the desk near Brynn without asking, which Brynn appreciated.

“Webb has three priors in Ohio,” Olivia said, sitting back down. “Two dismissed before trial, one conviction for a minor charge that got him eighteen months and out in eleven. The pattern is consistent with someone who’s been insulated by people above him in a network.” She glanced between them. “Chicago field office is sending everything they have on the Vance connection tonight. We’ll have it by morning.”

“Good,” Cole said. He was looking at the board again, but Brynn could feel the residual attention of the previous conversation, the way it sat in the room even after the subject had changed. “I want a full operational plan on the table by tomorrow night. Thursday is four days out.”

“I’ll have the geographic layout done by noon,” Brynn said. “I can walk the corridor tomorrow morning before it gets light. I know that stretch of Miller Road well enough to map the approach angles from memory, but I want to confirm the rear access sight lines before we commit to them.”

Cole turned from the board. “Not alone.”

She glanced up at him.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. Simple. Non-negotiable.

She could have argued it. She understood the area, she’d walked it a hundred times, she was capable of a reconnaissance walk on a public street in her own city without supervision. She knew all of that and she knew he knew it too. What she also knew, standing in the cold quiet office with the overhead light doing its worst and Olivia diplomatically focused on her screens, was that she didn’t want to argue it.

“Six a.m.,” she said. “Dress like you’re not FBI.”

The corner of his mouth moved in the semblance of a smirk. “I own clothes that aren’t suits.”

She shrugged. “Jury’s still out.”

Olivia, from across the room, said nothing, but still her silence was audible.

They worked for another hour and a half. The big picture was taking shape—the Harlan and Meridian properties mapped against each other, the approach angles, the entry plan, the post-entry plan for the girls inside.

Brynn built the victim response portion of the plan, the piece that Cole and Olivia were too trained and yet not trained enough to build on their own. What to say. What not to say. How to approach. What to do when a girl went silent versus when she went loud. The kind of knowledge of someone who had been that girl and had also spent a decade helping other girls through the process.

By nine-thirty they had a working draft of a plan. Not final, not approved, not yet coordinated with the full team. But coherent. Real.

Olivia stretched and closed her laptop. “I’m going to sleep,” she announced unceremoniously. She gathered her coat and bag, paused at the door. “Brynn. You’re not driving home tonight.”

“I know,” Brynn said.

“Good.” Olivia looked at Cole. “Don’t stay too late. Four days out, we need you functional.” She said it level and precise and with unmistakable meaning beneath it all.

Then she was gone and the office was quiet.

Brynn began gathering her materials, stacking the files in order, capping the pens she’d borrowed from the supply cup on the desk. Cole was still at the board, making a final notation, and the hum of the fluorescents combined with the cold dark outside the frosted glass created a kind of unmistakable intimacy. The unspoken elephant in the room lingering between two people who had been working hard side by side for a long time, and the noise of it seemed way too loud all of a sudden.

“You should have told me about the car on your street,” Cole said without turning from the board.

“I know.”

“And the phone call.”

“I know.” Brynn zipped her bag. “I handled it by myself.” The way she always did. “It’s a habit I’m working on.”

He turned from the board then, and the full weight of his attention across the quiet office was something she’d spent all week learning to hold steady under.

“You don’t have to handle things by yourself on this case,” he said. “You have people.”

She blinked. “I know I do.”

“Do you?” He moved away from the board and crossed to where she was standing at the desk. Not fast, just covering the distance between them until he stopped a mere few inches away. “Because knowing it and believing it are two different things, and I think you’ve been doing the first one without the second.”