We arrived at the police station unscathed and immediately parted ways. Alex went to the cafeteria to fetch a drink so that he could take his painkillers, and I went to Dixon's office.

He saw me coming through the glass and nodded at me, so I didn't bother knocking before I pushed the door open. Thankfully, Sten was no longer in there.

"Amber," Dixon said as I closed the door. "Update me on your progress. The deceased is Lonn Temple, head researcher of Lab S at Socrico University Research?"

"Yes, sir. We've spoken with his wife, Janet Temple, and his niece, Frankie Jarsdel. Both have confirmed that he went home to have dinner with them. Then he left again at seven. That was the last time he was seen alive." I sighed. "We're still working on finding out why he went back to the lab. We're also trying to locate some work that was stolen from his office."

"What work?"

"I don't know, sir." And spelling it out made my spirits sink. My future was riding on a whole lot of nothing.

He nodded, his eyes narrowing. "You're very flushed, Amber."

"We had to run back here. The journalists are like hounds." That was totally the reason. None of my colouring whatsoever was because I'd snogged my sergeant down a dark alleyway. "I actually came to talk about organising a press conference."

"That's already underway." Dixon sat back in his chair. "I'm pulling out all the stops to hold it tonight in the hope that it will make them back off tomorrow."

"What time, sir?"

He shook his head. "You don't need to know, because I don't want you and Alex to be there. I'll handle the media frenzy. You focus on the investigation."

I hesitated. Then I smiled. "Thank you, sir."

Leaving his office, I followed the maze of glass cubes back to my own. I had to pass Sebastian's on my way, and I saw him sitting in there alone. He caught my eye through the glass. I waved. He stood up and came to the door, so I turned around and waited for him.

Before Alex had arrived, Sebastian had been (and probably still was to many) the best-looking man on Socrico's police force. If Alex was tall, dark, and handsome, then Sebastian was tall, fair, and charming. He pulled his door open and lounged on the threshold with a smile. "Amber. I heard you've got a new investigation."

"That's right. Murder at Socrico University."

"So now you've started the Trials." His gaze drifted to the metal bracelet peeking out from the cuff of my button-up blouse. "Sten's fitted you with spyware already?"

"Yes." I smiled faintly. "That's monitoring my heart rate or something. I've also got electrodes picking up my brain signals, a microphone under my shirt, and video-recording contact lenses in my eyes."

Sebastian grinned. "Big Brother is watching us. I'd better go and hide the empty bottles in my office."

I laughed. "You do that. I have to get on with solving this case."

"Good luck."

"Thanks. See you later."

When I finally reached my office, Alex was at his desk with a cup of coffee, a packaged sandwich, and his tabphone. He dragged his eyes away from the screen as I entered. "What did Dixon say?"

"He's holding a press conference about the investigation and our Trial tonight. We can stay well away, which means I can keep my promise to you and cook dinner." I sank into my chair and realised I also had coffee and a sandwich in front of me. "Oh. Thank you."

"You're welcome. The PRBs have already looked at Lonn's tabphone, by the way. There was nothing of interest in his Xplora messages, and the last one he'd replied to was yesterday morning before he went to work. So that's a dead end."

I stared at him. "You mean there was nothing telling him that he needed to go back to the lab?"

"No."

I ripped open my sandwich. "And now you're looking at...?"

"Clocking in and out records for the fatal familial insomnia lab." He looked back at his screen. "One person failed to clock out of Lab S last night."

I dragged my chair to his desk, taking the coffee and sandwich with me. "Who?"

"The older assistant. Nora Fitzroy."

"Call her."

He found Nora's Xplora profile and put a call through while I sipped my coffee and tapped my foot.

The call rang out.

I huffed. "Maybe she's not on her lunch break yet. We'll try again later. It looks bad, but the last thing the murderer would do is remain clocked in -- not when the PRBs found no fingerprints at the scene. They were careful. Let's examine everyone else's profiles while we --"

The office door swung open, and I looked up. Cassia entered with a smile.

"Hi." I smiled carefully back. "What are you doing here?"

"I've finished the post-mortem," she said, "so I've put off writing the report and come over here to sum it up for you. I thought you could do with having answers as fast as possible, considering the Trials."

"Oh, good. I'm all ears."

"Cause of death was as I expected, the stab wound in his descending aorta. But he gave his liver a real bashing, and from what I could smell, I suspect his blood tox will tell us he was drunk when he died."

I looked at Alex. "That tallies with what the bartender said at The Black Horse."

Alex frowned. "To a certain degree. But then he stopped going. And he certainly didn't go last night."

"Maybe he took his custom elsewhere or he started getting smashed at home."

"By the way," Cassia said, "Laney told me there are no prints on the scalpel. It's gone for more testing, but I don't think you'll get any results."

I sighed. "We need something to go on. Do you have any bright ideas about why he went back to work?"

