Page 267 of What We Bury

Milo pulls out his phone and taps until the clone of Brock’s cell fills the screen and scrolls. “Direct quotes? ‘You don’t get to disappear on me.’ ‘I know what you promised.’ ‘If you’re fucking someone else, I’ll burn your life down.’ Then the classic, ‘Call me or I’ll start escalating, and you know what that means.’”

That lands.

Holden leans forward, forearms on his thighs. “Isn’t that the one he sent while we were at Pinecrest?”

“Yeah. And your ‘go find another dick to suck’ response didn’t go down well. So thanks for that.”

“Bite me,” Holden says.

“Pass,” Milo shoots back. “You’re all starch and repression.”

Odin ignores both of them. “The phone.”

Milo passes over his cell. Odin reads in silence for a full minute, thumb moving. The room stills around him. Even Milo shuts up.

Finally, Odin hands it back.

“That’s not a spurned fling,” he says.

My shoulders tighten. “You think Stephen’s our guy?”

“I think Stephen belongs in the center of the board, not the margins.” He sets the empty espresso cup down on the side table with a soft click. “Possessive language. Implied leverage. Escalation without concern for welfare. He’s not asking whether Brock is alive. He’s furious Brock has become unavailable.”

“Did anything flag during the initial deep dive into Brock’s life?” Holden asks. “Our brief didn’t note romantic partners to watch out for.”

“You’re right,” Odin says, shifting his attention to Holden. “We didn’t include everything we knew about him in the execution file. Perhaps we should have. But we didn’t feel it was necessary information for the task.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

Odin’s eyes swing to me. “We were aware that Brock was closeted. Violently closeted. His self-hatred was core to his pathology—it’s why he targeted women. He hated himself fornotwanting them.”

For a second, nobody says a damn thing. We’re all too busy processing.

I hear my own voice before I feel ready to use it. “Why the fuck wasn’t that in the file?”

Odin doesn’t flinch. “Because his sexuality wasn’t the target criterion. His violence against women was. The file gave you what was operationally relevant.”

“It’s operationally relevant now,” Holden says, flat.

“Yes,” Odin agrees. “Now it is.”

Milo lets out a humorless laugh. “Cool. Great. Love that for us. So our dead rapist had a secret boyfriend with a temper and implied blackmail and we all just—what? Didn’t get to know because it wasn’t relevant until there was a fucking rope hanging over Sage’s head? We would have treated these texts way more seriously.”

“Milo,” Micah says quietly.

“No, I’d actually love to know why the fuck that was withheld,” Milo finishes, voice sharp enough to draw blood.

Odin looks at him coolly. “Because operational compartmentalization keeps people alive.”

“Except Sage just got a noose party favor in her apartment, so forgive me if I’m not thrilled with the current system.”

“Milo.” My tone cuts harder this time.

He throws his hands up. “What? I’m right.”

He is. That’s part of the problem.

Odin folds his hands over one knee. “You are right to be angry. But anger is only useful if it sharpens thought. Use it well.”