Sorry. The word felt like the tip of a hot blade poking a blister. Had anyone ever said it to her before? When she’d been young, people had either regarded her with pity or not at all. She was a ghost, a creepy little thing that haunted the corners of people’s vision and unnerved them when they noticed her. Later, the pity morphed into fear. She’d worked hard to make it so. Because if people feared her, they didn’t hurt her. They just … stayed away.

“Thank you,” she whispered, though she didn’t need saving anymore.

Next, she gave him the abridged version of her life after Winslow Street. She went to live with her now parents, Lynette and Bruce Mori. She grew up. She went to school in Chicago and worked at The Portrait People in the mall to pay the bills. And when the mall was all but bankrupt, the opportunity to lease a department store was too tempting to resist.

“That’s this place?” Kole tapped the ticket.

“Yes.”

“And you said Garrison had this on him, when…?”

Morgan looked at Hudson.

“How are the three of us poring over this thing and it isn’t in Evidence?”

“I reacted,” Hudson confessed. “If it was something bad, I didn’t want Brix’s family to know about it. Not from a report, anyway.”

“Well, was it?”

“What’s that?”

Nik rolled his eyes. “Something bad. I assume you’ve done some research and haven’t just been using it as a bookmark this whole time.”

Morgan felt Hudson’s gaze shift to her. The Ruins was not his secret to tell. And for all that she’d told him, there was still more.

Nik dialed his sights on her, too. “What kind of seedy operation were you running?” he asked. “And why would Garrison have gone there?”

“He was a PI,” said Hudson. The admission sounded abrupt, as though he’d been holding it in for some time.

“A PI? Brix Garrison?” Morgan was sure that if Kole had been drinking coffee, he would have spit it out.

Hudson’s voice was distant, like a computer with a dozen other programs running simultaneously. “We talked maybe four or five months ago. About his plans for after retirement. He said he had an offer.”

“Jesus.” Kole scratched his head, then rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling in a Lord help me moment. “Okay. And he went to The Ruins, or he was looking into it at least, because of you.” He pointed to Morgan. “The secret Reynolds kid. This is easy.”

Hudson furrowed his brows. “It is?”

“We need to talk to Eleanor Reynolds.”

32 HUDSON