Now she was crumpled into herself on the sofa, rocking faintly. Whenever he looked her way, he wanted to rip the world in half and pull the old woman out through the boiling center for her.

But he could not muddy up his mind with rage or worry. Not even hope. Hope was too personal. In real life cops didn’t work cases they were close to, and this was why. He needed to be thinking, cold and clear.

“She messed up,” he told them, so calm. He’d found his old cop voice, rusty from disuse. “She gave us the other child’s name and approximate age. There will be news stories about a missing toddler, and this one had an unusual name.”

“How does that help?” Gabrielle said, overwhelmed.

“Until now we had only two points, Spence and Trey, connected by the line of a legal case. Geoff is a third point, a way to triangulate. When we find the lines connecting Geoff’s parents, the right case file will be inside the shape they all make together. Inside that file we’ll find the woman who took Robert. We need her real name.”

With the real name, maybe, just maybe, he could get Robert back. If he was willing to be ruthless. He didn’t have to mull it over. He was willing. He was past willing. He could feel a coming violence, like a prickling carbonation in his blood. This was yet another reason cops were not allowed to work on cases close to them.

Gabrielle burst into motion, pushing off the doorway. “We should have called the police. They would have traced that call. We’d know exactly where she is.” Her words came blurting out, all rush and tumble, a road straight to regret.

“No,” Marshall cut in, firm and cool. They could not indulge in woulda-coulda-shoulda. He saw only one path that might get them all the way to Robert. It was full of switchbacks and deadfalls, but it was a path, and he was on it. “We got this. I have a plan.” Well, the seeds of one. “Remember, if Bree had called the cops first thing, Robert would be dead already.”

Bree flinched, but it was good for her to hear these words. Like every parent living, she’d be looking for a way to make this her fault.

She looked up at him with drowning eyes. “Maybe we should call them now?”

“No,” he said. He looked at Gabrielle and was glad to see her nodding, backing his play. Bree could end up in prison and still lose her baby. And as murder/suicide plans went, this one felt pretty tight. He could see six thousand ways it could go ass up if they called the cops. “She’s tied the baby to her body, which makes snipers or gas or a breach too risky. She doesn’t care if she lives, so they can’t negotiate. That’s every choice the cops have. They have to stay inside the law. They have limits.” He held Bree’s gaze. “We don’t. All I need is her name. She has a weak point.”

He saw it click in her, or perhaps she’d thought of it already and was only recognizing how far down into this thing he’d go with her. A light came into her eyes. She said, “You want her name so you can find the daughter. Get something to trade that isn’t Trey.”

He nodded, even as Gabrielle’s jaw unhinged. He turned to her before she could speak. “We’ll leave you out of anything illegal. I don’t see another way.” The daughter was the only thing she cared about. Finding her was the key.

Bree stood up, firming her lips and squaring her shoulders, her gaze burning into him. Gratitude and hope and something else, unreadable. “So what do we do first?”

She asked as if she were sure he knew, and he felt her faith like a jolt, pure energy crackling through him. This was that force she had in her, the thing that had made her so electric on the stage. She’d turned it on him like a beam.

“We send the phone and bag to a private lab. The pill bottle and the dosed flask incriminate you, so I’ll hold them in case we need them. I know a lab that works Saturdays. I’ll call them. A rush job will be expensive, but . . .” She was already waving that away, so he started packing the artifacts into the gaudy bag. “Not enough time for DNA, but if they can get fingerprints, maybe she has a record. Gabrielle, call a car service? As soon as we’re done here, you need to go drop this stuff off.” He handed her the sack, then unclipped his own phone from his belt. “I’ll text you the lab’s address.”

“I can do that.” She came down hard on the last word as she got her phone out. It was a warning; there were things she would not do.

Bree understood the warning as well. She turned to hold his gaze in what became a promise between them. No limits.

Then she looked down, her cheeks coloring, and changed the subject. “The mother said finding her wouldn’t help me find the daughter.”

Pushback was good. If he had to convince her, it made this idea more his. If it failed, at least Bree would have someone to blame besides herself.

“She meant finding her physical location wouldn’t help. We know the daughter isn’t with her. But her identity? If she didn’t care about us knowing that, she would have answered your last question. She told you everything else you wanted to know. About herself, her family, her motivations. Geoff. But she wouldn’t tell you her name, or her husband’s name, or her daughter’s. She wouldn’t say what Trey and Spence did, and people with a grievance love to express their outrage. She didn’t because if you knew which case had harmed her, then you could find her name. If she wants to hide her name, then it’s worth finding.” Bree was nodding, seeing it, so he pressed forward. “I need a water glass and a big Ziploc storage bag, please.” She turned toward the kitchen, but his next words made her blanch. “Then you have to call Trey. Get him up to speed, so he’ll hop the first plane home.”

“I will.” She hurried away to get the things he’d asked for.

He turned back to Gabrielle. “After you drop this stuff off, can you go into the office? I’ll stay here and start the research. By the time you get there, I’ll have emailed all my notes to you. You can use them to narrow down Spencer and Trey’s cases.”

Bree was already back. He took her hand and found it trembling so hard he had to steady it as he pressed her fingertips cleanly onto the water glass. “So the lab can rule your prints out.” He dropped the glass in the bag and sealed it.

“Thank you,” she said. That was all, but her eyes were full of unsaid things.

He nodded, feeling a sudden need, sharp and small and selfish, to be the one to make this happen. He would shake hands with Satan, trade anything, to be the one to get Robert back. He could almost feel the small, live weight of the baby, see how joy would crash through her as he put that weight into her arms.