Blaire

Blaire was making a complete mess out of the pen cap clamped between her teeth. Though it was her day off, she found herself completely unable to remove herself from the events of the evening before. As she tried to fall asleep that night, she found herself thinking about the elements of the haunting at the Monte Claire. An angry ghost, a haunted venue, people losing their lives due to her seeking vengeance on those involved in tearing the place down. She had wondered if the person that had previously lived in the house she visited had met some kind of tragic ending. Were local legends true?

Blaire had ended the night by telling herself that what she had seen in that window was probably a drape moving from a draft in the old house or some trick of the light reflecting off the snow. It was enough to slow the thoughts storming and flooding her mind. It was not enough, however, to explain it away.

"Uh oh," Liam began as she entered the living room. "CEU time again?"

Blaire's spine snapped to attention. She turned the screen quickly from Liam's view and nodded, "absolutely."

Liam furrowed her brows, "Uh...huh."

Blaire swallowed, scratched at the back of her head, "yeah, sorry. Just a little distracted."

"Everything okay at work?" Liam took a seat in the oversized chair with her favorite throw. She looked intently at her friend.

"Yeah, everything's fine. I just haven't been sleeping that great lately."

"Why's that?" Blaire felt Liam growing concerned.

"I'm not sure. I'm good, though. Work has actually been alright now that Sarah's gone on vacation."

"A vacation for her is a vacation for everyone," Liam chuckled. "Tell me about what you're learning." Liam gestured toward the computer that Blaire was pulling closer on her lap.

"It's nothing interesting," Blaire looked down at the website then back up at her friend. "Just some stuff about caring for geriatrics."

"Ah," Liam made it clear to Blaire that she wasn't buying it by the way she knowingly smirked. "You do know that I question people for a living, right?"

Blaire let out a huff and felt her cheeks turn pink. The last thing she wanted was to tell Liam that she had been skulking around possible haunted houses just a month after they learned that they even existed. When she looked back up at her friend, Liam was staring at her expectantly.

"Okay," Blaire ran a hand through her hair in defeat. "Remember all those stories kids used to tell all the time about The Witch's House in Hawthorne?"

"Yeah..." Liam nodded slowly, looking at her as if she was having a difficult time tracking.

"I was looking into the lore behind some of the stuff that we used to hear about. Just curious, that's all." Blaire was hoping the casual tone she was attempting to muster would be enough for Liam to back down.

"Why did this even come up?" Liam situated herself so she was sitting up a little straighter, leaning on the arm of the chair.

"No reason, I was just thinking about it the other day when I was out that way. That's all."

"When were you in Hawthorne?" Blaire felt herself feeling sympathetic towards those that Detective Sinclair brought in for questioning. The intensity of her gaze was enough to put a crack in the sun.

"It's nothing," Blaire shrugged.

"Yeah, nothing." Liam rolled her eyes. "Come on, Blaire. What's going on?"

"I don't know. Do you think any of those stories could be, you know, true?"

"I doubt it," Liam shrugged. "There were like six stories going around about that house at once. I remember they used to say it was haunted by a little girl, other people said it was some old lady. Then there was that stuff going around about a witch actually living there at the time. I remember Eric Iverson was always bragging about the time he broke in and saw all this Satanic cult stuff. It's just one of those urban legends that small towns have."

Blaire sunk a little lower into her seat. She knew that if she was ever going to present any information about a possible haunting to Liam, she had to have all of the gaps bridged. No room for her to poke holes in it and fill it with her own logical explanation.

Blaire started to close her laptop, remembering the last conversation they shared about what had gone on at the Theater. The drive home that night when they parted ways with the Winchesters was silent. Though there had not been any tension between them after the fact, Blaire couldn't help but notice an unspoken divide between them.

Liam seemed to throw herself into her work, keeping to herself more than usual. Blaire had found herself treading more carefully around topics that skirted around the paranormal, even turning the channel when one of their favorite horror movies was on the tv.

"Blaire," Liam's voice softened. She pushed the blanket down to the ottoman and sat herself up. "Just tell me what's going on. Do you know something?"

"When I was out there the other day, I think I saw something. And now I'm wondering if maybe some of the stuff that we heard about as kids is actually true." Blaire bit at her lip in thought, looking at the torn cuticle on her thumb.

