Harris stirred to wakefulness a few times that night. Agatha's body spooned into his, so after checking that their lovemaking wasn't a dream, he fell right back into actual dreams, each one warmer than the next.

This time he woke up to a finger of sunlight browsing the room through the gap in the curtains. It stopped at Agatha's eyelids, making them quiver. The hangover from fooling around when things were this good was nothing. And it was a Sunday.

"I'm happy," he said groggily.

Agatha squinted in the sunlight, yet smiled at him—one hell of a compliment. "I'm happy too."

Harris sat up in the morning's glow. The sheet slipped down from his shoulder, baring him to his waist. He would get completely naked if Agatha wouldn't mind the sight.

Her gaze circles his chest, stomach and the tented sheet below it without blushing. Much had happened since last night, even when they were sleeping. "We're a couple."

She nodded. "Yes."

He stretched out to nuzzle her forehead. The air chilled his skin as the sheet rolled away past his hips. "Sore?"

"A little."

He leaned back, retrieved the sheet, and tied it around his waist. Slow was the best. "How about I make breakfast?"

Make breakfast, plus while away ten hours before he could take her to the bedroom again. A part of him—the obvious part—ached, resenting the wait, pointing out he was already there. Right now, he was in bed with a warm, naked, sleepy woman, dammit.

Slow does it, bud. He wasn't arguing with his own body parts, was he? Okay, he was. Some days a guy had to. He shut his eyes for a second. There was a bathroom to his right with a shower. Quite convenient.

While he fidgeted, Agatha flips in bed and tugged his hand. "Harris, it's Sunday. Grab a shower and let's go find some coffee. You'll tell me what's going on with your work—"

He winced. "Just some depressing crap."

She kissed his shoulder. "I'll feel for you so much more with a good cup of Joe in my hand."

After a quick pause, he sighed. "Okay, you win. I'd sell my soul for your kisses."

"Once we're back, you can cook up a storm, honey. I need to catch up on work."

"I thought you were kidding about the podcast cataloguing all my weaknesses."

"That will have to wait." Her lips grazed his nose. "I have to do something else."

The blush bloomed in the small hollows under her cheekbones. He kissed it, half-expecting it to smell like strawberries. It was better—a hint of jasmine from her cosmetics and her own scent.

"After my engagement to Oliver, Leungs formalized my position in our family business." Agatha's fingers threaded through his hair. She straightened a curl, then let it twirl back in. "I suppose they felt I was in the right mind. I want to prove that I am, no matter who I love."

"Heck yeah!" The sparkle in her eyes, the intense sense of pride for her, overshadowed everything else for a second. But only for a second.

"Does this mean you'll have to return to Singapore, sweetie?" His breath hitched. She couldn't just leave him, can she? Their relationship was barely one night young.

Agatha patted his shoulder. Her tongue circled her teeth under her lip. "I'll have to. But I'll find a work-around so we can be together as much as possible."

He had to inhale so badly.... "We will." Oxygen trickled into his lungs and he shoved away the invisible claws tearing at his gut. They would hold together, because there had to be a shot at happiness for him in this screwy world.

The hearing at his work might end up with his termination. The silver lining would be that he'd end up as a free operator. Sarkisian Senior was clearly on the mend. Mom was a pragmatic person who coped without either of them for years.

Singapore... so long as he stayed out of the direct sun, he could do Singapore. Life flowed faster there, but he could adapt. Re-train. He could become a workforce of the future.

Harris opened his mouth to tell her all that, but her phone rang. Agatha jumped out of bed and palmed the ringing phone. They exchanged a wordless glance: Sunday, before seven am!

"Good morning. Agatha Leung speaking—" A small crease cut in between her brows during the inaudible reply on the other end of the line. "No, no, please don't apologize! You didn't wake us up."

She held the phone down by her cheek to her shoulder and used her hands to slide the walk-in closet open. Half of it was colorful and choke-full. The other half displayed a stack of store-folded t-shirts in shades ranging from white to black. Three lonesome pairs of jeans bent over the hangers.

His and hers, huh? He smiled, imagining her things eventually making their way into all those empty spaces.

