Even so, Jethro and Nari shouldn’t be there. He would have expected the woman to think he was nuts, but instead she was going along with his delusion. She deserved so much better than this disaster. She’d been in a fight the day before, was still bruised, and should be resting by a fire with a good book. Instead, she was out in the freezing rain, looking for a clue that probably didn’t exist.

He couldn’t stop the team from working this case, but he didn’t have to let them court danger.

His phone buzzed and he looked down to see a familiar number. “Hi, Serena,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m being tailed by two HDD agents,” the professor said, sounding more bemused than angry. “Why? We only worked that one case together and it was months ago. Even if your team is in danger, as these nice agents have informed me, I’m not on your team.”

Angus studied the trees up the bank. Surely the techs had canvassed the entire area. “I’m just being overly cautious. The world doesn’t have enough geniuses; I’d hate to lose one.”

“Sure it does. Anybody with an IQ over one-sixty is a genius,” Serena said thoughtfully.

He was too tired to feel amused, but his lips twitched anyway. “Oh. Of course.” Lightning zinged the earth close enough he could smell ozone.

“Where are you?” Serena asked.

“At a crime scene looking for a note that doesn’t exist,” he said, turning to make sure Nari was all right by the creek.

Serena was quiet for a minute. “In the rain? Nobody would leave a note in the rain, and it’s been raining for weeks. Should snow soon. Statistically it should’ve snowed yesterday, but that’s another story, and one you probably don’t have time for right now.”

“True.” He had a flashback to her trying to explain something called methods for entanglement verification to him one time when she’d dropped by the office to meet Brigid, and he shivered. “Thanks, though.”

“Anytime. Let me know when I can lose the feds.” She hung up, no doubt already on to her next puzzle.

Angus slipped his phone in his pocket. She was right. It didn’t make sense to leave a note in the rain. There had to be some sort of clue with the body. “Let’s go, gang,” he called out. “I want to drop by the morgue.”

Nari hunched her shoulders against the rain and picked her way toward him. “We’ll need to dry off Roscoe. I’ll hurry ahead and get the towel out of the back seat.”