"You mean, something like what happened before?" Blaire recognized the tone in Liam's voice. It was not judgement, it was curiosity.

Blaire nodded.

"Tell me everything."

"Okay," Blaire grabbed the pen she had poised behind her ear and pressed its tip to the yellow legal pad's fresh page. "Let's think about all of the stories we heard about that house. That may help us figure out what may be actually happening there."

"Well, the witch," Liam began, linking one index finger over the other as she began to count the local legends. "The house got its name because people had said they'd see black cats on the property, said some old lady still lived there and killed kids and stuff."

"And there was the little girl." Blaire watched as Liam outstretched her middle finger and linked it as she spoke. "I wonder if they thought that she was one of the victims of the witch or something."

"Could be," Liam nodded with a shrug. "There was all that satanic cult stuff, too. The kids that would look in windows and stuff would say there were altars and stuff inside."

"And then there was the generic old lady ghost. I don't remember any more to that story, though. Do you?"

"No," Liam looked down at her four outstretched fingers as Blaire finished scribbling the last of them down.

"Well," Blaire looked down at the list. "When I was in there, I couldn't see any alters or anything. And the person I saw in the window definitely looked to be a young woman, not a girl or an old lady. So, that gets rid of these three." Blaire crossed off three of the legends from the list.

"Perfect," Liam walked over and sat down beside Blaire. She reached over and slid Blaire's idling laptop across the coffee table toward her. "Now, if we're able to find who the last owners of the house were, we may be able to track down just who that woman was without wasting too much time."

"If you look it up on the auditor's site, you should be able to get the records of all of the previous owners." Blaire plucked a post-it off of the table's surface and handed it to Liam.

Liam's focus narrowed in on the screen as her fingers deftly swept the keyboard. She glanced over at the post-it as she typed in the address and ceremoniously struck the enter key. There were only a few beats of silence before Liam turned to Blaire.

"Edmund and Marion Heard purchased the home in 1953." She looked back over at the screen and clicked once more. "Looks like it was then put in a relative, David Heard's name in 1976."

"Perfect." Blaire muttered as she wrote these names and dates down on the yellow page in front of her.

"Do you want to work your magic with those names?" Liam offered up Blaire's laptop to her after she opened up a new search engine tab.

Blaire nodded and placed the laptop on her knees. She skilfully typed in the criteria and hit enter, watching the results populate.

"Okay…" She mumbled, scrolling with purpose through the page. Liam watched from her vantage point as her friend clicked in and out of links, creating new tabs as she went.

Blaire typed in each individual name, allowing the full picture to begin to come together before her. One after the other, she was uncovering the history of this family whose history had been buried by urban legends.

The Hawthorne Herald Editor-in-Chief Found Slain in Home

Local Family Found in Home in Apparent Murder-Suicide

Man Murders Parents After Wife's Death, Commits Suicide

Moments passed between them. Liam took it upon herself to get up as Blaire absorbed article after article to grab a cup of hot tea for both of them. When she returned with two steaming oversized mugs, Blaire was taking notes, her laptop closed beside her.

"Whatcha got for me?" Liam curled herself comfortably back under her throw.

"Okay." Blaire tossed her pen back onto the pad as she sat back into the couch with a sigh. "From what I found, it looks like back in the 70s, a family was found dead in their homes. The father was the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper. His son was the one that killed them, and then killed himself. About a month before, his wife passed away. They suspected that it was some type of mental breakdown due to his grief."

"Okay…" Liam let out an exhale and looked down at the carpet in thought. Her brow was furrowed as if she were straining to count every fiber. "If there's a crime, then there's a papertrail. Which means if I can get my hands on the casefiles, that would put us one step closer to getting this solved."

"Perfect," Blaire smiled with a sigh of relief. "It looks like in one of the articles, they interviewed the woman that lived next door. I'd like to go and see if she's still around. Maybe she can give us some more information that we won't find in print."

"Great idea. I'll stop by the courthouse tomorrow and see what I can dig up. You can go and track down that neighbor and get any details we may need to put the pieces together."

Blaire could feel the electrical charge in the room. She couldn't help but feel energized by the work that they had done, by the plans they had made. It was apparent that Liam was feeling this way too, as she thumbed the warm mug between her hands and smirked off into space.

"Liam?" Blaire asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

"Hmm?" Liam's eyes seemed to take a moment to focus on her friend.

