You’re Going to Want to See This
YOU’RE GOING TO WANT TO SEE THIS
PATRICK
You’re going to want to see this.
Those seven words held a lot of weight when they came from his father.
If it had been nothing, Ian wouldn’t have texted at all.
If it had been straightforward, Ian would have laid it out in the message.
The fact that he hadn’t done either meant it required a conversation. Required Patrick to see it for himself.
He pulled into the driveway and parked behind his father’s truck. Porch lights glowed a soft amber in welcome while keeping the multitude of security cameras invisible in the shadows.
Ian opened the door before he knocked.
“That was quick.”
“Sounded important.”
Ian said nothing, simply stepped back and allowed Patrick to enter.
The house was quiet. His mother and Kate had long since gone to bed. Ian moved through the house and Patrick followed him into the back room.
The screens were active, the familiar blue-white glow of running searches and data feeds casting light across the equipment. Ian went over to the processing station and picked up a single printed sheet.
He handed it to Patrick without preamble.
Patrick read it.
Anthony Varro. His address, employment history, prior record. Nothing remarkable. Patrick read it twice before he understood what he was looking at.
The address was a mail drop in Trenton, New Jersey. He recognized the format; he’d seen it before in his own research. A physical street address attached to a commercial mail service, designed specifically for people who needed an address that wasn’t where they actually lived.
The employment history listed a consulting firm in Newark.
Patrick tapped it into his phone and pulled up the company’s website.
It was, in a word, sparse. Minimal web presence.
No origin story, no staff register, no list of important clients or accolades.
A contact form and a phone number that, when he searched it, returned no results attached to any legitimate business operation.
The prior record was one count of disorderly conduct, Monmouth County, eleven years ago, reduced to a fine. It was the kind of minor charge that appeared just credible enough to make a background check look plausible.
Patrick set the sheet on the desk.
Ian was leaning in the doorway. Arms crossed. Watching.
“This identity was constructed,” Patrick said.
Ian said nothing but his eyes glittered with approval.
“The mail drop, the consulting shell, the prior—it’s all bullshit.” He looked at the sheet again. “Someone built this.”
“It’s realistic enough to pass a cursory background check,” Ian said.
“Which means whoever put it together knew what they were doing.”
“Agreed.”
Patrick thought about the injection site behind the left ear. The hands with the grip callus. The stripped identity—no wallet, no phone, no keys. A man who came to a closed campground in Pine Ridge… for what purpose?
The answer: nothing good.
“He wasn’t here by accident,” Patrick said.
“I don’t believe so, no.”
Patrick stood in his father’s back room, looking at a carefully assembled dossier attached to a dead man, a chill settling over him. Whoever Anthony Varro was, he had resources and the ability to build a cover that held up under routine scrutiny.
And not because he wanted to chill off-grid.
“What about the hair sample?” Patrick said.
“Mick ran it through a standard tox screen. It’s clean,” Ian told him. “Nothing a standard tox would flag.”
“But?”
“Mick said the clean result was interesting, given the presentation Morgan described. He and Nicki want to run a targeted panel.”
Clean wasn’t the same thing as nothing. There were plenty of toxins, both natural and manmade, that would leave some kind of trace.
Whatever had been used to stop this man’s heart had been chosen specifically because it wouldn’t show up.
That required specific knowledge and access to things that weren’t available at a pharmacy or a hardware store.
Patrick picked up the sheet again. Stared at the bogus employment history. Thought about the image that placed him at one of Morgan’s crime scenes and the parking garage she used.
His phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
Morgan: Any word?
The timestamp read 11:53 PM.
Something moved through him—quick, instinctive, not entirely rational. She was awake and waiting and didn’t know about the results he now held or what they might mean. He thought about telling her now, over text, in the middle of the night, and rejected the idea.
He set the phone face down on the desk and looked at the wall of screens without really seeing them.
The almost-feral instinct to stand between Morgan Sullivan and whatever came next was no longer as surprising as it had been.
He’d been feeling some version of it since that first day in the coffee shop.
What was interesting was how powerful it had become.
He’d grown up with enough Callaghan family history to know what that kind of pull meant. He wasn’t prepared to go there yet. But he wasn’t not going there, either.
“Are you going to tell her?” Ian asked, flicking his gaze to Patrick’s phone.
“Yes, but not tonight, and not over text.”
Ian nodded.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He tucked the sheet into his jacket pocket, said goodnight, and let himself out.
Patrick waited until he’d turned onto the main road before he used the hands-free to call Morgan. Was he going to tell her everything? No. But he had to tell her something.
It barely rang once before connecting.
“Hey.” Her voice was alert. She hadn’t been asleep.
“Hey. You’re up late.”
“I could say the same.” A pause. “Did something happen?”
“We got some hits,” he confirmed. “Better discussed in person though. Can we meet tomorrow?”
The silence was filled with questions she was smart enough not to ask before she said, “Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll come to you, if that works. Mid-morning?”
“Don’t wait that long on my account,” she said. “I’m up early.”
That made him smile a little. Maybe, in addition to wanting to know what he’d found, she was anxious to see him, too. “Good to know. I’ll text first though, okay?”
“That works.”
The line stayed open. Neither of them filled it.
“Patrick, are you okay?” she asked.
Not “what did you find” or “is it bad”—just “Are you okay.” As if his state of mind was worth asking about.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
She ended the call.
He drove the last few miles, the roads empty and dark as pitch. He was no longer thinking about Anthony Varro. He was thinking about Morgan. Awake, wondering, waiting for answers.
Tomorrow morning couldn’t come soon enough.