Earlier that day…
Sofia Ramirez was no stranger to chaos and questionable decisions. If anything, she thrived in them — most of her frat boy adventures were basically the direct result of her questionable decisions and chaos-seeking tendencies. So when Magnus jogged over before they split up and told her, in the tone of someone who didn't believe in what he was saying but still decided to say it anyway, that Tony had apparently been running a parallel investigation into a vendor near the east entrance, and that she should probably be careful just in case the raccoon was onto something, Sofia had nodded, filed it under low priority but vaguely interesting, and gone on her way.
The thing was, she wasn't entirely making up an excuse to leave the couple alone when she said she wanted something to eat. She was genuinely hungry. They had been running around all day because of the sabotage investigation and the stress that came with it. All she'd had since morning were the few bites of the food Magnus had obviously packed for Alex and an energy bar from her bag, so she was not above admitting that a track meet hot dog sounded genuinely appealing at this stage.
Tony was waiting at the east entrance like he'd known she was coming. Which was either raccoon instinct, dumb luck, or something Sofia wasn't sure she wanted to think too hard about.
Maybe Alex was right! Maybe Tony wasn't just a normal raccoon.
"Okay," she said, eyeing him warily. "Magnus said you were investigating something here. What is it?"
Tony looked at her for a long moment. Then at the row of vendors. Then back at her again, with an expression that made Sofia huff a laugh. Because she could feel it — she was being judged by a raccoon. Tony was evidently trying to determine whether she could pass as an acceptable assistant: a Watson to his Holmes.
Then the raccoon nodded, satisfied, and gestured for her to follow him. Sofia blinked and stared at him for a second before moving. She was buying Alex's words more and more every second.
Tony was way too smart to be a normal raccoon.
The vendor in question was three stalls down — hot dogs, nachos, soft pretzels, the standard sports venue spread. The man running it was in his fifties, heavyset, currently engaged in the universal vendor activity of looking at his phone while technically being available for customers. Nothing about the setup screamed public health crisis.
Tony stopped in front of the condiment station and pointed at it with the gravitas of a detective presenting the murder weapon.
Sofia looked. There was mustard, ketchup, and something in a branded bottle labeled Signature Stadium Secret Sauce in a font that had put in a lot of effort to suggest a quality of product the contents had not matched. She picked it up, turned it over, then scanned the ingredients.
"...This is just mustard with paprika," she said slowly.
Tony looked at her with pride and what could only be described as… smugness.
"That's the ethical violation?" Sofia blinked. "This? You told Magnus this was 'dangerous'?"
Tony confirmed this with the solemn nod of a raccoon whose faith in food quality had been shaken but whose commitment to the truth had not.
Sofia looked at the bottle. Then at Tony. Then back at the bottle.
The thing was — and she would never say this out loud — she felt betrayed.
After all that time hearing from Alex and Magnus about how unusually smart Tony was; after being convinced to let the raccoon into her car and drive him here today; after watching Tony navigate the venue with that focused intensity all day; hearing about the way he'd apparently been running a parallel investigation with complete conviction; and seeing the way he communicated in gestures and expressions that somehow conveyed more than they should have just now…
After all that, she'd found herself starting to believe that maybe Alex was onto something. Maybe this raccoon really wasn't just a raccoon. Maybe there was something genuinely different about him.
And then… this!
She set the bottle of rebranded mustard down very carefully, looked at the raccoon who had spent an entire federal investigation day treating condiment fraud as a matter of urgent moral consequence, and thought: nope. What was I even thinking? That's probably just my bias toward Alex. Magnus was right. This thing really is just a raccoon.
Then she turned toward the hot dog station.
"Two, please," she told the vendor, who had looked up from his phone with the mildly suspicious expression of someone who had just watched a woman hold a prolonged one-sided conversation with a raccoon.
"The raccoon isn't a health violation," Sofia told him pleasantly. "He's with me."
The vendor just shrugged, apparently deciding that whatever counted as pets for young people these days wasn't his business. Smart man!
Sofia paid, handed one of the hot dogs down to Tony — who accepted it with the dignified gravity of payment rendered for services honestly performed — and leaned against the railing, eating and watching the last heat of the day wind down on the track below.
Tony ate beside her in companionable silence: Case closed. Justice served. The Signature Stadium Secret Sauce was no longer a secret. It had been identified for what it was, and that would have to be enough… for now.
She pulled out her phone, sent Magnus the mustard update, and leaned against the railing finishing her food. Her thoughts drifted to the two of them — wherever they were right now, doing whatever they were doing to work through whatever this was.
She genuinely hoped they figured it out. She'd never seen Alex this happy with anyone — not Sammy, not Dick, not anyone else her best friend might have been attracted to either. There was a version of Alex around Magnus that Sofia hadn't seen before, softer in some places, sharper in others, and annoying most of the time, but it suited her.