"Just how big of a deal is impersonating an officer?"

Liam

Elena Sinclair was the kind of incoming storm that people watched from their porch, knowing that they should go inside and steer clear of her winds, but too awed by the potential she had to destroy them.

She was a force to be reckoned with, but, at twenty-six years old, Liam Sinclair had her own winds.

"It's a busy day," Liam told her mother as the woman hovered near her desk, "I really can't take a long lunch today."

"This is what it looks like when it's busy?" Elena asked, looking around the quiet station in exasperation.

"Well, it was bustling before you came in and started making demands of everyone," Liam said, partly under her breath. At that moment, Hill reappeared with the cup of coffee Elena had sent him after.

"Here you go, Ms. Sinclair," he said with a pandering smile, and Liam resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"Thank you, Daniel," Elena replied.

"If you're on your way to lunch, why are you even drinking that?" Liam asked, not looking away from the screen as she attempted to fill out an incident report on her computer.

"Are you taking an early lunch?" Hill asked.

"No," Liam replied at the same time as Elena said, "yes."

"Go ahead, Sinclair," Hill insisted, "I can finish this up and hold down the fort for an hour. Go spend some time with your mother."

"See?" Elena said as Liam glared daggers at her partner for getting involved. "It's normal to want to go out to lunch with your daughter."

"Alright," Liam said, rising and grabbing her jacket from the back of the chair. She was better off to go and eat lunch now than to continue arguing with her mother for the next hour anyway, "but I have to be back by two so that I can go to the courthouse."

"So Daniel seems to be doing well," Elena said as Liam picked at her chicken Makhni. She had chosen the Indian restaurant just down the street to avoid having to travel too far for this unplanned excursion.

"I guess so," she said, shoving a large piece of chicken into her mouth. Elena raised an eyebrow. "Still an asshole, so I guess that's a sign that all's normal."

Elena snorted, shaking her head as she dug into her own food. "I still think that's just his way of trying to bond with you. Men are like that with each other."

"Yeah, he's a true feminist," Liam said, rolling her eyes. "How's the thrilling world of bookkeeping this week?"

"It would be better if I didn't have Mr. Caputo constantly breathing down my neck asking me questions about purchase forms. I swear, he wants me to do his and my job both. Like, I'll show you how to do something once, maybe twice. Okay. But 10 times? There's no reason for it."

"Maybe it's not about the purchase forms," Liam said, tearing off a piece of naan and shoving it into her mouth.

"Then I'm not the one," Elena replied with raised eyebrows, causing Liam to choke on her food. When her shocked laughter subsided, she took a sip of water.

"He's into you. I tried to tell you."

"Well then that's his problem," said Elena, "I'm there to keep the books."

The table was silent as the two women considered this, and then Elena broached a new topic. "Things at work still weird?"

"Always," Liam sighed. "Chief still doesn't seem to trust me with anything too serious."

"Do you think he'll come around?"

Liam shrugged a shoulder, swirling her fork around aimlessly on the plate.

"Do you think…" Elena began carefully, "that it might be time to move on, then?"

Liam's eyes darted up to meet hers. "I'm the youngest detective in the county, mom. I can't just quit. I've worked so hard."

"I know, mija," said Elena, "but what if you've gone as far as you can here? You used to talk about the FBI all the time. Is that something you still want?"

"I don't know," Liam said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. The truth was, she had stopped thinking about the FBI once she had a stable job that kept her close to home. She worried that if she left, her mother would be lonely. And now, since the Monte Clair, she couldn't confidently say that her previous dreams meant anything. She had put on new lenses, and now the entire world as she knew it needed to be systematically reevaluated.

"Well, I think you should do whatever makes you happy," Elena said, somehow forcing Liam's eyes to meet hers without even touching her, "You know? Even if it's the scarier choice."

"I know, mom," Liam said, and though she tried to force some annoyance into her tone to return to familiar territory, she couldn't ignore the swelling of her chest in response to her mother's affection. It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation, and she felt certain it wouldn't be the last.

Liam sighed as she shut the driver's side door on her car harder than necessary - she always did this when she wasn't thinking, and she knew that if Alex Cartello was here, he would be wincing and trying his best not to say anything about it. Liam and Blaire had separated last night (after long hours of planning and strategizing) with their own missions for the following day. Blaire would be stopping by her dad's hardware store to pick up any supplies they might need. Liam was to look into any public records related to Maria Heard - the woman they were pretty sure was now inhabiting the upper floor of the abandoned house as a restless spirit.

