Just a Collaboration
MORGAN
The NorthStar post had been up for several hours when Patrick's text arrived, and she was still trying to wrap her head around it.
Cold War provenance. The method is the message. Ask who benefits from the silence.
Everyone in the Thread had been invited for a reason.
DeepTrace had pattern recognition that bordered on algorithmic.
Archivist worked data and uncovered connections no one else would.
Ledger found money trails that should have been invisible.
Even Sextant, with the procedural questions and the careful sourcing, brought order and discipline.
Halcyon had a knack for sorting through open-source haystacks and finding needles everyone else missed.
NorthStar brought questions.
Always questions. Never the answers—just the questions that subtly pointed them in the right direction, like a master conductor leading his orchestra. Who owned it before? Who was he working for? And now this one, which seemed like it might be the most important question of all.
Ask who benefits from the silence.
The thing about a puzzle—a real one, not the metaphorical kind—was that you couldn’t force the pieces.
You could dig deep and come close, unable to see the bigger picture because of a “forest from the trees” situation.
Then you’d step back, soften your gaze, and the shape would emerge from the noise.
She stepped back, and looked at the pieces she already had, starting with saxitoxin.
She’d read about it in one of Frank’s books. Not a popular history. Not a sensationalized account of Cold War tradecraft. A dense, methodically organized text on covert chemical weapon development, published by a university press with minimal commercial distribution.
She hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Frank’s shelves were filled with declassified texts on Cold War history and conspiracy theories, in addition to plenty of survivalist manuals that covered everything from water sources to homeopathic remedies.
Frank was Frank. He lived life unapologetically on his own terms and had a very small inner circle that currently consisted of Shadow, Donna, and most recently, her.
She thought about Donna, and how she’d become such a fixture in the life of a man who seemed determined to not need anyone else. They fit, though. Like two people who had been through some serious stuff together and forged a connection along the way.
There’s very little I wouldn’t do for that man, Donna had said quietly, but Morgan had felt the truth of it. Those two had a history.
But what history? She didn’t know much about Frank’s past. Her birth father’s family wasn’t something her mother liked to talk about. On those rare occasions when her mother spoke of Frank at all, she used words like ‘paranoid’ and ‘delusional’ but refused to back that up with any context.
At the time, Morgan had chalked it up to old friction, and the fact that her stepfather was a possessive, jealous man who did not tolerate reminders of her mother’s previous relationships.
Which explained a lot about her relationship with her stepfather, really.
Thing was, she liked Frank. Liked that he was quiet and capable and didn’t speak unless he had something worthwhile to say. And, oddly enough given everything that had happened, she felt safe here.
Ask who benefits from the silence.
Shadow put a paw on her knee, as if he could see her thoughts.
“I know,” Morgan said.
She closed the book and went to get ready for dinner, telling herself not to read too much into Patrick’s invitation. It was most likely because of the case. Because DeepTrace had seen the NorthStar post too, and Patrick wanted to talk to her about it.
It didn’t mean anything.
But that was no reason to show up in hikers, well-worn jeans, and a flannel shirt.
A touch of makeup wouldn’t hurt, either.
Twenty minutes later, she was as ready as she was going to get.
She’d ditched the ponytail and brushed her hair into soft waves.
Added a light coat of mascara and selected small gold hoop earrings.
Swapped her blue jeans for black ones, her t-shirt and flannel for a soft, fitted sweater in dark green that someone had once said made her eyes pop.
She wasn’t dressing up. She was just choosing cleaner clothes.
Less field-ready, more casual gathering.
A sweater that fit properly instead of the oversized thermal she’d been living in for the better part of a week.
Hair down, because it was already down and she’d already combed it and she was absolutely not overthinking that.
She came downstairs just as Frank was coming in from the outside.
He looked at her for a moment. Took in her appearance. Said nothing, though the question was there in his eyes.
“I’m having dinner with Patrick,” she said, lifting her chin slightly, challenging him to say something about that.
If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she wouldn’t have noticed the approval that ghosted over his features. Frank approved of Patrick, which put Patrick in a very small minority, apparently.
Her grandfather was a secretive but protective man with a bookcase filled with CIA operative level readings.
Who benefits from the silence.
“Did you kill Anthony Varro?” she blurted out.
She hadn’t meant to say it. The idea wasn’t even a fully formed thought, just a vague notion, loosely formed from hours of trying to make sense of the past couple of weeks.
Frank met her gaze steadily. Not a flicker, not a shift at the mention of the dead man’s name.
“No,” he said.
Simple. Not defensive. Not surprised. Just: no.
In four years as an MDI, Morgan had learned a great deal about what people’s faces did when they heard the name of someone connected to a death.
Surprise. Recognition, or the careful absence of it.
Grief. Relief. Even from people who were trying very hard not to react, there was always something.
Everyone had a tell, if you knew where to look.
Frank Sullivan’s face said absolutely nothing.
Which told her everything.
Frank moved to the fridge and pulled out one of the labeled containers Donna had left for him. As if she hadn’t just asked him if he’d killed a man.
Morgan took her jacket from the peg and picked up her keys from the small dish beneath it.
“Have a good time,” he said.
Perfectly even. Perfectly ordinary.
“I will,” she said, in exactly the same tone.
She spent the first part of the drive to Patrick’s house assembling and discarding every counter-argument she could think of.
Frank had said no. She had no hard evidence, only a pattern of observations that a good defense attorney would dismantle easily.
She knew better than to charge toward a conclusion on suggestive evidence.
That was the kind of thing that distinguished good investigative work from the kind that got thrown out.
She spent the last part of the drive forcing those thoughts aside. Not because it wasn’t worth pursuing, but because she’d need more than a non-reaction and a shelf full of books and a feeling to come to a conclusion like that.
The porch light was on when she pulled up to the house, warm and welcoming, and she shifted her focus to the anticipation tingling beneath her skin.
It’s just a collaboration. It doesn’t mean anything more than that.
She sat for a moment longer. Ran a hand over her hair. Checked her makeup in the rearview mirror.
She got out of the car. Climbed the steps. Took a deep breath.
She lifted her hand and knocked.