Page 153 of What We Bury

“Hudson. Here’s what we’ve got.”

Professional. Controlled. Whatever’s been eating at him, he’s locked it in a box and shoved it under the bed. Fine. I can work with the mask. We all can.

He runs through it. Hudson treats Pinecrest like a second home—golf on Sundays, the club gym Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings after the office. Married, two kids in school, wife on a charity board Tuesdays and Thursdays. The house sits in a gated community with residential security, which Eli flags and dismisses in the same breath. Too many eyes. Too many variables.

“The gym’s our window,” I say. “It’s the one place he’s predictable and alone.”

“Agreed.” Eli looks to Milo. “Tell me the locker room’s clean.”

Milo’s already got it pulled up. “Locker forty-seven. End of the second row, two from the showers, one from the sauna, three from the back exit. No cameras inside—the club won’t put them where members undress. The floor feed runs through a closet I can get into, so I loop it, we move, nothing lands on a drive.” He spreads his hands. “I cased it Sunday. We’re good.”

Knox shifts against the wall. “What are the roles?”

“You can be on kitten duty.” Milo sits forward and grabs a pastry. “Kitten duty is the most important post,” he says. “Bad things happen to kittens when you leave them alone too long.”

“Yeah,” Micah says, voice warm. “And we all know Knox is her favorite.”

Knox doesn’t answer, but the quarter moves a little faster.

The door opens. Odin enters. Dark hair cut precise, gray suit, those odd pale eyes—one of them a half-second slow—moving over each of us.

“Gentlemen.” He takes a seat and plucks a pastry from the box. “Show me what you have.”

Eli presents the plan. Clean, efficient, no wasted words. I fill in the recon details. Knox adds the physical layout. Milo covers the digital angle and what he thinks the suicide note should cover. Micah suggests hanging the rope in the shower cubicle—it’ll take longer to find him that way.

Odin listens. Asks two questions about contingencies we’ve already addressed. When Eli finishes, Odin is quiet for a moment.

“Wednesday,” he says. “Next week.” He looks at his watch. “That’ll make it the seventeenth. I want logistics confirmed by the fourteenth.” He finishes the last of his pastry and somehow doesn’t have any crumbs. “And the girl? I assume you have the undertaker watching her again?”

Micah’s mouth goes flat at the word girl.

Mine nearly does too.

Odin always says it like that. The girl. Never Sage. Like naming her would make her real in a way that’s inconvenient.

“Dean is watching her,” Eli confirms. Too fast.

“And have you read him in?”

Eli’s quiet a half-second too long. “Not all the way.”

It’s a small pause. On Eli, a pause is an alarm.

Odin’s gaze settles on him and narrows. “Explain.”

Nobody moves. Milo stops chewing. Knox’s quarter goes silent in his hand.

Eli folds his hands on the table. Calm as a grave. “Dean knows she’s under protection. He knows there’s potential collateral exposure from the Davis disappearance. He doesn’t know how or why he disappeared. Or what our involvement was.”

Odin leans back in his chair. “You were asked to test him.”

“I am testing him.” Eli holds steady. “I was told to bring him in slowly. One piece at a time.”

“And yet you seem no closer than you were seven days ago. We need more from him than simple surveillance duty.”

“Understood,” Eli says. “I’ll sit him down this week. Report back.”

Odin studies him for another beat too long.