"Harris, come here." Agatha switched on the speaker, and Lonita's voice said, "I'd like you to come downtown right away. I understand that it's inconvenient with Harris barely out of the hospital—"

"I'll be there in half-and-hour tops." She hung up and glanced at Harris, chewing her lip. "Sorry, I should have asked you first, but they got a match for Oliver in the police databases. They want to see if I can identify..." her words turned into sobs.

Harris was next to her in an instant, massaging her shoulders, pressing her back into his body for comfort. "You wanted to go out for coffee anyway, right? So, let's haul ass."

"Are you sure you want to go to the station? You need to rest, and... gosh, I should have thought about it!"

"They have chairs over there. And, for that matter, coffee."

Her chortle was brittle, more like a hiccup than laughter. "If a police station is the place to get the best coffee in Milwaukee, I feel sorry for your town."

It was creepy how familiar the police station's break room felt to Harris, even though it was his first time there.

It had metal-framed chairs with thinning cushions, brown-on-brown checkered linoleum on the floor, granite imitation counter and print-outs of memes appealing to wash one's own dishes over the sink. The green plush couch in the corner looked like someone had simply hauled it over from home ten years ago, and the bosses closed their eyes at this glaring violation of purchasing protocols ever since.

The general ambiance was of cleaning in progress, neither quite finished nor quite abandoned. Today, someone left a crushed paper cup with a slick of coffee under it next to the sink on an otherwise spotless counter. Tomorrow, the trashcan might overflow or someone would pull all the chairs to one table and leave another chairless.

The drifting strings of the conversations in the halls and the periodic loudspeaker announcements had the same edgy, rough-and-ready vibe as at his firehouse. Basically, switch the staff trudging down the hall out of their dark-blue uniforms, and he'd be right at home.

The coffee wasn't as bad as Agatha feared, either. The PD coughed up dough for an industrial-capacity Keurig. Sure, a connoisseur like Oliver—

Harris gripped two warm mugs with coffee tighter. God willing, Oliver would savor the prison brews soon. That's why they were here.

He traversed the land of cubicles to reach the hall with the meeting rooms, checked the room number and nestled Agatha's latte and his own black, super-extra-strong in one hand. Knocked with another.

"Come in," Lonita called from the inside.

Harris was yet to come to grips with the fact that Dad moved in with someone other than Mom, let alone Lonita, their neighbor. For the time being, he was more comfortable seeing her separately from Dad.

She was curvy, but her khaki shirt fit her well, tucked into her blue jeans. Over that, Lonita wore a loose cotton blazer with sleeves ending just below elbows. Beaded earrings dangled in her ears. Her wavy hair used to be stark black before the gray came in. She didn't cover it and that also fit her well. Basically, Lonita had that "I see all" neighbor vibe, not a terrible trait in a police detective.

He would have avoided eye contact altogether, but the meeting room was pretty dull. A rectangular conference table. Four chairs, a pair on each long side of the table. An opaque light fixture at the exact center of the ceiling. Mom would have had a fit if she saw this space. No whimsy at all to increase morale and boost productivity in an office. Imagine that!

Even Agatha couldn't illuminate this room for him, sitting straight-backed across the table from Lonita.

When Harris left to bring the coffees, Lonita was trying small talk while plugging her laptop into a hub of sockets in its middle.

By the time Harris returned, she gave up.

The atmosphere thickened to claustrophobic once Harris shut the door behind him with his foot. He placed the mugs onto round coasters with the Milwaukee PD logo and lowered himself into the vacant chair on their side of the table.

"Latte for you, Miss," he said, forcing a smile.

"Thank you." Agatha craned her neck at him. Her smile was as brittle and fake as his.

Crap. He slid the latte closer to her and took a sip of his espresso, racking his brain for something comforting to say in such a gray room.

Fortunately, the door opened up again, admitting the second cop. His name tag read Joe. He was so obviously larger-than-life that Harris could imagine the other cops calling him Little Joe. He and Lonita both wore khaki shirts, but his pants were gray — part of a suit missing its jacket.

"We've had some luck. I don't trust Fate, but I'll take it." Little Joe beamed at Agatha, and Harris' insides churned.

That was new. He wasn't cerebrally jealous here, like with Oliver. His body had an atavistic reaction to an attractive, big guy talking to his girl. He needed to work on that, particularly since a wide wedding band nearly covered the first joint of Little Joe's ring finger. There were three small diamonds set into it—kids, perhaps? All the more reason—

Lonita cut in. "We found a match here, in the States. For fingerprints, from all things, not the DNA."

