You Need to See This
PATRICK
Patrick woke later than he'd intended, the angle of the light through the curtains telling him it was well past eight. He and Riley had talked late into the night about the forum, the case, Morgan—all of it.
And the stuff he hadn’t said out loud? He didn’t have to, because Riley knew him. Sometimes better than he knew himself.
He lay there for a moment, looking at the ceiling.
Riley had been the one to put that growing awareness he’d been feeling into words: “What if she’s your croie?”
He'd deflected, because deflecting was easier at one in the morning than examining what it would mean if she was right. But the question lingered, supported by his own thoughts, increasingly impossible to deny.
Regardless, that wasn’t a question he could definitively answer yet. He had other things on his to-do list, and the first was, getting an ID on the guy in the morgue, and he knew exactly where to start.
He reached for his phone, remembering only when he came up empty that he’d left it charging in the kitchen.
He found it face down on the counter, exactly where he’d left it. The screen lit up the moment he grabbed it.
Eleven notifications, including seven texts from Riley, timestamped across the last two hours. The last one was brief and to the point.
Riley: OMW
He’d no sooner read the text than there was an impatient knock at the door. Riley was on the step with her laptop bag and the fierce expression of a woman who didn’t appreciate being ignored.
“What the hell, Patrick?” she said, pushing her way into the house. “Did you turn off your phone or something?”
“I left it charging down here when I crashed. What’s going on?”
She was already at the table, pulling out her laptop. “Sit down. You need to see this.”
He did.
The thread had run through the night.
He read it from where he'd left off—GraveDigger's upload of morgue photographs and clean, concise notes on the personal effects she’d found bagged and labeled. The group had taken them and run.
Sextant had moved first, flagging the injection site Morgan—but not GraveDigger—had documented.
Under Pennsylvania statute, that finding alone should have triggered a mandatory toxicology hold.
Sextant laid out the procedural failure without editorializing.
The implication sat in the thread: either the Pine Ridge PD hadn't done their job, or they’d made a conscious decision not to.
Ledger had run the financial angle on the clothing description Morgan had documented.
Quality construction, well-maintained. Ledger mapped the expense profile against known operational funding patterns and found the absence of a traceable footprint where one should have existed.
His conclusion: this man had been resourced and erased, and that combination had a specific and documented profile.
Halcyon had found the photograph. The facial recognition match came from an open source search through Philadelphia news archives.
A bystander image from a crime scene, the kind of incidental photography that accumulated around public tragedy without anyone paying attention to what was in the background.
A wide street shot. Police tape. Investigators moving through the scene.
And behind the tape, a man watching.
Medium height, medium build. Dark hair. He blended. No one would give him a second glance but had somehow ended up on a slab in the Pine Ridge morgue.
Archivist used the Philly connection to create an overlay.
Patrick recognized Riley's work before he registered her handle—meticulous layering of documented organized crime operational territories across Philadelphia mapped against the location of the crime scene in the archive photograph Halcyon had surfaced.
She'd placed the dead man's last known location inside a territory that had a name, even if the thread was careful not to use it directly.
Then NorthStar had posted.
NorthStar: Who was he working for?
Patrick followed the link Halcyon had included to the news article.
He hadn’t heard of the case but that wasn’t unusual.
Philadelphia homicides didn't make it to northeastern Pennsylvania unless something made them impossible to ignore, and this one had been kept quiet enough that even a targeted search returned almost nothing.
That was unusual, even for a city known for its crime rate.
Which could mean someone had gone to considerable effort to bury it.
He studied the photograph for a long time, repeatedly zooming in and increasing the resolution until he had a crystal-clear image of the man behind the tape, quietly watching the scene.
Patrick sat back, an uncomfortable feeling tightening his gut. “It can’t just be a coincidence, right?”
“You mean the same guy in that picture ending up dead in Pine Ridge on Sullivan land while a Philly MDI is on forced leave because she wouldn’t sign off on a case?” Riley deadpanned.
“Yeah, that.”
“No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. But Philly’s a big city. Morgan’s not the only MDI on staff.”
Patrick zoomed out, scanned the photo again. “There,” he said pointing to a figure near the edge. “That’s Morgan.”
Riley squinted and put her face to the screen. “How can you tell? That person is wearing a hat and a jacket and facing away from the camera.”
He couldn’t explain it. He just knew.
“Can you work your magic and find out if Morgan worked that case?” Riley asked.
“Public records typically don’t mention the MDI that worked a scene,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “The internal ME records would have that information, though.”
“Or you could just ask her,” Riley said drily.
Patrick smiled. “Or I could just ask her. Not sure she’ll tell me, but it’s worth a shot.”
Riley’s expression grew serious. “Sooner rather than later, right? Because if this is somehow related, Morgan could be in danger.”
He knew. His gut was saying exactly the same thing. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good. Keep me posted. And Patrick?”
“Yeah.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.” He had a feeling he was going to need a little luck with this one.
After Riley left, Patrick fired off a text to Morgan.
