"It is the only one I have right now."
Her jaw works. For a moment I think she's going to push harder, demand the conversation I've been avoiding since she stood in my doorway last night with bare feet and no armor. But she reads whatever is on my face and decides against it.
She walks out of the kitchen, grabs her briefcase from the living room chair. I follow.
The CPG conference room has the flat light of a space designed for function, not comfort. Overhead fluorescents, a table that seats twelve, screens mounted on three walls.
Kade stands at the head of the table. Jax leans back in his chair, one leg bouncing. Vanessa's laptop casts blue light across her face, fingers already moving. Asher sits with a stylus balanced between his knuckles, turning it end over end in a rhythm only he hears. Damian has his coffee untouched in front of him, eyes moving from face to face without hurrying.
Angelina sits to my left with her notebook open and pen uncapped. Spine straight, chin level, attentive without revealing what she thinks. She watches the team the way she watches a courtroom, and I don't know what to do with that.
"Li's tox screen came back." Vanessa pulls the results onto the main display. Chemical compound names, concentration levels, a diagram I don't pretend to understand. "Atropine and scopolamine derivatives. Belladonna-based. The concentrations were lethal and exact. This is not someone grinding up berries in a kitchen. This is pharmaceutical-grade synthesis."
"The flowers are the weapon," Kade says.
"The flowers are the delivery mechanism. The compound is extracted, refined, and administered separately. The flowers are left as signature." Vanessa's hands move as she talks, gesturing at the molecular structure on screen. "Whoever is doing this has real pharmaceutical knowledge. Access to equipment, understanding of dosing, familiarity with alkaloid compounds. This is not amateur work."
"What about delivery method?" I ask. "How is the compound reaching the victims?"
"That's the part that kept me up last night." Vanessa pulls up another set of data. "No injection sites, no evidence of ingestion under duress. These victims are consuming the compound voluntarily. Which means they're being poisoned through something they eat or drink regularly, or—"
"Or they know their killer," Asher says without looking up.
"Or theytrusttheir killer," Vanessa corrects. "There's a difference."
Angelina's pen has stopped moving.
Jax's leg stops bouncing. "So we're looking for someone with pharma training. That narrows our lane."
"Or opens it up to a six-lane highway," Asher says. "Pharmaceutical industry in the Bay Area employs tens of thousands."
"Narrow it to someone with reason to target federal judges and knowledge of belladonna specifically," Vanessa says. "That is a smaller pool."
"How small?"
"I am working on it. Give me caffeine and don't talk to me for six hours."
Angelina's pen moves across her notebook.
Twenty-three days.
Kade assigns follow-up. Vanessa on the pharmaceutical connection trace. Asher pulling security footage from Judge Li's and Judge Brown's offices for comparison. Damian reviewing the physical evidence chain.
"DeLuca status?" Kade looks at Angelina.
"Pretrial motions scheduled for next week. I have no intention of recusing."
Kade nods.
The briefing breaks. Chairs push back, laptops close, Jax already talking to Vanessa about access logs. Angelina caps her pen and tucks the notebook into her bag.
I catch her glancing at the wall behind Kade, the row of photographs I stopped seeing months ago. Team shots, operational milestones. And one headshot near the center: a man in a charcoal suit, dark hair, expression set like he is tolerating the camera rather than posing for it.
Her eyes linger on it for two seconds, then cut to me.
Not here.
I stay close as we move toward the elevator. She walks with that careful composure she's perfected, shoulders tight under her coat, her hand drifting toward her throat before she catches herself.