It was a small thing—a meaningless detail in the bottom corner of each photograph. Unremarkable unless you looked at them side by side. She’d figured that it was her memory playing tricks on her, or at best it was just a coincidental similarity. But this, this was something else. This was the same. Exactly the same. How was that possible?

She showed it to Hendricks.

“How is that possible?” he echoed.

She didn’t know, but it tied Duke Vaughn to what was happening in Somerset. To Suzanne Lombard’s abduction.

Hendricks looked at her seriously. “This stays between us until we know what it means.”

“Even Vaughn?”

“Especially Vaughn.”

They went back to work, because it was paralyzing to think about it too long, and they couldn’t afford to be here a second longer than was necessary. That worked for a while, until the sound of Hendricks cursing rousted her. She thought she was well versed in all of Hendricks’s tones, but there was an unfamiliar edge to his voice. He sounded panicked. She found him standing over their weapons bag.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“One of them’s gone.”

“One of what’s gone? One of the guns?”

“One of the Glocks.” His voice had dropped to a near whisper. “That and two mags.”

“Anything else?”

“There doesn’t need to be anything else missing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He owns me. That’s what I’m talking about. I couldn’t figure why he took Tate’s body instead of sticking it with us. But now I get it.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Oh, shit is right. I’ve fired that gun a thousand times. I handloaded those mags. I cleaned those guns. My prints are on every moving piece, on every shell casing.”

“And he didn’t leave any shell casings . . .”

“No. Not one. I double-checked. He picked them all up. Which means he can dump the body, plant the gun, and ring me up for murder any time he wants. So like I said, he owns me.”

“Who?”

“Whoever it was. Gibson. WR8TH. Does it even matter?”

Hendricks looked at her expectantly like a child who just wanted a comforting word. She didn’t know that she had any. They thought they’d been two steps ahead, when in actual fact they’d been well behind. She wondered what George would do in this situation. These kinds of blind-alley crises were his forte, but he was nowhere to be found. So the question really was, what would she do?

“That boy and I have a chat coming,” he said.

“It’s not Gibson.”

“Convince me.”

“This?” Jenn gestured at the blood still in Tate’s unit. “This isn’t him.”