And do you know what you’re getting yourself into?

In the afternoon we lump the whole team into the tiny living room at my place until we can figure out a better solution. We divide twenty binders between us and get to work. Except for the rhythmic hiss of turning paper, we work mostly in silence, and unexpectedly I feel a sense of ease that I haven’t felt in I don’t know how long.

It’s Flora who first spots the discrepancy: not money going missing, but too much money accounted for. Optimal has been paying Clean Solutions Management, a firm they subcontracted to deal with chemical disposal, massive sums almost quarterly.

Clean Solutions Management’s website is all low-tech and full of meaningless jargon.

It always pays to follow the money.

I remember what Lilian McMann told me about the too-clean evaluations entered into the federal system on their behalf. There must have been a bribe in it somewhere. “Could Optimal be redirecting money through a company like Clean Solutions?”

Joe squints at me. “What do you mean, redirecting?”

“I don’t know. Think of what they did for Aaron Pulaski. Optimal’s parent company paid off Pulaski so he wouldn’t come after them for labor violations, didn’t they? Maybe one of their subcontractors is cutting checks, too.”

“That would be a lot of effort.”

“Well, maybe it’s a lot of pockets.”

Joe’s eyes are like razors—I can feel them trying to dive straight down into my thoughts. “Like whose?”

Like Colin Danner’s, I think. And maybe his buddy Michael Phillips, who cleaned up the reports he put into ICIS. Maybe the entire goddamn town.

“I don’t know,” I say instead. I haven’t told him about what I learned from Lilian McMann except in general terms. “I’m just throwing it out there.”

He doesn’t seem convinced. For a long time, he stares at me. “On the off chance you’ve forgotten, we’re working this case together,” he says.

“I haven’t forgotten,” I say. “I don’t have anything we can use.” My heartbeat picks up. The room has gone silent, and the comfortable feeling I had earlier has vanished. “Look, if we knew where Kaycee Mitchell went—if we could just get her side of the story—”

But Joe doesn’t let me finish. “If the Kaycee Mitchell case was legit, if she got sick, it only confirms what we think. We can’t prove it because we can’t ask her, and we can’t ask her because we don’t know where she is, and we can’t find her because that’s not why we’re here. Abby, we need to focus on what Optimal is doing now—not what they did ten years ago.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” I snap. Joe doesn’t understand that in Barrens, you can’t just peel away the present from the past. It’s like trying to get gum out of your hair: the more you try to separate it, the more strands get caught up.

“This isn’t about Kaycee Mitchell,” he tells me in a low voice. “This isn’t about what happened back then.” Then: “We might be able to save some people, Abby. But not her. You understand that, right?”