"Didn't talk to each other about it," Vanessa finishes, shaking her head. "Houston doesn't know about Portland. Phoenix doesn't care about Seattle. No federal task force, no centralized tracking. They each ruled their own judge's death natural and moved on, with no follow-up triggered."
Angelina's pen taps twice against her notepad. Then she writes again.
I can't look away.
This is what she does.Cross-examines expert witnesses. Calm, methodical, pulling at weak points until the whole structure either collapses or hardens into something she can trust. Taking notes on threat assessment like she's reviewing a brief.
Brilliant and competent and mine. The combination is going to be a problem.
My hands flatten against the table. Tendons stand sharp beneath the skin.
"So we've got a serial killer with a gardening hobby," Jax says, chair tipped back again. "I vote we call them the Gardener. It's got that serial killer name energy. Like the Zodiac, except with better taste in flowers."
Silence drops.
Then Frost breaks the silence without looking up from his tablet. "You just described homicide as having good taste."
"Thematic homicide," Jax corrects. "There's a difference."
"There isn't."
"The flowers make it thematic—"
"They make it botanical," Frost says flatly. "Congratulations. You've discovered horticulture."
Jax grins. "See? The Gardener. It works."
Kade exhales audibly through his nose. "Let's concentrate on the case."
Vanessa pulls the case files onto the main screen. Names, case numbers, dates of death. The trafficking prosecutions line up in parallel. Money laundering, coerced transport, conspiracy. Different defendants. Same network underneath.
Angelina's pen stops moving.
She stares at the screen. Her hand doesn't lift from the table.
Nobody says it.
The math is in the room.
She handles trafficking cases. She's connected to the same network through DeLuca. Federal bench. High-profile rulings. The trial starts in days.
The pen sits on the notepad, remaining still.
I watch her arrive at the conclusion the way I've watched her process a hundred difficult moments through camera feeds—the micro-flinch she thinks no one sees, the way her throat moveswhen she swallows hard, the split second before training takes over and locks everything down.
My jaw locks. Every instinct screams at me to put myself between her and what's on those screens. Three chairs of professional distance is the only part of my operational protocol still functioning.
I stay in the chair.
Her eyes flick to mine for half a second. Then back to the screen.
"The variable timing," she says. Her voice is steady. "On the flower deliveries. You said six days to three weeks prior to death. What's the confidence interval on that window?"
Vanessa hesitates. "Low. The sample size is just too small. It could be noise."
"Or it could be testing," Angelina says. "Surveillance before execution. Confirming target routines."
Kade nods once. "Possible."