I'm excited; this story is almost halfway done. Thank you all for reading/reviewing. Means a lot to me. TW: none.

10.

"I think he's the Harpy."

"Octavian, please explain the meaning of your accusations."

Reyna Ramirez-Arellano sat down at her office desk and laced her fingers together, placing them on top of the polished wooden surface of her desk. Her mouth stretched into a tight line, and lines appeared over her forehead as she frowned. Anger flashed through her eyes, hard flints of stone embedded in her obsidian-colored eyes.

In the flourescent lighting of her office, Octavian's hair looked almost like silver, the hollows on his cheeks emphasized. Outside, a street lamp flickered as crickets chirped in the night.

They had just driven back to the office from Ethan Nakamura's apartment after Will Solace and his partner left with Will promising to get Nico di Angelo home in one piece after the ordeal. Meanwhile, Reyna had been tasked with the paperwork and late-night coffee. It looked like she might be pulling another all-nighter over this case when one of her agents stepped inside her work office.

"I know how I must sound," he attempted to explain.

"No, you really do not," Reyna retorted. Her anger at the accusation bubbled inside of her chest and rose to her throat as she snapped at the agent. Over her years, she had seen many things she thought were not possible and allowed debatably unethical behaviors to fly under her nose for the sake of catching a killer, but this was not something she was willing to tolerate. "You are accusing a good agent who has solved many cases for us in the past of manslaughter and homicide."

Octavian opened his mouth to argue, but before a sound could come out of his mouth, Reyna silenced him with a flick of her finger and a hard glare, turning her attention back to the paperwork.

She was tired, she had a stack of paperwork she needed to file before tomorrow, and there was still a killer on the loose. Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano did not need the night to be as long as her name.

Who would accuse another agent of such a thing? she thought to herself. Nico di Angelo, most of all.

Sure, she had doubts about every single one of her agents and how far they could be pushed, Nico most of all. It was uncanny the way he drew the connections and the way he approached each case from the killer's point of view, but that was what good agents did. When she herself had been an investigator, her partner had told her that you run into a truly brilliant agent perhaps once or twice in your lifetime, and after seeing Nico di Angelo's work, Reyna agreed with the sentiment.

Whatever doubts she had about his abilities and how long he could keep it up, she had no doubts about his innocence.

After a long pause, Octavian sat down. He looked at her with those squinty watery-blue eyes; Reyna often wondered what went on behind them in that head of his. "Will you hear me out?"

She put the pen down and placed her hands together on the table again with a sigh.

He interpreted the action correctly as a sign to start talking quickly and not waste any more her time. "I believe Nico di Angelo is the Harpy. I can explain."

Reyna's nostrils flared. Despite her annoyance, she knew Octavian wasn't going to let it rest until she had heard every single word he had to say. She gestured for him to keep talking.

"The first thing I noticed was off was how quickly he found the connection between the killers. Everyone else here has looked over the case many times, but none of us managed to find the connection he did. It makes you wonder if he knows something no one else does."

"He's a good investigator," Reyna replied. "He always has been; that's his job."

"I thought so, too," Octavian conceded. "Until we found the body of Thalia Grace. He took one look at the body and told us that she was the one the Harpy was after all along, the golden ticket, as he put it. I couldn't help but feel suspicious about his empathy with the killer."

He took a deep breath before continuing. Reyna could tell he had thought this through many times and had many things to say.

"Furthermore, when I got there, I saw him circling the perimeter and looking in the trees for evidence or whatnot. Two seconds later, Rachel finds the murder weapon. How did he know where to look? How did he not find the weapon when he was looking over the exact same thing? I say that there's a very real possibility that he planted the murder weapon there while he was circling the perimeter for us to find, to lead us to Ethan Nakamura."

"And it explains very well how Ethan Nakamura had a sketch of how the victims were murdered in his apartment."

Octavian waved his hands. "He could've pulled that from any news story. This case has been all over the news. More to the point, I feel as if Nico di Angelo set him up. The woman at the factory told us Ethan was seeing a doctor before he quit; we know he wasn't stable and could've easily been susceptible to suggestion."

