Rogue.

“So be it,” she says. Then she kicks the splintered door wide open.

No sound of quick movement deep in the house, no sudden feet on the floor. No clicking of a second gun either. But McGowan keeps hers up all the same.

“Mr. Gold? A couple questions, is all.”

Daphne. You a fan?

She’s through the front living-room area now, pointing the gun to the four corners of the kitchen. She kicks open the pantry.

“Zach Gold?”

But he isn’t here. And by the looks of the open bedroom window, she didn’t need to shoot the doorknob off either.

She studies the bedroom. A mattress on the ground. No sheets. Just a yellow blanket. No posters on the walls. And the stuffy smell of a single man who doesn’t clean up often.

She steps quickly to the closet. He could be in here. Could be armed.

She kicks the flimsy doors in, gun chin-high.

Only two articles of clothing hang on the chipped, wooden bar.

“Fuck me,” McGowan says.

A pair of jeans folded over the hanger’s bar and a jean jacket on its shoulders. There was a lot of talk about denim in the journals of Kell Darren and Nicole Welsh.

McGowan takes the clothing. Warrant or not, these are coming with her.

Through the living room again, she reaches the front door. But something in the living room has caught her eye.

A big, fancy smart TV.

The nicest thing in this place.

She finds the controller on the arm of the couch, turns the TV on.

Then she sits on the couch and removes her phone from her pocket. The photos of Tammy Jones are still the first that show. She closes these out and opens her notes.

Because this might take a second.

On the screen that takes up eighty percent of Zach Gold’s living room is a thread. A chat he hadn’t closed out. A conversation among like-minded friends that seemingly goes on for thousands of words.

But the word that stands out immediately (and shows more often than any other) is:

Daphne.

“Where are you…” McGowan asks.

Her CB crackles and she grips it, almost afraid to hear the news.

“Detective.”

It’s Chief Pollen. McGowan doesn’t respond. Only reads the words on the big screen.

“McGowan. Meet me at the Wild Stallion.”

McGowan doesn’t respond. Only begins to make sense of what she’s reading.

“I’m not taking your badge,” Pollen says. “I’m gonna help you solve this fucking case.”

McGowan looks to the CB. Brings it to her lips.

“McGowan here,” she says. “How soon can you get there?”

Kit can’t stop thinking about Daphne.

Tammy, Melanie, Kennedy.

Maybe more? She doesn’t know. Won’t let herself know. Yesterday, Natasha wrote the team (those who remain) on a group thread. Said she had “more of the story to tell.”

Kit turned her phone off then. Hasn’t turned it on since.

The anxiety she feels now is new to her. It renders the stuff she writes about in her journal meaningless. If she catches herself in a mirror, in the window of a storefront downtown, what she sees is what she believes she will look like the day she dies.