Relief flooded Alec because Finn looked like he was alright. There was colour back in his cheeks, and his curls had some spring again, and there was even a small smile on his face. Alec’s mistakes hadn’t ruined his son’s life for good.
Ainslee reappeared in the archway to the living room, Alec’s letter in her hand. It was unmarked but for her name, and she looked it over in confusion.
“What is it, Mum?” Finn asked. Alec could barely hear his voice through the glass.
“A letter,” she answered, turning it over to open it.
“From who?”
Ainslee’s hand flew to her mouth as she recognized the handwriting within, the envelope fluttering to the ground forgotten. Alec was suddenly sure that he’d made a terrible mistake. Ainslee sank to the couch beside Finn as she scanned the first page of the letter. A tear slipped down her cheek.
Alec couldn’t move until she’d finished the whole thing. He needed to see her reaction. She lowered the papers to her lap, eyes brimming, shoulders trembling, as she covered her mouth with her hand.
But Alec thought he saw her smile first.
Twenty-Nine
Between Lena’s band rehearsal and my endless paperwork wrapping up the case, it took us a week to find a time to go out for dinner finally. I had to get statements from Haruto, Collins, and Fawkes about the attack on them. Only one of their assailants, the woman with the dark hair, had been taken in the raid on Holden’s estate.
Fletcher and I asked Haruto what we should do with the Viking cache once it was no longer needed as evidence, and he suggested we send it to the National Museum of Scotland down in Edinburgh for safekeeping. He said scores of scholars and medievalists would want to study what we’d recovered. Rickerson came in to tell his tale as well once he heard that we’d taken down Holden’s operation. I was certain that with all those testimonies, we would get something to stick to the man, even with his high-powered team of lawyers.
Then, very suddenly, it was the day of my date with Lena. In a moment of weakness and error in judgment, I texted Fletcher and asked her to come over a couple of hours beforehand. She had better style than I did, though I would never tell her that to her face.
I regretted it the instant I opened the door and saw her broadly smirking face.
“Is somebody nervous?” she crowed.
I tried to swing the door shut, but she stuck her foot in the crack and let herself into my apartment.
“Fine, yes. I’m nervous,” I admitted. “It’s just… it’s been a long time coming, and now, it feels like there’s so much pressure on it.”
We’d made the plan two days ago, and ever since then, I’d been on edge, hyper-aware of the impending event. It was like knowing there was an exam coming up that you hadn’t studied for.
“Look, the biggest thing to remember is to just relax,” Fletcher said as she pushed past me and went looking for my bedroom so she could both invade my privacy and sort through my clothes.
“Easier said than done,” I pointed out. “How do you do it? Your first night here, and you had a date.”
“I did already know her,” Fletcher pointed out. She made her way upstairs and poked her nose through various doors until she found my room. I was glad I’d actually made the bed this morning and put away the laundry I did last night. She threw my closet open, rubbing her chin as she looked over my shirts. “Do you only own dark colours?”
“Yes.”
“Honestly, same. You and Lena have that light-dark foil going on, and that is so cute.”
Fletcher threw three shirts, two jackets, and two pairs of pants at me and had me try on several combinations and berate them around for her before she finally decided on the classic black trousers, blazer, and white shirt.
We went downstairs, and I made tea, setting a half-empty package of biscuits on the table that Fletcher immediately dug into. My phone dinged just as the kettle finished boiling, but I didn’t check it until after I poured water over the tea bags.
It was an email from Martin with a subject line that was just an exclamation point. Intrigued, I opened it up. “Callum,” it read. “I finished analyzing that photograph you sent me, and holy shit, man, this is awesome. I’ve determined that your sister found something totally new and never before seen. I’ve compared it to every other Nessie photo to see if I could figure out what ‘misidentified object’ it is, but I haven’t been able to match it up with anything. It’s totally new. I said that already. Anyway, I think you should send this to every newspaper ever, but I know you won’t do that.
“But what I really want you to take a look at is in the bottom left corner. There’s some kind of reflection in the water. I’ve blown it up as best I can, though it's still kind of hard to make out. I expect you to keep me in the loop with EVERYTHING you find, you got me? Everything.”
I went to find my laptop, so I could look at Martin’s enlarged photo on a larger screen. By the time I got back, Fletcher had eaten all but two of the Bourbon Creams, and I took them away from her so I could eat them myself.
“Martin found something on the picture my father took,” I explained, and she scooted closer to peer over my shoulder as I