Were the fingerprints dated now, like the cassette players?

Agatha gulped. "Is this why it only took a week?"

"Yes." Lonita turned her laptop around to show them a photograph of a young man.

Harris would have preferred it to be a mugshot in a prison jumpsuit, but it was just regular baggy clothes on a regular adolescent guy.

"A week is nothing!" Little Joe beamed again. "This came from a 2008 file, so I had to excavate the paper trail through the HQ's basement. You see, the case didn't go into the electronic records after we've changed the record-keeping system. It was supposed to be purged altogether, because our suspect was a minor, but I had a hunch. I told myself, 'what if I check the basement, ah?' And there it was! Our match!"

Even from the faded photo, Harris could tell that the guy was naturally pasty—except for his blotchy cheeks and forehead. Pale eyes, hazelnut if one wanted to be generous to their color. The stubble unevenly dotted his jaws, plus a patch on the chin, possibly an attempt at a goatee. If Oliver was a minor back then, he was likely in his older teens, caught just at the cusp of being charged as an adult.

Except...

"I don't think this is Oliver." Harris glanced from Lonita to Joe, then back to Lonita. Was this a trick question? "Is it him?"

Agatha shrunk in her chair, clasping her hands. Her latte steamed, spreading around a sweet, milky smell for naught. She hadn't touched it. "That's... that's... Oh, gosh! I can't remember his name. But I know him. I know him!"

She painstakingly scrunched her face and Harris jumped out of his seat to crouch by her side. He stroked her shoulders. "Here, sweetie, here. It'll come to you. I promise."

"Do you know where you might have met this man?" Lonita asked. Every word in that sentence was a fishing hook, eager for a catch.

By the glow in both cops' eyes, Harris surmises that one, they didn't expect Agatha to ID the perp, and two—somehow, it was a major win for them. So, Little Joe's shining eyes and grins had nothing to do with a pretty girl; it was the adrenaline. Weirdly, it didn't calm Harris down at all. He was new at this boyfriend thing. Too raw from their first time. And losing her was too fresh.

"This guy..." Agatha's tongue touched her lips. The glossy lipstick she put on in the car barely masked their dryness. Her hands are on her laps clenched. "This man was a nurse at the adolescent mental health facility where I was a patient. From 2008 to 2010."

Little Joe extracted a pad from his pocket, a regular paper pad with curling pages, and a stub of a yellow HB pencil. The tiny thing practically vanished in his big hand, but zipped around as soon as Lonita spoke.

"Can you think back and confirm he was nursing staff for certain?"

Agatha nodded. "Positive. He had more facial hair though. A beard, I think. But I recognize him."

"Did he take a particular interest in you? Was he too friendly? Ever did anything unprofessional toward you or the other patients?"

Agatha's hands suddenly released their clenched grip and Harris threads his fingers through hers. I'm here if you need me. I love you.

"I... I can't remember anything bad. He wasn't there the whole time, only for a few months. He was much like the other nurses."

"But he spoke to you?" Lonita asked, frowning.

"Yes, a lot. It was a part of his job."

Little Joe stopped writing. "Did he work night shifts or day shifts?"

"Nights, I think. With the meds, everything blended together there." Agatha's eyes veiled with tears, then hooded as she sifted through her memories. "Yes. Yes, I think he worked nights mostly."

Little Joe glanced at Lonita. "I'll put in a request for a search for the registered nurses reported missing around this time period. It's a long shot, but fingers crossed?"

"Do it. I'll get a warrant to request the staff records."

The mention of a missing persons' file sent a chill down Harris' back. What's more, the guy in the photo barely resembled Oliver, save for the pallor. It added up to scarier shit than setting fires. "Did Oliver impersonate someone to get close to Agatha?" Someone potentially murdered. When Agatha was fourteen. Fourteen!

He shut up before cussing out the pervert, but Agatha's fingers quivered in his hands. Her voice quivered as well. "This... this man stalked me in the hospital? A stranger?"

The pause stretched, stifling the air out of the room.

"Or is this actually Oliver?" She circled the three of them with wild, rounded eyes, as if Harris was privvy to the content of the cops' files. "Please, tell me! I need... No, I must know!"