Chapter 3

The ring cut through the silence — a sharp electronic chirp from the phone dock on her hip. Everyone in the room heard it. Brant's head snapped toward her, then Grant's, then a dozen other faces.

Vera pulled the phone free. The screen read UNKNOWN NUMBER.

In twelve years, she'd learned to trust the chill that ran through her chest when an unknown number rang at the wrong moment. She answered.

"Detective Slade."

A pause. Then a voice — distorted, electronic, scraped flat by some voice-changer app. The words came through in a buzz that climbed the edge of her ear.

"If you found the paper," it said, "you're already too late."

Vera's body went still. Her free hand pressed flat on the desk, palm down, fingers spread.

The room watched her.

"Who is this?"

Another pause. Longer. The line crackled — she could hear something behind the distortion, a room tone, a humming fluorescent light not unlike the one above her.

"Ask Grant who he buried."

The line clicked dead.

Vera held the phone to her ear a second longer, breathing slow. Then she lowered it. Her face was pale — not dramatically, not staged, just a shade off, the color draining the way it does when the body knows something the mind hasn't caught up to yet.

She turned toward Grant.

He wasn't smiling anymore.

The change was small and total. His jaw was tight, muscles flexing at the hinge. His eyes had fixed forward, off-center, at a spot on the wall past her shoulder. His hands were flat on the desk, palms down, perfectly still.

The smirk was gone like it had never been there.