“He is.”

Chapter 14 — The Command Center

By eight that evening the precinct had turned into something else.

What had walked in as two cold children at a rainy counter had become, over four hours, a case with a shape.

Detective Ramsey from the Child Protection Unit had taken over Cordell’s desk, and the digital forensics report from Fenwick’s phone and home computer sat open across two monitors.

Ramsey had worked these cases a long time and had the flat, careful calm of someone who had learned not to react out loud anymore; but even Ramsey went quiet, reading, and then said, without looking up, “This isn’t what it looked like at the front counter.