Jo was clearly already picturing her own personal doomsday scenarios on what awaited her in the bank vault. “I swear to Christ if I find a stray cat I will lose it. I do not have the patience to deal with a feral animal today, not on top of everything else going on.”

Jo stopped up short when she got to the door of the bank vault. Imogen nearly ran into her back. She stepped around Jo, trying to get a view of the scene.

It was not a feral cat.

Imogen looked to Jo for a moment. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was instinct at this point. Look to the adult in the room to see if they actually knew how to handle the batshit insanity that was life.

But, of course, Jo didn’t know what to do with a sobbing Rinn Olivera any more than Imogen did.

This was not the Little Miss Sunshine they were accustomed to working with, and Imogen could understand how this would freeze even the least adult of adults that Imogen had ever known. But Jo must have hit her limits when she caught sight of a girl sobbing maniacally in a room and throwing dollar-mystery novels across the floor.

Imogen had to duck under an airborne James Patterson. Jo took an Evanovich to the chest. But it was when the hardbound Sayers novels went flying that Imogen came to a decision. After what felt like a lifetime of standing still, of staying in place, of this strange, numbing immobility, Imogen didn’t just want to take an action.

She needed to.

Imogen stepped forward, reached out, and gave the lightest touch she could at the upper part of Rinn’s arm. “Hey, Rinn.”

Rinn responded with a louder, wider-mouthed sob. She slammed what looked like a very nice copy of an original Nancy Drew onto the floor. Imogen did her best not to wince. Right now, a person was way more important than a book.

“That’s okay.” Imogen wasn’t even sure why she’d said it. She didn’t understand what Rinn had said, or attempted to say—not as words. But she understood the feeling. If there was one advantage to the way that Imogen had felt on and off for the past year, it was getting a sense of the feeling behind what people were saying. It was understanding what sadness was—sometimes more than a feeling—and that it was a thing she could almost taste, could almost touch at times, it was so real.

Rinn looked up, startled, but still crying. Her eyes were wide and haunted.

“We’re going to go to the bathroom, okay, Rinn? I need you to nod at least once that you understand.”

Rinn kept crying, but she also bobbed her head up and down. She got it. She really, really got it. She also apparently couldn’t stop crying.