And if Sofia was being completely honest with herself — which she generally tried to be, because self-deception was inefficient — she was a little jealous. Not of Alex specifically. Just of the thing they had. Because Magnus was, objectively, a catch: caring boyfriend, funny without trying, and, from personal experience, genuinely excellent in bed. She wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
Not that she'd ever act on it. He wasn't her type, not really — too earnest, too boy scout-y, too much of a golden retriever in human form for her specific preferences. The attraction was purely physical and she knew it. Which meant it was also manageable. And it was absolutely not worth damaging the best friendship she had over it. She'd made that calculation clearly and without much internal debate.
Besides, she was developing something she hadn't expected with Magnus: actual respect and genuine fondness. The kind that made her want things to go well for him rather than just want things from him. She'd told them both she was open to another threesome if they ever wanted it, and she'd meant it. She'd also meant it when she made clear she wasn't going to push if they weren't comfortable. That line existed and she had no interest in crossing it.
She finished her hot dog. Tony finished his. The last heat of the day wound down on the track below them.
"Come on!" she told him. "Let's go back to the car."
***
Later that night…
The house was quiet when Katherine Hale woke up.
She'd half expected to wake up in a hotel room — James had mentioned possibly staying near the venue if the investigation demanded it. But no, they were at home, which meant he'd driven them back after she'd fallen asleep in the car. Which also meant the investigation was going well.
What had woken her was the light.
The desk lamp in the corner of the bedroom was on, casting a narrow pool of light across James's shoulders. He was sitting very still, which in most people meant thinking. In James, it meant thinking about something he hadn't decided what to do with yet.
Katherine sat up. "James."
"Go back to sleep."
"What time is it?" She grabbed her phone to check. "What are you still doing up at 3 AM?"
He didn't answer immediately. She waited him out, the way she'd learned to wait for him over the years. Because James Hale did not withhold information from her as a power move, he withheld it because he was still sorting it, and pushing before he'd sorted it would only make the sorting take longer.
"Background check," he said finally.
Katherine's eyes went to the laptop screen: a request form, confirmation number visible. Her first thought, arriving faster than she could stop it, was: not again.
"James, Alex is not Vanessa. Did you at least tell Veronica yet? Because if this concerns her daughter—"
"It's not about Alex."
She stopped.
James turned slightly in his chair to look at her. In the low light his expression was something she didn't see often — not uncertain exactly, but something adjacent to it. Awareness of a gap between what he knew and what he needed to know.
"He's a good kid," he said. "I'm not doing this because I think he's involved in something bad."
"Then what?"
James was quiet for a moment. Then:
"I've told you about Lucy, right?"
Katherine went still.
She turned the name over carefully, reaching back through years of fragments — mentions in passing, James and Nate talking in low voices and going quiet when she entered the room, the way her husband's expression changed on the rare occasions the name came up. She had never known Lucy directly. Right around the time of her marriage to James, Lucy had disappeared, and Katherine had been too occupied with the awkwardness of an arranged marriage she hadn't chosen to pay close attention to her new husband's grief about it.
She'd gathered the outline later, slowly, over years. That there had been a girl. That she'd been part of Nate's life first, then James's, then both of theirs. That she'd disappeared without warning or explanation and neither of them had ever stopped looking.
Nathan Locke's only regret. Written into his will.
"Lucy," Katherine said slowly. "Nate's Lucy?"
"Yes."
She looked at him properly now. "How is Alex's boyfriend related to Lucy?"
"The last name," James said. "Chane. It's Lucy's last name too. It's not that common. And the age — he'd be about the right age if the reason she disappeared was because she had a child. And the way he moves." He paused, remembering what he had observed earlier that day. "The way he helped people without thinking about it. Without expecting to be seen."
"And the way he talked to the technician, Frank," he added after another brief pause. "Made the man calm down without him realizing it was happening. Nate used to do that. I haven't seen anyone else do it since…"
Katherine was quiet, putting it together. "You think he might be her son?"
"I think it's possible. He told Frank that he grew up with a single mother, no father in the picture." James turned back to the screen. "I might be wrong. The resemblance could be coincidental. The name could be coincidental."
"But?"
"But Nate and I spent eleven years looking for her and never found her. And she's in his will. And I'd like to know." His voice was even, the way it got when he was holding something steady through effort rather than ease. "One way or the other, I'd like to know."
Katherine sat with that for a moment. Then she got up, crossed the room, and stood beside him the way she had ten thousand times over the course of their marriage — not to manage him, just to be there.
She looked at the confirmation on the screen. Then at the lines around his eyes that hadn't been there ten years ago.
"Okay," she said simply. "So why haven't you sent it yet?"
"If I'm wrong—"
"James," she stopped him with a single word.
"You haven't been uncertain about something in a very long time," she added quietly after a moment. "I'd forgotten what it looked like."
James made a sound Katherine had learned to understand as the closest equivalent to a laugh James Hale was capable of.
"It happened more often than you think."
They stayed like that in silence for a while.
"Send it," she said finally.
James nodded once.
She went back to bed. He stayed at the desk for a while longer, not looking at anything in particular, and Katherine lay in the dark listening to the quiet and thinking about a woman she had never met. A woman who had apparently meant enough to two of the greatest men she knew that her absence had never quite closed over, even after two decades had passed.
Eventually James came to bed. Neither of them said anything else.
After a while, Katherine slept.
James did not. Not for a long time.