Chapter 18 #2
Ezra speaks from behind his monitors. "The sedan from yesterday.
The cameras only caught a partial on the plates, but I've got a match on the vehicle registration.
Leased through a shell company." He pauses.
Types. "Corporate chain goes back several layers.
I'm still pulling it apart, but there are ties to entities associated with properties connected to Elysium. "
Nobody speaks for a moment.
Sophie speaks up. "I've been cross-referencing Luc's membership records with the names in Natalie's files.
The people Gaudet mentored at Elysium. étienne was one of them.
So was the member who later took responsibility for the submissive who disappeared.
" She glances at me. "The woman Sebastien tried to find after Elysium closed. "
Luc looks up from his tablet. "Gaudet connected them?"
"Introduced them. Recommended the mentoring arrangement. Put people in each other's orbit." Sophie taps the screen in front of her. "He wasn't just nearby when things went wrong. He was often the person who connected the people involved."
One connection becomes several. Not proof by itself, but a pattern that hides in plain sight until someone with the right training pulls the thread.
I provide what I know about Gaudet's behavioral patterns. The tells I've tracked across years of watching him operate. How he positions himself in rooms. How he builds consensus.
Looking back now, with the pattern visible, I can identify moments when the friendliness shifted into something functional. Deployed rather than felt. I didn't read it then. I can't help but see it now.
Natalie listens to my contribution without looking at me. She takes notes. Then she asks a question so sharply calibrated it takes me a second to recognize the scalpel inside it.
"How many times did you watch him mediate a complaint and think that was resolved too fast without doing anything about it?"
The silence holds. The question lands exactly where she aimed it, and the aim is flawless.
"More than I should have," I say.
"Good. Then you owe this case every observation you've ever made about him." She turns back to her files. "I'll hold you to that."
The edge in her voice is the same edge that drew me across a crowded floor weeks ago. The fact that it's aimed at me now doesn't make it less attractive. It makes it more dangerous.
The case is laid out. Claire's timeline covers one wall.
The counter-investigation occupies another.
Luc's booking data and Ezra's corporate trace fill the gaps between them.
For years, these pieces existed in separate rooms, separate minds.
Now they're in one place, and the picture they form is clear enough to act on.
The plan needs building.
Remy starts it. "How do we get him?"
"Get him to tell me something only Claire's killer would know," Natalie says.
"A correction isn't a confession," Andy says. "He can know things about Claire's death without admitting involvement. Proximity explains a lot."
"Not if the detail was never public." Natalie turns to face him.
"The official report ruled accidental death during a scene.
It listed the equipment involved but not the room configuration.
Not who accessed the scheduling system before Claire's session.
Not the specific method of restraint modification. "
"So you present the wrong method," I say.
Every head turns.
"You describe Claire's death to Gaudet as part of your research. You get the restraint method wrong. Deliberately. Specifically." I lean forward. "If he corrects you, he's revealing knowledge that wasn't in the report."
Andy shakes his head. "étienne found her. He saw the room. So did first responders and investigators. That's restricted knowledge, not perpetrator-only. A defense attorney puts étienne on the stand and argues community gossip."
He's right. The final state of the room isn't exclusive to the killer.
"Then we need the sequence," Natalie says. She's already ahead of the rest of us. "Not what the room looked like when étienne walked in. What happened before that. How the scene was staged into its final configuration."
"Something only the person who set the stage would know," I say.
"Exactly." Natalie looks at the timeline. "If I describe the staging sequence wrong, and Gaudet corrects me, that's not something he could have learned from finding Claire or hearing about it afterward. That's knowledge he could only have if he was in the room before étienne arrived."
Andy is quiet for a long moment. "That's perpetrator knowledge. If the detail is genuinely exclusive, and the recording is clean, I can build a case around that."
"The question is whether he'll take the bait," Remy says.
"He will." I know this about Gaudet. The care he takes. The precision of his staging. A man that meticulous about his methods won't sit across from someone describing them wrong. His ego won't tolerate the inaccuracy even if his survival instincts should.
Natalie nods. "I contact him as the true-crime author researching Elysium's history. Established cover. Documented interest. Nothing confrontational."
"Location?" Remy asks.
"I let him choose." Natalie's voice is steady. "If I suggest somewhere, he controls nothing and has every reason to be suspicious. If he picks the terrain, he feels safe. People talk when they feel safe."
"But it gives him a tactical advantage," Cole says.
"It gives him a psychological disadvantage," I say. "Comfort makes people careless. Especially people who've been careful for a long time."
Remy considers this. "We survey whatever place he picks. Cole maps the space. Ezra and Luc handle recording and communication. Contingency plans for every exit we find."
"And the ones we don't find?" Cole asks.
"That's why we build redundancy into the recording," Luc says. "Primary transmitter. Local backup. If one fails, the other captures."
Andy leans back. "Clean audio. Uninterrupted. Properly authenticated. Don't hand a defense attorney an evidentiary chain opening."
"We won't," Ezra says.
The room begins to clear. Sophie to compile her social connections into a format Natalie can reference during the interview. Cole and Ezra move toward the stairs already talking logistics.
Cole pauses. "Shell company. Want to bet it leads to another shell company?"
"I don't take sucker bets," Ezra says, eyes on his screen. "I take them apart."
Luc pauses at the door. "You good?"
The question is directed at me. Luc has watched me navigate damage before. He's checking whether this version requires intervention.
"I'm working," I say.
He nods. It's enough.
Natalie gathers a stack of files and heads downstairs to work on the interview details. Remy follows her out, already on the phone coordinating logistics.
The room empties until it's just me and the timeline Natalie pinned to the wall. Her handwriting. Her evidence. Her case. Years of work displayed in index cards and printed documents and pins connecting names I should have connected myself.
My thumb finds the inside of my left wrist. The pulse there is steady. The steadiness is a lie my body tells my brain, and I let it.
That's what I can give her now. Not an apology. Not the collar. Not the dynamic we built and I corrupted with silence.
The work. Every observation I've collected across years of watching a man I didn't know I was watching.
I was in the room. I missed it.
I pull a chair to the table and open the file Natalie left for me. What I'm putting together will tell her exactly how far she can push before Gaudet stops being warm.
But a man who has given every system nothing to find for years didn't do it by being careless. He reads rooms. He adapts. The plan assumes he won't see it coming.
I'm not sure that assumption is correct.