3. Miles #2
"Since Iris. How many clients have you lost to programs you'd never heard of? Intensive retreats that promised breakthroughs your traditional therapy couldn't provide?"
The question stole the air from my lungs. I stared at him, thinking of Mrs. Kim and the veteran who'd vanished after mentioning recruitment for an intensive program.
"Three," I whispered. "Maybe four. I thought it was a coincidence. Trauma survivors naturally seek more intensive help when they're ready, but—"
"It's not a coincidence." Rowan's voice was flat, certain. "You've been carrying this guilt alone for eighteen months, Dr. McCabe, but Iris wasn't your fault. She was their victim. And she's not the only one."
I glanced around, warm and a little crowded. A group of college students had claimed the table beside us, their conversation about weekend plans almost obscene in its normality after what Rowan implied.
"You're saying it's something organized? That someone is deliberately targeting—"
"I'm saying you need to see what I've been tracking." He glanced around the increasingly busy café, then back at me. "But not here. Too many ears."
My rational mind knew I should ask more questions, demand details, and insist on proceeding cautiously. The part of me that had been choking on guilt for eighteen months was already nodding.
"I have files," Rowan continued, finishing his coffee in one swallow. "Evidence. Photos. Things that will help you understand what really happened to Iris."
He stood, reaching for his jacket. "My apartment has better privacy."
My brain short-circuited. He might as well have said, "Taylor Swift's house is right this way."
I should have hesitated. Should have insisted on public spaces and professional boundaries.
But Rowan Ashcroft—the Rowan Ashcroft—was inviting me into his private space. The voice that kept me company through my dark nights wanted to show me something. The impossibility of it made my head spin.
He waited, patient but not pushing. He understood this was a choice that mattered, and once I crossed this line, there'd be no pretending our connection was only professional.
I was about to enter the private world of a man I'd fantasized about for months, armed with evidence about a lost client.
"This isn't—" I started, then stopped. "I'm not sure this is appropriate."
"Appropriate for what?" His gray-green eyes held mine steadily. "For a therapist who's been carrying guilt that isn't his? If you come, we treat this like an off-the-record consult. You can walk at any point."
The coffee shop hummed around us. I could walk away. Go back to my office and my carefully controlled world where other people's trauma stayed contained within fifty-minute sessions. Or I could follow him.
"Lead the way," I said, my voice steadier than I felt.
The October air outside Harbor it was how Rowan arranged them. He positioned each photo at eye level, the right height to converse with them. Small details beneath each face: favorite foods, childhood pets, things that had nothing to do with how they'd died.
It wasn't evidence documentation. It was grief work.
I recognized the pattern because I'd done it myself after my father died—obsessively documenting details, needing to keep him alive through remembering.
Rowan wasn't only investigating the deaths. He was processing his own trauma by refusing to let the people become statistics.
"You carry them with you," I said, not quite a question.
"What?"
"How you've organized this—it's not forensic. It's therapeutic. You're doing grief counseling on yourself, one case at a time."
I looked at him, understanding shifting between us.
And there, in the center of it all, was Iris.