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I make a note. Tag it. Cross-reference it against every data point in the partition and let the system run its connections while I sit back and think about what we've just confirmed.

A network of people who are patient enough to watch locations for months before they move. Careful enough to keep seven separate jurisdictions from connecting the cases.

"Miles." Mason's voice has a different quality now. "These girls, where do you think they are?"

I look at the seven photographs on the board. I still have to add the other girls' images but thought I would work on these seven first to get a pattern, a clue and then I can see if the other girls fit the same pattern.

"I don't know yet," I say, which is true. The other answer, the one that's been sitting underneath all of this since the first time I read the files properly, I keep to myself because saying it out loud doesn't help anyone tonight. What helps is staying on the research and the cases.

Mason nods once, then he goes back to the file in his hand.

Declan returns to the table. Picks up his pen. Looks at his legal pad and then starts writing again.

I turn back to my screens.

The partition is running the new connection data we just found. The construction timelines mapped against the disappearance dates. The system is building a visual model of what Declan named as an operation. They are patient, organized and careful, moving across the country in a way that doesn’t look like a pattern. I watch it build and make notes where the model needs human judgment rather than just data, and the places where the system flags a connection but can't weigh it correctly without context.

Forty minutes pass.

Then my passive alert pings.

It's quiet, just a small indicator light on the bottom right of my left monitor, it’s an unobtrusive notification I've set up because it goes off at unpredictable hours and I don't want it pulling Mason's attention. It’s Sadie's university portal, and she's logged on.

I glance at it, then look back at the case files.

The construction timeline is sitting there, half-built, and the most significant development in three weeks of working this case. I'm in the middle of something that matters, something that Cain told me to take it seriously and I am taking it seriously.

I glance at the alert again.

"You've got that look," Mason says, without looking up from the Nashville file.

"I don't have a look."

"It’s the one where you're deciding something," Mason says with a tone that says I know you well enough now.

"I'm working."

Declan doesn't say anything. He's learned that sometimes the most effective contribution to a conversation is to say nothing and let it resolve itself.

I open a minimal trace window on the bottom right of my right monitor. It’s small enough that it doesn't pull the eye toward it. Her portal activity is running quietly underneath the case files, the way it always does at this hour. She logs on late; she's been doing it since the second week of term. It’s some combination of insomnia of someone still finding their rhythm in a new place.

She's in her coursework folder. Opening the communications essay.

Again.

She's read that essay four times since the grade came back. I know because the trace logs the access and I check the logs every morning. She reads it, highlights sections, removes the highlights, and then closes it.

"The Austin one's bothering me," Declan says from the table.

I minimize the trace window. I don’t close it, just minimize it. "Which part?"

"The timeline. She disappeared on a Wednesday." He taps the legal pad. "Every other disappearance is a Friday or Saturday. Late evening. The Austin one is a Thursday afternoon."

I pull the Austin file. Sarah Okafor, twenty-four, graduate student. Disappeared from the university library, different university, different state, same profession as Jade Coleman in Colorado. Last seen at two fifteen in the afternoon, which is an outlier against the pattern of late-evening disappearances across the other six cases.

"What was the gap between the environmental change and the disappearance in Austin?" I ask.

I already know the answer. I'm asking because I want Declan to run the same calculation I ran three weeks ago and tell me what he gets.