Cassia smiled and shrugged. "That's for you to work out. Enjoy your lunch."

She left.

"Oh yes, the shit that makes no sense is my job." I picked up my tabphone. "I should have become a pathologist."

In my peripheral vision, Alex smiled.

I returned my attention to the suspects' profiles. While Alex browsed through Nora Fitzroy's Xplora page, I had a look at the national profile of Lonn's other assistant: Riannon Sotello. She was twenty-six. She'd studied at Socrico University. She lived alone. I yawned and followed the link to her Xplora profile.

And sat up straight.

The most recent post had been at 8:34 p.m. the previous night. It was a photo of a hot pink cocktail sitting on a circular bar. It had no caption or location tag, but I would have known the snatch of background anywhere.

A few more clicks took me to Xplora Films. Hit with sudden inspiration, I typed Underground Angel in.

Sorry! We were unable to find what you're looking for. Please check your search query for spelling errors, or click here to go back to the home page.

Putting the same title into Xplora Search Engine brought up a wave of news articles that told me Underground Angel had recently been removed from Xplora Films.

I spun my chair to the side so that I was facing Alex. He swallowed the last mouthful of his sandwich and raised an eyebrow at me.

"Let's swap." I snatched his tabphone out of the air and pressed mine into his hands. "Get Xplora to tell you where that cocktail picture was taken. I'm going to call Riannon."

Alex absorbed the contents of the screen and its implications in the time it took me to load Riannon's Xplora page on his tabphone. I pressed the video-call button and waited for it to start ringing.

Alex put my tabphone down. "It was taken in The Silver Star."

How the fuck had he done it so quickly?

"Thank you," I muttered.

He laughed, then turned it into a cough when I glared at him. Avoiding my gaze, he lifted his device from my hands so that it was floating freely in front of us. We stared at the screen and waited.

At the last moment, Riannon picked up. It looked like she was in a busy staff cafeteria.

"Hi." She tilted her head to the side, her long earrings swinging. "I only have, like, a few minutes of my lunch break left --"

"Why did you lie to us, Riannon?" I asked.

Her mouth fell upon. "Um -- w-what?"

"You told us that you stayed in last night, watching a film called Underground Angel on Xplora. But that film is no longer available, and at half eight you posted a photo to your profile that was taken in The Silver Star."

She swallowed a few times. "I can explain."

"That would be good. How do you feel about explaining it to us at the police station after work? Of course, coming down here is voluntary, but it would help you clear up this misunderstanding."

Behind her, a large group of people started leaving the cafeteria. Someone in the distance called to her.

"Yes," she said quickly, glancing to the side with panic in her eyes. "I'll come."

***

We spent the rest of the afternoon filling out electronic paperwork (and casting work for other cases aside), studying the national profiles of the staff who worked in Lab S, and trying to ring Nora Fitzroy. She never picked up.

By the time DC Laney knocked on the door and informed us that Riannon Sotello had arrived, Alex and I had consumed six cups of coffee between us. My sergeant drank the last of his with two more painkillers before he followed me to the custody suite.

Riannon looked up when we entered her interview room, long earrings swinging. She was sitting at the table in the middle of the small space, her shoulders slumped and her hands linked together in her lap.

"Thanks for coming, Riannon." I sat down opposite her. "I just have a few formalities to run through, and then we can have a quick chat."

"Okay."

I went through what was necessary for her and the cameras, and then Alex put two printouts on the table: a screen-shot of the apology page from Xplora Films, and another of Riannon's latest Xplora post.

I gave her a moment to look at them. Then I cleared my throat. "We're inviting you to rectify your initial explanation of your whereabouts between seven and nine yesterday evening."

She bit her lip. "This will just stay, like, between us?"

"It depends on what you have to say."

"Okay." She released a long breath. "I didn't go anywhere near Socrico University after I left work yesterday, I swear. I went back home, had dinner, and got ready for my date. I met him at The Silver Star at half eight."

"Who?" Alex asked.

She looked away. "Do I have to tell you?"

"If he can confirm your alibi, we won't need to bother you about it again."

"Petr Fitzroy," she blurted. A blush coloured her cheeks.

I thought back to the national profiles we'd studied. "Nora's husband?"

Riannon nodded.

"So before you met Petr," I said, "and after you left work: you were at home?"

She nodded again.

"Can anyone confirm that?"

"No. I was on my own."

"What time did you and Petr leave The Silver Star last night?"

"Er...it was late. Maybe just after eleven."

"You understand that we'll have to contact Petr to confirm this?"

"Yes." Her eyes widened. "But please don't tell Nora."

"Where is Nora?" I leaned forward, curious. "We've been trying to contact her all day. Was she okay after she fainted this morning?"

"Oh, she went home after that." Riannon smirked. "If you're looking for a motive, Nora will take Lonn's position as our head researcher starting from Monday."

