She looked offended. “You couldn’t stop me.”

“If nothing turns up, maybe you should branch out to the rest of Arizona.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll widen the circle a little at a time. What work are you taking with you?”

Out in the Cold’s next season had to be a priority. Sophie and I were gathering and reading information on promising cold cases, looking for the right one to feature next. We’d screened out almost a hundred so far, and more recently we’d rejected two dozen or so suggested by crew, consultants and saddest of all, families still hoping to discover the truth about a loved one’s death. It was time to zero in.

I listed what I planned to bring along, finishing quickly. “Most of what I need is on my laptop, but I’ll bring the files I haven’t had time to look at yet. You and I can send info back and forth, like we always do.”

“Do you have meetings you’ll miss? Do you need me to take them for you?”

“I think I can do all of them by phone, unless Sebastian wants a sit-down.” Sebastian Freiman is the podcast’s executive producer, which means he forks over whatever money we need to stay on the air, and most of the time leaves us alone. But soon it would be time for a meeting to discuss whatever idea Sophie and I settled on.

“You’ll have to come back and take that one.” Sophie wasn’t intimidated by Sebastian, as much as she was mystified. She’d grown up in poverty, while Sebastian was rich enough that Out in the Cold was nothing more than a hobby, like his collections of antique cars or his forty-foot yacht.

“I can come back for a day if I need to,” I said. “My mother can manage the girls short-term. She can hire help if she has advance notice.”

“No matter what, it’s going to be hard. Your mom’s no spring chicken.”

Wendy had been born when Mom was almost thirty, and I had been born when she was forty-five, the proverbial change of life baby. Now she was seventy-three.

“Yeah, she deserves better.” I slapped one final running shoe into the bag. “Then there’s Dad. I don’t know what this thing with Wendy will do to him. So I need to keep this to myself as long as I can.”

“Which won’t be long.” Sophie stood and stretched. “You know I’ll do whatever I can on this end. If you need more, just holler.”

I wished I didn’t need her, that I had friends at the ready in the town where I grew up. But that wasn’t true. Unlike my popular sister, as a girl I’d had only a few close friends, none of whom had stayed in Seabank. A colleague or two from my internship at the Seabank Free Press might still be around, but I hoped to avoid them.

The face of the one friend who’d remained in town flashed through my mind. Just as quickly, I shoved away the image of Teo Santiago, the man whose life I had changed forever, and not for the better.