You Signed the Page

Nico takes me to the secure suite instead of the station because, as he puts it, "I am trying not to make you tonight's public circus before breakfast." The cut on my hand gets cleaned by a medic with no curiosity at all, which in Greybridge feels almost saintly. Poppy is asleep in the adjoining room. Callum is in the lobby feeding rumor to trusted reporters at a controlled drip. Everyone else seems to understand the choreography except me.

Nico sets the copied coroner addendum, the bridge blood photos, and my signed identification page in a line on the hotel desk. "Start at the moment you knew the body might not be Tessa."

"I never knew. I suspected."

"You signed the page anyway."

There is no cruelty in his voice. That makes it worse. I tell him about the storm, the pressure, Vivian's certainty, Owen's grief, Poppy asleep on a stranger's lap, the late-arriving ring. I do not try to make myself noble. The facts will not support it.

"Did Owen ever tell you the phrase 'recovered effects' before you saw it in the report?" Nico asks.

The question lands so precisely that I look up sharply. "Yes," I say after a beat. "In the hallway outside the viewing room. He said the ring turned up in recovered effects and that should settle everyone's nerves."

Nico writes that down and exhales slowly. "Then he was ahead of the formal chain."

"Can you prove that?"

"Not from your memory alone. But memory plus logs plus witnesses plus whatever was in that ledger?" He shakes his head. "That gets interesting."

I push the motel keycard across the table. "Tessa gave me this."

"Or wanted you to think she did."

"You think I hallucinated my sister?"

"I think living women are harder evidence than dead ones, and someone has spent six years building a case around what people can be made to swear to." He taps the signed identification page. "Including you."

I hate him again for being right. In the next room, Poppy murmurs in her sleep. Nico hears it too and softens half a degree. "Once daylight hits, I need formal statements, chain custody on the ledger, and your phone."

"My phone?"

"All communications with Tessa. If she's alive, she's witness material. If she's bait, she's still evidence."

I hand the phone over and feel like I am surrendering the only line that might actually lead to her. Nico scrolls once, stops, and turns the screen toward me. A new text has arrived while the phone sat between us.

Poppy never showed you all the postcards. Ask where he hid the blue ones.