What was he doing here? How did he even know to come here? Did he find the video I left for him? How long had he even been here?

Trina glanced at me. "Um, sorry," she said, shaking her head. "Why are you in my house?"

Kyle was standing in the kitchen, looking completely dumbfounded. I elbowed Trina lightly. "That's not a question we can discuss right now," I reminded her. I jerked my thumb at the door, slipping into task mode - there would be time to freak out later. "Kyle, get your stuff together and get into the back of the van, out of sight."

He looked at me for a moment, slightly confused, but shaking his head. "I need to go get Fiona - she's upstairs sleeping."

My eyes widened. Both of them came? Kyle scurried out of the room, and Trina and I hurried to follow him upstairs, heading to Shawn's room. As I passed, I glanced in my old room. Kyle's stuff was inside and slightly unpacked, so they had to have gotten here yesterday at some point.

Trina opened Shawn's door and right away we noticed something was wrong:the articles were all gone. He'd taken them all down. Frantically, we began searching the room. Trina took apart his bedside table and art stand, while I tackled the desk. After not finding any of them, we both began taking things out of his dresser, but they were gone. Trina got down and pulled stuff out from under his bed. We turned out all the drawers in his bathroom.

Nothing.

A huge pile of nothing.

I dashed out and found Kyle leaving Trina's bedroom. "Kyle!" He stopped and looked at me. "Did Shawn take anything downstairs yesterday? Or this morning?"

He scratched his head. "Not that I know of. I didn't really give that much mind to anything he did and he was up before I was this morning."

Trina, who'd joined us in the hallway, sighed and tugged at her hair. "Ugh! He's a step ahead of us!" She made another frustrated sound before hurrying downstairs.

"What are you looking for, anyway?" Kyle asked.

"Articles," I said. "Like, newspaper articles that have been cut out. Shawn had them tacked up in his room."

His eyes widened. "I found some articles in my room last night." I followed him into the yellow bedroom where he opened a drawer and pulled out a handful of clippings. "Are these them?"

I took them and began checking the articles. "Yes! Are these all you found?" He nodded. "Trina!" I shouted, hurrying from the room. I heard her come running up the stairs. I waved the papers in my hand as she came into view. "Check your room!"

She hurried off as I went into the bathroom and began going through the drawers. I found some clippings, but not about Victoria. Curious, I took them to look through later.

"Found some!"

I met her in the hallway and I counted what she had. "We're still five short," I informed her. "Is there anywhere he may have stashed them?"

Trina began slowly pacing. Fiona poked her head out of Trina's room and smiled at me. I held out my arms as she ran to me and we hugged for a long moment. "I missed you," she said as she pulled away.

"I missed you, too," I told her, unable to tone down my grin.

"Garage," Trina said and hurried downstairs. With a glance at Kyle and Fiona, I followed her. I went into the garage just in time to see her push a work bench out of the way. Behind it was a small cubbyhole with a small safe nestled inside. "Shawn keeps his important papers and stuff in here. He thinks I don't know the code." She began turning the knob and a minute later the door opened. "Bingo," she said, pulling out more clippings.

I frowned when I realized she had many more than five. "What are all those?" I asked, frowning.

She started flipping through them, brow furrowed. "I, um." She shook her head as her phone rang. "Yeah?" She listened and her eyes widened. "Okay, we'll be there in a minute." She put her phone in her pocket before grabbing the safe and roughly putting it in the back of the van. "Tell your friends to hurry up if they're coming - Shawn's almost here."

---

Fiona and Trina kind of stared at each other, I noticed as I drove along. Fi slid closer to Kyle, their shoulders brushing. Trina just stared at them. It was actually kind of funny in a way. By the time we arrived at the house we were staying at Trina was kind of subdued, which was a little weird.

It took some configuring, but eventually we fixed it so that Ade, Trevor, and Kyle shared a room, while me, Trina, and Fi shared another room, which left the third bedroom open for Adam and Sheila.

While everyone was getting settled, I took a moment to find Trina, who was sitting alone in the kitchen. "Hey," I said, pulling out the chair next to her and sitting.

She smiled at me before returning her attention to the clippings she'd laid out. "I was just about to start sorting these," she said, moving a couple of them into a line an arm's length away.

"Are you okay?" I asked gently.

She froze for a moment before sliding another slip of paper into place. "Yes. No." She shook her head. "I'm not sure." For the second time since I met her, she looked like she was getting ready to cry. "It's just all of this stuff. I thought I could handle it, but all of this about Mom-" She broke off in a sob and I moved to hug her. She buried her face in my shoulder as she shook.