Liam had left the station under the guise of visiting the courthouse for records related to a cold case she was pouring over - in reality, she was going to try and find the death records for the Heard family and see if she could determine who had died under suspicious circumstances and where they had been buried. The thought of digging up a grave - something that she had managed to avoid doing herself last time - made her stomach tighten uncomfortably, but she tried to put it out of her mind. She would cross that bridge when she got to it. Right now, all she knew was that this spirit needed to be laid to rest properly.

Inside the courthouse, on the third floor where the bulk of the county's records were kept, Ethel Summers was manning her usual post behind the clerk's counter.

"Afternoon, Ethel," Liam greeted cordially, offering the woman a chocolate eclair she'd delicately wrapped in a napkin and brought with her from her stop at the coffee shop down the street.

"Good afternoon, you," Ethel replied, eagerly taking the sweet offering. Ethel, though she recognized Liam, always refrained from using her name, probably because she was beginning to lose track of time and had a difficult time telling the difference between Liam and her mother, "and what do we need today?"

Liam smiled, writing her name on the sign-in form clipped to the clipboard on the countertop.

"I need to know about the Heard family," she replied, taking out a slip of paper with the name and address jotted down on it. She flattened it out on the counter and slid it across to Ethel, who squinted at it, holding it a good two feet from her face to overcome her farsightedness.

"Do you know when they lived in the house?" She asked.

"Some time in the late 70s, I think."

"Not so recent, then."

"No, It's a cold case."

"A very cold case."

Liam didn't respond, reminding herself that she didn't need to explain her business to a courthouse clerk. She gave Ethel a pointed smile, and the woman's mouth tightened in what felt like judgement. She sauntered through a door at the back of the office, bringing the eclair along with her. Liam waited for more than twenty minutes for Ethel to return with the records. When she did, the folder she received was disappointingly small for the amount of time and effort she had put into getting it. She flipped open the folder and began to peruse its contents, glancing up every once in a while to ensure that Ethel was minding her own business behind the counter. The sheet on top appeared to be Maria's birth certificate. Liam flipped it over, revealing a number of title records, marriage licenses, and other sparse documents with information about the woman. She flipped past all of these, going straight to the bottom of the file for the death certificate. The article had mentioned Maria's death as happening about a week prior to the murder-suicide. The certificate confirmed this, stating that she had died on August 12th, 1978. She scanned it for signs of where the body had been interred, and her stomach dropped when she read the notation that Maria Heard had been cremated. What happens if there is no body to burn? How had Maria become a ghost in the first place if she was already ashes?

Liam's eyes roved over the certificate again for any information that might be useful to them later, but came up dry. She hated that she didn't really know what to look for.

"Mind if I get copies of this?" She asked Ethel, who wordlessly took the folder from her and proceeded to the copier in the back of the office. When she had received her own copy, she immediately began to rifle through it again as she thanked Ethel and exited the records room, galloping down the stairs to the courthouse foyer. She passed through the metal detectors and out the door with an absent-minded wave to the security guard on duty and pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes as she emerged in the parking lot again.

Something on the death certificate had caught her eye this time. Under "cause of death," the words "Accidental Fall," had been scrawled. A fall? Liam had been under the impression that ghosts were usually spirits of people who had been killed in some gruesome way. Could anyone become a spirit? She climbed back into her car and threw the file on the passenger seat. If there was one thing Liam had learned from working homicide, it was that accidents were often looked into. If Maria Heard had died under any suspicious circumstances at all, there would be records of her death at the police station, too.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and balanced it between her ear and shoulder as she started the car.

"Hello?" Blaire chirped on the other end.

"Hey, how's it coming on your end?"

"She still lives there, but I haven't talked to her yet. I'm on my way now. How about you?"

"I found a few documents on the Heard family, including Maria Heard's death certificate. Cause of death says 'accidental fall'."

"And how likely is that to have been an actual accident?"

"Not likely, if you ask me," said Liam, "I'm going to head back to the station and pick up any more files that might be helpful there before I come home. Do you want me to swing by somewhere and grab dinner on the way?"