"If he is the Harpy, why would he be working for us? So far, all he has provided are solid evidence and theories," Reyna questioned.

"If he is the Harpy, working for us would be the greatest advantage. He could point us in all the wrong directions before we pointed to him, and Ethan Nakamura would only be another person for him to pin the murders on. However, what convinced me to take this to you was tonight was how he shot Nakamura."

"Nakamura had a gun."

He continued as if she didn't say anything. "I'm aware, but it was the way he shot Ethan Nakamura. I haven't see anyone shoot someone straight in the middle of the forehead in my entire career. You know that only happens in movies; no one has that kind of precision—unless you're a killer, and you've had practice. He didn't blink twice when he pulled the trigger. And you also saw that he didn't even react the way agents normally do when they kill their first."

Reyna sighed, shaking her head. She rubbed her face vigorously, wishing that her problems could be scrubbed away just as easily.

After a long moment of silence, she spoke again. "All you are giving me are what-if's, hypotheticals, and theories. I need proof, and you know this. I can't investigate anything without solid ground." More annoyed than before at the time she wasted on Octavian, Reyna dismissed him.

She wished that she could dismiss her newfound doubts about Nico di Angelo just as quickly.

. . .

"Are they seriously just going to drop the case?" Nico asked. His eyebrows furrowed when he heard the news. How could anyone believe that the case was done when there was so much evidence otherwise? "This is ridiculous."

When the red flush in his cheeks had finally drained out of his face, Nico had made his way back to his office, feeling uncharacteristically too giddy for his own good. However, as always, his happiness was short lived; Reyna was waiting for him by his office door with the newest piece of bad news she had in store for him.

"I don't get a say in this," she told him as Nico unlocked the door. "I'm just the poor bastard who has to fill out the paperwork and follow their orders."

Nico cursed and ran a hand through his hair. Even though Reyna's superiors might have been blind to the facts, he was certain she was not. "You don't think that the case is finished, do you?"

"No."

"Then what do you plan to do?"

Reyna sighed. She lowered herself into the chair across from Nico's desk; he followed suit. It had been a long time since she sat in that chair across from his desk, though this time, the visit was certainly in better circumstances. When they last exchanged words across the wooden table, he had to explain himself for pulling a gun on school children—in his defense, the popping of their homemade fireworks did sound like gunshots, after all.

"Working within my constraints is my speciality," she replied with a thin and knowing smile, crossing her legs. "Operating underneath topside isn't exactly the best position to be in, but I've learned my way around."

Nico had no doubt that the sharp assistant director had figured out all the loopholes to her job there were to be found.

"They've been flustered over this case for weeks," Reyna continued, sighing. "Now that there's finally someone they can pin these murders on to, they've latched onto it and aren't willing to let it go. I'm sure you can imagine."

Nico grimaced. Even though he'd never met anyone from above, he could imagine how they operated. "You don't agree."

"No, I don't. Unlike them, I care about saving lives, not racking up a solved cases count." Reyna narrowed her eyes. "There are some people—some people within this very building as well as outside of it, I'm afraid—who are obsessed with getting promotions and their own records ever since they set foot into this line of work. Eventually, it becomes less of a motivation and more of an infatuation, so much so that they forget the real reason they're here. You're not one of those people, and neither am I."

He blinked, little bit taken aback by the unexpected compliment. No matter how many times he was told he was good at his job, Nico was always surprised when it was brought up in conversation.

"On the record, I'm saying that the case is closed. Off the record, I'm going to keep the investigation going."

Nico's thoughts raced like scuttling centipedes, a million fragments of questions, doubts, ideas, and suspicions. However, he could only bring himself to ask one of them. "What do you want me to do then?"

"I can't give you any answers," Reyna replied curtly, uncrossing her legs. She stood up and dusted off her skirt, walking to the door in three quick strides. As she was halfway out the threshold, she said, "I have given you a day off, Nico di Angelo. Do what you want with it, and it won't go on the record."