And that only made him that much more fascinating. Morgan had been quietly appreciating DeepTrace’s analytical skills and pattern recognition for years. Discovering that brilliant mind was wrapped in such a physically attractive package and tied up with a ribbon of endearing charm was more than any woman could be reasonably expected to resist.
Even her, who prided herself on calm, clear, rational behavior.
But she was not in a position to be this distracted. She was supposed to be keeping her head down, cooling her heels far away from Philly while another investigator filedtheir(incomplete and erroneous) report and closed the case. Only then could she quietly return, sufficiently chastised and properly warned about the consequences of making waves.
Ifthat time came.Ifshe still had a job to go back to.
The question now was, would her conscience allow her to?
She lay down and was asleep before she came up with an answer.
The dream didn’t havethe usual chaotic, nonsensical elements of an overtired brain and hidden meaning. It was more like a memory where things made sense. Familiar buildings of stone and glass and chrome, not labyrinthine mansions with secret rooms. The people in it were dressed in ordinary day clothes doing everyday things, not circus performers riding unicycles across the Ben Franklin bridge.
In the dream, she was in the parking garage beneath the Philadelphia ME’s office. Level two, to be specific—the one with the flickering light near the stairwell that facilities had been promising to fix for eight months. She'd been heading to her car after a late shift, her bag over one shoulder, already thinking about the report she hadn't finished and trying to decide which frozen entrée to pop in the microwave when she got home.
She heard the voices before she saw them. Words spoken in low, quiet tones not meant to carry. When she came around the concrete pillar, she saw her supervisor and a man she didn't recognize. She clocked his features without conscious thought, creating a mental snapshot, because that was the way her brain worked. Medium height, medium build. Dark hair. The kind of nondescript looks that would be hard to describe.
Dressed in suits, they stood close, deep in what looked like a heated conversation.
The man she didn’t recognize spotted her first. His mouth clamped shut, his eyes narrowing on her as she drew closer. Her supervisor noticed and turned, doing the same.
She smiled apologetically and kept walking, aware that she’d interrupted a private conversation.
Then she'd gone to her car and driven home, not giving it another thought. It wasn’t any of her business. She'd had a report to finish and a case that wasn’t adding up and no reason to believe that their conversation had any relevance to her.
Except she’d seen that man in the dream again.
Because he’d been splayed out on a stainless-steel table in Pine Ridge morgue.
Morgan woke up.
She lay there for a moment, willing her heart to stop racing. A brief scan confirmed that she was in the guest room at Frank’s house. Shadow was a warm, breathing weight against her side.
She told herself it was just a dream. Her brain’s way of processing the day's input, trying to make sense of things without the restrictions of waking moments. She was stressed about her job, about a case that bore the hallmarks of a cover-up, and a man she had no business being attracted to. Her evening had been spent focused on a dead man. Ofcoursehe'd followed her into sleep.
She picked up her phone. 3:47 a.m.
She put it down.
Picked it up again.
The forum notifications were right there. New activity, multiple posts, no doubt due to her earlier upload. She couldn’t put it off again.
She opened the app.
The thread had moved fast. Someone had run her photographs through facial recognition software, but the official databaseshad returned nothing. No criminal record, no law enforcement file, no documented identity.
Then Halcyon had gone a different direction entirely. Not official records but open source—news archives, local coverage, the kind of incidental photography that accumulated around crime scenes without anyone paying much attention to it. Amateur photos. Bystander footage, posted with Halcyon’s brief comment “Got him. Why is he here?”
The clip was from a Philadelphia news archive. A wide shot of the street, police tape, investigators moving through the scene.
Including her.
And in the background, behind the tape, slightly out of focus but there: a man watching.
Medium height, medium build. Dark hair. Nondescript.
Morgan sat up.