"That would be great," Blaire said, exhaling deeply. She usually spent a good portion of her days off catching up on sleep, so Liam knew she must be exhausted.

"Alright, text me if you get a particular craving," said Liam, "oh, and Blaire? Has any of your research said what to do if a person was cremated?" she added hopefully.

There was a long pause before Blaire responded.

"Shit."

Blaire

Blaire was disappointed to find out that in exchange for borrowing a badge from her best friend and brandishing it to the unsuspecting neighbor, she could face up to two years jail time. Instead, she decided to take her chances at posing as a journalist.

The next morning, she donned a white button down blouse with a navy pencil skirt, an outfit that she usually saved for job interviews and first dates. As she perfected her mascara, she was muttering introductions to the mirror, feigning all the confidence of a local journalist with aspirations to work for a big titan in the print industry.

When she got into her car and started off on her 25 minute drive, she consistently glanced over at the list of questions on the passenger seat. She practiced them until she felt them rolling off her tongue naturally, which only just occurred on the final leg of her journey. It was in these final moments that Liam had called, checking in on her progress and filling her in on what she had discovered on her own mission. When Blaire hung up, she took advantage of every red light to skim the questions, looking for gaps that may need to be filled with Liam's recent update.

The Witch's house somehow seemed more ominous than she had remembered, even in the light of the mid morning sun. Knowing what had gone on inside, however many years earlier, filled Blaire's stomach with a growing pit. A pit she tried to shake off as she climbed out of her car and started down the sidewalk to the home two empty lots down from the home.

This one, in stark contrast, was meticulously kept. Even in the dead of winter, the care and consideration that went into the staggered lanterns lining the front walk and the beautifully crafted winter wreath on the front door reflected the great care the owners took in making their home much more inviting than the one next door. Blaire pressed the illuminated button beside the storm door. She could faintly hear the bell inside chiming a melodic, four note tune in response.

The woman who answered the door appeared to be in her sixties. She wore a white cashmere sweater and her long, professionally dyed hair was perfectly styled. Her nails were as pristinely cared for as Blaire could tell the home's grand foyer had been. The woman smiled as she opened the storm door a crack.

"Can I help you?"

"Hi there. My name is Wendy Stark. I'm a writer for the Hawthorne Herald. How're you today?" Though it was just as rehearsed, the lie slipped past Blaire's lips in a way that surprised her.

"I'm well." The woman glanced down either side of the street before turning her attention back to Blaire. "What can I do for you, Wendy?"

"I am looking for a woman named Helen Fowler."

"I'm Helen Fowler."

"Wonderful." Blaire felt the same electricity she had felt the night before as she and Liam had hashed out their plan. "I was really hoping you could answer some questions for me about the incident that occurred next door in 1978."

When Blaire got home, she quickly changed from her professional attire to the least restrictive cotton articles of clothing she owned. By the time Liam arrived, pizza in hand, Blaire was buzzing, full to the brim with information to share.

"Okay, just give me a second to pee and then you can tell me everything." Liam said as she placed the box down on the glass stovetop.

"I'm just gonna follow you and you can leave the door cracked," Blaire jumped up from her chair and started down the hallway towards Liam, who knew better than to protest.

As Liam flipped on the bathroom light and left the bathroom door open a crack, Blaire took it upon herself to step into Liam's room across the hall and collect her comfiest pair of sweatpants and her favorite oversized crew neck. All the while, she yelled over her shoulder, setting the scene for her first ever witness interview.

"So then," Blaire handed Liam her outfit as she stepped out of the bathroom. "I asked her what she thought about their marriage, and she told me that she always suspected that David was a little heavy handed when he drank."

"The perfect 1970s husband." Liam rolled her eyes as she changed out of her blouse and dress pants. "So it really may not have been an accidental fall."

"Well, that's just it." Blaire shifted her weight from one foot to the other eagerly. "She even said to me that there was suspicion that it really wasn't a fall, but that he had pushed her down the stairs and killed her."

"But how did they manage to keep any of that suspicion from getting back to investigators?"

"Apparently Mr. editor-in-chief was really chummy with the police force. He kept it out of the papers, and they kept it out of their reports."

"Sounds about right." Liam huffed, bracing herself on the wall as she put one leg at a time in her sweatpants. "Did you happen to find anything online about the cremation hitch?"

