He felt like a complete dickhead. On the spur of the moment, he opened Google and searched for the item he’d been thinking about for Emma for Christmas. He smiled as he ordered it and left a message for the seller. It wasn’t much, but they didn’t have a lot to spend this year. And he knew Emma would appreciate the thought more than anything.

Once he was done, he picked up the water-damaged card and turned it over in his hands.

He knew he shouldn’t have just taken it. He should’ve checked it out in the evidence log, but the evidence bag had still been lying there under the gurney and nobody had been around, so he’d taken it. And he needed a lead. Anything that would get him closer to solving this case.

Was it the right thing to do? Nate had no idea. What was right and what was wrong was becoming increasingly blurred to him. His frustration curdled into a sharp anger. He hated himself for feeling useless and ineffective, hated that this promotion felt miles away and that he needed it so desperately.

Nate laid the sheet of tracing paper over the business card and rifled through the desk drawer. When he found a pencil he scratched it over the tracing paper, the shape of the business card, slowly revealing the embossed logo on the front.

A thick cross was surrounded by a circle, a set of wings to the left and right of the circle. Beneath that, the bold capital letters AL GIA CE.

Nate opened Google again and found the website he was looking for. He compared the tracing paper to the website. The logo was the same.

ALLEGIANCE HEALTH CLINIC

It was Emma’s clinic.

LATER THAT NIGHT, Nate was lounging on the couch. Emma’s feet were on his lap, Josh curled like a bean on hers. He was too big to sleep on her anymore, but he didn’t like to be left alone, and Emma seemed to need him close. Charlie was on the floor making funny little sucking sounds in his sleep.

The TV murmured in the background, the fireplace crackling and casting a sepia glow across the screen. All of Emma’s usual rules—strict 7:30 p.m. bedtime for Josh, flossing and brushing teeth, laundry on a Monday night—had gone out the window. Even her glass of wine was propped on the coffee table without a coaster, unheard of for Emma.

Emma was looking down at Josh’s sleeping form, gently stroking his cheek, her eyes so full of love it made Nate’s heart ache.

She looked tired. Exhausted, really. Her hair was tied into a tangled ponytail, limp tendrils hanging around her face, not a speck of makeup on. But when she looked at him and smiled, it made everything in him go warm with happiness. There was no woman in the world more beautiful than his wife.