Unsure of exactly what to do, I let my instincts take over. I rocked her from side to side gently, making shushing noises as I rubbed her back. I heard someone come to the entrance to the kitchen and then walk away. Trina didn't hear the sound, so I ignored it. I held her as she cried until, a few minutes later, she started forcing herself to take deep, shuddering breaths.

Once she'd calmed herself down enough she pulled away and began wiping the moisture off her face. "I'm sorry," she said in a hoarse whisper.

I quickly shook my head. "It's good to cry sometimes. Don't ever apologize to me for it."

She gave me a small, sad smile as she wiped her eyes a little more. "Thank you." She sniffled, so I hurried to the living room to grab the box of tissues and gave them to her. "Thanks," she said again. Once she was sorted well enough, she gave me another smile, but this one was kind of closed off. "Your friends probably want you in the living room now," she said. "I got this."

I glanced at the articles and then back at her. She was focused on her task, but froze when I slid another clipping beside the last one. "I want to help you." She slowly slid the one her finger was on into place before looking up at me. With a small smile to herself, we began working together to get the clippings lined up.

---

Sheila and Adam burst through the door about the time Ade was asking us what we wanted for lunch. We all turned to look when we heard the loud bang that reverberated through the entire downstairs. "Yo!" Ade shouted. "Respect the house!"

Adam came into the kitchen. "Trina," he said, ignoring an upset Ade. "Your brother was just at the house.

Trina and I glanced at each other. "Shawn? Why was he there?"

"He was looking for you, said he figured you went there."

Alarmed, we looked at each other again. "Does he know about this place?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "Only we do. I mean, it's possible he could find out, but Shawn's too lazy to do what needs to be done. Still, it's a little unsettling that he could track me so well."

"He said he knew your friends," Kyle said from the doorway. None of us had heard him enter, so we all whipped our heads around to look at him. As effortlessly confident as he always seemed to be, he simply leaned on the doorway and crossed one leg in front of the other.

"Well, I know he's met them before," Trina said. "We have an agreement that we have to meet the other's friends at least once, but I never thought he would have remembered their names, let alone where they lived."

"Maybe he's not as lazy as you think," I suggested.

She shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. In any case, macaroni sounds great, Ade, and, Liza, I think we're done sorting these. Now, what did we do with the other ones?"

I felt a pair of eyes on me, so I looked over at Kyle again. He was watching me with something like surprise in his eyes. I knew something was up when he shook his head at me and retreated to the living room. What was up with him?

Trina was watching me when I turned back to her. "You know, you could still go talk to him if you want to," Trina told me quietly.

I shook my head, not really wanting to face him right now. "I'd rather stay and help you."

"Don't you want to go talk to your best friend?"

I chewed on my lip as I turned that over in my head. "Not right now," I said slowly.

"Why not?"

I sighed. "I don't want to talk about it right now, okay?"

She studied for a moment before nodding. "Do you remember where we left those other ones?" I pulled some from my pocket and sat them on the table. "Are those all of them?"

"No, but I think you have the others. They were with the ones we need."

She stood up and turned out her pockets, but there was nothing. "I'll be right back - I'm going to check the van. They might have fallen out in there."

Once she was out of the kitchen, Ade glanced at me. "You okay over there?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks."

He sat the pot he'd just filled on the stove, turned on the burner and turned to me. "Why aren't you in there with the friends you were crying about yesterday?"

I shook my head and opened my mouth to say something when the garage door opened again and Trina stepped inside. "Found them! They were kind of scattered around, so sorry it took so long. What I miss?" She glanced between me and Ade.

"Nothing," I said, lowering my gaze from his. "Um, do you want to try to order those too, or do you want to just read over them?"

I felt her gaze on me for a long moment before she spoke. "Let's just read them," she said. She handed me one of them and then picked one up for herself. While I watched, the words jumbled in front of me. Still, I scanned it and a few words caught my attention.

My focus sharpened as I studied it. When I finished it, I found Trina hurriedly grabbing another paper. I did the same. After several minutes, we ignored the plates Ade sat on the table by us and eventually we each read all of the articles.

"I have no words," I said, sitting back.

Trina simply shook her head slowly. Eventually, she said, "I can see now why he had those."

I nodded, looking down at the papers we'd scattered. "Those are a lot of lawsuits. From the ones brought against them by programmers wanting to be paid to the former employees charging Luke Knight for sexual harassment and assault, there's enough here to give us yet another angle for trying to pin them on something."

She nodded. "It may not be murder, but there's something here."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "How far along are you on those cards?"

"I'm about done."

"What would you say to a small test run?"