And Izzy had a feeling that the space in between the two was where Mia would flee to hide.

It was fully dark by the time they left the lighthouse behind, and Izzy huddled in on herself, cursing the ferry’s schedule that had them arriving on the island so late in the day.

“Hey, the doc said he’d be at his office till six, right?” Izzy asked, the words made shaky by the chattering of her teeth.

Mia slid her a glance. “Yeah.”

“Maybe he has the addresses for the guys who found the body.” Izzy shrugged, or tried to. It wasn’t clear what came through the layers of clothing.

Glancing at her phone’s clock, Mia nodded. “Yeah. They’re fishermen, so they’re probably home. Let’s do it.”

“Speaking of the doc . . .”

Mia must have heard something in her voice. She stopped, turned, ducked her chin so her cheeks were protected from the cold. “What’s up?”

“Walk and talk, Hart, walk and talk.” Izzy snagged her elbow to pull her into motion. Mia laughed as she fell into step. “You seemed to be on board with his suicide theory.”

It wasn’t a test, it wasn’t. But they were going to have to work on being up-front with each other.

Even though Izzy hadn’t framed it as a question, Mia was good enough to know what she was asking.

“Horses and zebras, right?” Mia shrugged. It was something of a motto for them, that old saying: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Too often on their cold cases, they were asked to make leaps of logic when evidence didn’t exist to back it up. But they both knew they needed to be kept in check sometimes. If either of them ever wandered too far down a path, the other reined her in. Horses and zebras.

“You think we’re making this too complicated?”

Mia paused, and this time Izzy stuttered to a stop next to her. “I think you and I, we tend to see murder where it might not be.”

The off notes, though. The lack of clothes in winter. Ending up in the ocean. These weren’t reaches.

But Izzy knew that the people who thought “zebra” instead of “horse” were also convinced they were right. She nodded once, not an agreement, really, but an acknowledgment, and they started walking again.

“I’m not convinced either way,” Mia said softly after a few minutes. “I know I want it to be suicide, though.”

Izzy gasped, overdramatic. “Mia Hart is volunteering information? We’ve really made progress.” She wiped at a fake tear while Mia shoved her hard enough for Izzy to stumble a bit.

This was a sore spot, and maybe too soon to joke about. But they couldn’t be careful around each other, tiptoeing and cutting off thoughts just to skirt the confrontation. That’s not how they worked.