The words were quiet, but something beneath them struck hard.
I rubbed my forehead. “What is happening?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I agree.”
There was movement on his end of the line, voices low in the background.
“I’ll send someone,” he said.
“No.”
“Nora—”
“No. I am not getting into a car with one of your people because someone stole a letter.”
“Then call your partner. The one from your shift.”
I stiffened. “How do you know about Luis?”
“I know who matters around the people who matter to me.”
“I don’t matter to you.”
Another pause.
“You saved my mother,” he said. “That makes you matter whether either of us likes it or not.”
I hated the way my chest tightened at that.
“I’ll call Luis,” I said.
“Good.”
“And Adrian?”
“Yes?”
“If this has anything to do with your family, fix it before it reaches mine.”
“My family,” he said, “may not be the only one with secrets.”
The line went dead.
I almost threw the phone across the room.
Luis arrived forty minutes later wearing sweatpants, a winter coat, and the expression of a man whose wife had already asked too many questions.
“You look terrible,” he said when I opened the door.
“Nice to see you too.”
He stepped inside and looked around. “Police said no forced entry?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Anything missing?”
“A letter.”
His eyebrows drew together. “A letter?”
I told him the least impossible version of the story. Margaret Hargrove. The missed interview. The dinner. The break-in.
I left out Adrian’s claim about the dead brother. I wasn’t ready to say that aloud.
Luis listened without interrupting, which was how I knew he was worried.
At the end, he sat down at my table and exhaled. “Nora, what did you get pulled into?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you trust him?”
“No.”
“Do you believe him?”
That was harder.
I thought of Adrian watching his mother climb the stairs. Adrian saying, She frightened me. Adrian not pretending to be harmless.
“Maybe,” I said.
Luis groaned. “That is worse than no.”
“I know.”
“You can stay with us tonight.”
“I don’t want to scare Elena.”
“She’s married to a paramedic. Her baseline is scared.”
I smiled despite everything.
I packed a bag while Luis checked the windows. Before we left, I paused beside the kitchen table and gathered my interview papers into a neat stack. Without the captain’s letter, the folder felt incomplete, like a tooth missing from a smile.