Patrick: Need to talk to you. Meet me?
He ran back upstairs, grabbed a quick shower and shave, while keeping his phone within reach with the volume turned all the way up. By the time he was dressed, she still hadn’t responded.
Disappointed, he sent another.
Patrick: You around? It’s important
While he waited, he called his dad.
Ian picked up on the second ring.
“Does this have anything to do with what we talked about the other night?” Ian asked when Patrick had explained what he needed. He knew what he was asking. Knew that the request went beyond an expedited ID.
“Maybe,” Patrick said.
A long pause ensued while his father listened to everything he wasn’t saying. Then a soft, “Finally. Bring them by, and we’ll talk.”
Patrick, like everyone else in the clan, knew his father and uncles had access to resources that very few did—including the Pine Ridge PD. Perhaps it was time he did as well.
He checked again. Still no reply from Morgan.
Unwilling to wait any longer, Patrick grabbed his keys and the evidence bags and went.
Morgan’s car was in the driveway, which gave Patrick a small measure of relief.
Frank answered the door.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Patrick said, pushing down his impatience and drawing upon the manners his parents had drilled into him. “I’d like to speak with Morgan, please, if I may.”
Frank Sullivan looked at Patrick with those dark green eyes, eyes that held approval and just a hint of amusement.
“She's upstairs,” he said, stepping back. “Second door on the left.”
Patrick entered the home and ascended the stairs, fighting the urge to take them two at a time. The need to see her was a tangible thing.
The second door on the left was open.
Morgan was in motion. Her bag was on the bed, half-packed. The small notebook from the bedside table went into the outer pocket. A stack of folded clothes followed.
His chest tightened. Morgan was preparing to leave.
He wasn’t about to let that happen. She’d be safer here, where he could protect her while they figured this out together.
She paused, sensing his presence.
“What are you doing here?” she said, without turning around.
“You didn't answer my texts.”
“I've been busy.”
“So I see. Going somewhere?” he said.
“Thinking about it.” She shoved something else into the bag.
“Why?”
“What is it to you?”
He understood her words for what they were—a defensive mechanism. She’d put two and two together and come up with the idea that leaving was probably the safest thing she could do for everyone.
A noble thought, but bullshit.
“The dead man,” he said, opting to cut right to the chase. “How is he connected to you?”
She turned then. The expression on her face was one he hadn't seen before. It wasn’t the controlled composure of the cool professional investigator.
This was more open. Vulnerable. It made his chest tighten further.
The need to protect this woman rose up from somewhere deep within, strong and powerful.
She exhaled and sank back on her bed, looking exhausted.
“I don't know,” she said. “Not exactly. But that picture Halcyon posted was a crime scene I worked.”
Patrick quietly sucked in a breath, but Morgan didn’t appear to realize she’d slipped and confirmed her membership in the forum. That, more than anything, proved she was more rattled than she was letting on.
“And then,” she continued, “then I remembered that I’d seen him again shortly afterward, talking to my supervisor in the parking garage.” She looked at her hands. “I don't know what the connection is. I just know it isn't a coincidence.”
“Okay,” he said. “Talk me through it.”
“Patrick—”
“You have a theory, and it's gotten you as far as a half-packed bag.” He held her gaze. “Talk me through it. Two heads are better than one, right?”
Something shifted in her expression. Surprise, maybe. Like she was so used to dealing with and solving problems on her own that she didn’t know what to do with his offer. He silently urged her to take a chance and trust him.
“Everything I have is circumstantial,” she said carefully. “A face in a photograph. A conversation in a parking garage. A body on family land.” She paused. “Theory, not fact.”
“Then let's start with that.” He moved the bag from the center of the bed to the floor and sat down. “Start from the beginning. What case were you working?”
She stood for a moment and paced. He could see her thinking about it. What to say, how much. Organizing thoughts to present in a methodical way. He waited patiently, giving her space to sort it out.
She sat back down beside him.
“A death that wasn't as cut and dried as what it appeared to be at first glance,” she said.
“I refused to close it. That's what got me the leave.” She looked at the window.
“I thought it was just about me not following orders. Taking too long. Someone making a point.” A pause. “I don't think that anymore.”
“No,” he said. “I don't either. How does the dead guy fit in?”
“I don’t know yet. I just know that he does,” she said, frustration lacing her voice.
“Then come on. Let’s get some answers.”
She perked up at that. “What answers? How?”
“We’re going to take those prints and that hair sample you got to someone who can find out who that guy is. Once we know that, we can figure out what, if anything, he has to do with your case and why he was in Pine Ridge.”
Morgan looked at the bag on the floor. At the window. At him. “Why?” she asked. “Why are you helping me?”
He shrugged, sensing that she wouldn’t accept an explanation that included things like, “because I think you might be my croie” and “because every instinct in my body is screaming to keep you close, keep you safe.” What he went with was, “Because I want to, and because I can. Isn’t that enough?”
She sat with that for a moment. “Okay.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
She got her jacket.