"Mmhm!" Blaire bounced triumphantly. "I had to verify it across a few different sources. But it seems like we're able to get around that if there's an object that was held at high value for the spirit when they were living. Usually something really sentimental for them."

"Huh," Liam twisted her hair into a loose braid over one shoulder. "What do we do to destroy that? Burn it like the bones?"

"Yep, seems like it." Blaire followed her back towards the kitchen. "All we have to do now is figure out what it was that was so important to Maria that it kept her hanging on all this time."

Liam

"Were there still belongings in the house?" Liam asked, sitting at the table and pulling a thin stack of folders from her attache.

"A few things, but mostly furniture," Blaire replied with a shrug. She leaned over the table and flipped open the pizza box, grabbing a slice. She offered one to Liam, who shook her head.

"I'll eat in a few," she said, "Don't want to get grease all over these files."

"Suit yourself," Blaire said, dipping a slice in garlic butter and taking a bite.

Liam spent the next twenty minutes flipping through the files from the station while Blaire worked diligently on her laptop. Most of the information she was seeing lined up pretty closely to things they had already learned from news articles. She glanced over the evidence report and noticed that an item had been logged.

"There's something in the evidence room," she announced, eyebrows raised. Blaire glanced over the top of her laptop screen at her.

"Yeah?"

"Looks like a wedding ring."

"Fits the bill of a significant remnant, that's for sure," Blaire said, taking the report from Liam when she offered it.

"Alright, but how do we destroy a ring?"

"Cast it into the fires of Mount Doom, obviously."

Liam cocked an eyebrow.

"With a blowtorch," Blaire amended.

There was a long silence as the two girls stared at each other across the table. Surely, this was where they stopped. Surely, they weren't going to steal evidence from a thirty-year-old case and then destroy it with a blowtorch.

"Can you get the blowtorch?" Liam asked. Blaire nodded.

"Can you get the ring?" She responded.

"Yeah."

Another pregnant silence before Blaire replied, "Then it's decided."

Liam exhaled deeply and grabbed a slice of pizza from the box.

Liam was, once again, preparing to commit one of many crimes. It wouldn't be the first time - she had gone through rebellious phases in her youth, much like any teenager, and then there was the vandalism of the Monte Clair just months ago and the way she subsequently covered up her involvement. She had always wondered if committing one crime made it easier to commit another. She still wasn't exactly sure. It didn't feel easier, per se, but she hadn't necessarily hesitated to agree to it, either.

She smiled brightly at the uniformed officer minding the evidence locker today.

"Detective Sinclair," He said, flashing his own smile and nodding at her. He was an overly-excited rookie and tended to act like he was meeting a celebrity whenever the higher-ranked detectives crossed his path.

"Hey, Powers," Liam greeted, "I just need a piece of evidence from a cold case I'm reviewing."

"Of course," said Powers, "You got the number?"

Liam handed him the slip of paper she'd written it on, and he disappeared into the lockup area to find it. She twirled the cubic zirconia ring on her right ring finger nervously. She hoped the thing didn't turn her finger green. When Powers returned with the plastic baggy in hand, she flashed him another smile.

"You signing out?" He asked.

"I'll just take a look at it here," she insisted, "I only need a few minutes."

"Alright," said Powers, handing her the bag. "Just shout if you need anything."

With that, he walked over to the computer behind the counter and continued to watch the video he'd been engrossed in when she walked in. Liam raised an eyebrow. She hoped he wasn't this slack with procedure all the time, but she was thankful nonetheless. She opened the plastic evidence bag and slid the small envelope out. Inside was a single, gold engagement ring. She slid it out carefully and inspected it. Nothing about it seemed out of the ordinary, and it struck her as odd that it had the power to keep Maria from moving on. The very same ring that had apparently bound her to a miserable life was now binding her to a miserable death.

Still, the ring was beautiful, and it was a shame they had to destroy it.

She slipped the department store ring off her finger and slid it into the envelope, attempting to replace it with the gold one. It didn't fit her ring finger, so she slid it onto her pinky instead.

"Thanks, Powers," she said, causing the young man to jump in his seat like he'd already forgotten she was there. She slid the envelope across the counter to him as he stood, and he took a quick peek inside before replacing the envelope in the evidence bag.

"Nice ice," he commented when he saw it at the bottom of the envelope, "Wonder how much that's worth."

Liam tried not to smirk.