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If he hadn’t been so sure they were being listened to by I.S.F. right then, he would have told Morley he was delusional, that Wynter wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about a little back and forth with a colleague. Charlie was flirty, sure. She was pretty, sure. But Nick was completely obsessed and singularly focused on his wife. She didn’t have a reason in the world to worry about him, and she damned well knew it. She better know it, at least.

Nick would sooner gnaw off his own wrist than cheat on her.

He’d sooner light himself on fire.

“That’s not something that ever even crosses my mind,” he told Morley.

Morley grunted. “Uh-huh. Not that kind of guy, huh?”

“I guess not.”

Nick honestly wasn’t sure if the old man was pulling his leg, trying to distract him, or if he really thought he was a piece of shit.

In the end, he found himself thinking Morley was trying to distract him.

The old man seemed to have picked up on some of Nick’s unease.

They hadn’t made it all the way inside the house yet, but they were in the garage. Everything about the damned space was familiar. Every tire track and drip of paint left on the floor, even the car itself, a little half-manual electric that had been designed to look like one of those little cars Nick remembered from back when he was human.

Mini Cooper. That’s what they were called.

A bizarre choice for a family with three kids and a grandmother living upstairs.

Nick winced at the thought.

The little car must belong to one of the adults. Parked next to it was a monster. Modern, with no external features whatsoever, it looked like a white egg lying on its side. Even the wheels were covered in those VR panels that would allow the driver to change the vehicle’s color whenever they felt like it.

That must be the family’s primary vehicle.

But Nick’s eyes kept returning to the Mini Cooper.

Nick smelled blood on that one.

That must have been the car the four adults took out to dinner, leaving their five kids and the grandmother behind at home. Nick grimaced, remembering the man in the black hat watching them as they exited the vehicle, all of them laughing, a little tipsy from wine.

It was completely unnerving, recognizing so much in the dim space.

He’d wanted so much for this to not be the house from his dream.

It was that house though, which unnerved him even more about the baby.

He was tempted to call Charlie again, see if she could check in with them about that patrol car. He knew he was kidding himself, though. When the man with the bandages had been watching through the windows of that house, it had been daylight.

Gardeners had covered the front yard.

The thought made him sick with anxiety.

Whatever had happened there, it was likely already over.

“Hey. Over here.”

Nick must have had a funny look on his face.

When Morley looked back at him, seeing Nick hesitate, the senior detective frowned. “What?” Looking back around at the inside of the garage, he swept the place with his eyes, then looked back at Nick. “You know this place?”

Nick gave him a grim look. “No. Absolutely not.”

Morley studied his eyes for a few beats longer.