I exchanged a look with Alex. He was the first to turn back to our interviewee. "What we're actually looking for is Lonn's missing folder. You told DC Laney that it was in his office yesterday."

"Yeah. It's weird, isn't it?" Riannon sat up straighter and flicked her dark hair over one shoulder. "I thought to myself after they'd asked me about it: why would someone kill Lonn...and then, like, run off with a folder? So I hope you don't mind, but I went into his office when the robots weren't looking, and I checked all the folders that were in there. And I realised the missing one is his secret project folder!"

Fucking useless robots. "Lonn's office is a crime scene, Riannon. You're not allowed to go in."

"I don't see why it matters. Won't Nora be moving into it on Monday?"

"Not necessarily. She might have to stay in the main lab until we've finished with it."

"What's all this about a secret project folder?" Alex asked.

Riannon grinned. "I knew you'd find it useful! After you'd gone, I thought more about why Lonn might have stayed late. Well, like I said, he wasn't supposed to stay late last night, but sometimes he would stay late to work on this big project of his. None of us knew what it was, but we speculated that maybe it was, like, some breakthrough he was nearing that was going to help us all find the cure we're researching."

"But you've looked in the folder," I said. "You must know what it was."

She frowned. "What? I've never looked in the folder."

"Then how did you know it was this secret project folder that's missing?"

"Oh!" She smiled. "That's easy. I recognised the stuff that was in all of the other folders because I'd fetched it for Lonn or I'd had to sign it. So the one that's missing has to be his project!"

***

Alex and I strolled back to our office after the interview, deep in thought. The glass cubes around us were largely empty -- most officers on day shifts had gone home, and the night shift was arriving in dribs and drabs.

"The plot thickens," I said. "Was Lonn murdered for his project?"

Alex shrugged. "If the murderer knew how important the folder was, they could have taken it as a bluff."

"True. But in both scenarios, the murderer knew what was in the folder. The first thing I want to do tomorrow is try catching Nora at her flat." I tapped my bracelet as we reached our office. "Right now, we need to take this stuff off."

Alex started to turn away. "I'll see you back here in ten minutes?"

"Yeah. But, wait --" I grabbed his hand. "Are you okay?"

He paused, his face in profile to me. "I'll be fine when we get back to yours."

***

We removed our microphones and contact lenses in the staff toilets and took all the gear back to Sten separately. He was waiting in Dixon's office again, his face unreadable and his lips sealed.

When we were ready, we met up in our own office again and walked to my flat.

As we went inside, I glanced over my shoulder. "Alex, why don't you sit down for five minutes while I feed Mitzy and --"

He swayed. I spun like lightning and clamped my fingers around his biceps. "Whoa! You said you'd be fine when we got here. You're not fine. You're about to pass out on my floor."

"We've only just walked in." He smiled faintly, but he was pale again. "I need five minutes to unwind, that's all."

I worried my bottom lip. "Maybe it's a migraine. Have you ever had one before?"

"No."

"Okay, well, there's a first time for everything." I rose on my tiptoes and pressed my forehead against his. No temperature, but I couldn't rule out the alternative option that he was coming down with something. It would be just our luck when we were doing the Trials. "Let's make that half an hour to unwind. Take a nap in my room."

He looped his arm around the small of my back. "Will you be joining me?"

I swallowed hard. "I... After I've fed Mitzy. But I'll be working."

I escaped into the kitchen before my defences could break. Mitzy was sitting on top of the furthest counter, and she stood up on my arrival and started purring. As I bent over to fetch the cat food from the glass cupboard beneath her, she rubbed around my head.

"You're only being fussy because it's dinnertime," I grumbled.

She continued purring until I'd set her food on the floor. Then she jumped off the counter to eat, and I entered my room to keep an eye on Alex.

He'd shrugged his jacket off and loosened his tie, and now he was lying on top of my covers with his eyes closed. He hadn't even bothered removing his shoes, as if he needed to be ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.

I toed my boots off and propped myself up on the pillows beside him, tangling our legs together. He didn't stir, and my heart squeezed. This wasn't the first time he'd crashed fully clothed when we'd been doing more work than play, and watching him filled me with sad recognition. The rumpled shirt against the bedclothes, the tie draping across the edge of the pillow, and the dark circles under his eyes painted a picture of the workaholic natures we both lived by.

It made me feel slightly guilty as I placed a call to Gem Robinson, hoping she could confirm what time Riannon and Petr Fitzroy had left The Silver Star. But the call rang out.

I punched the back button, guessing she'd started her shift, but my understanding ran out when Petr didn't pick up either. Wasn't anyone going to answer their damn tabphones today?

As if someone had read my thoughts, a message appeared at the top of my screen. Of course, it was from the person I least wanted to talk with.

I heard you've started the Trials, darling. Want to talk about it?

Fuck you, Clyde, I responded.

Abandoning Xplora, I went over everyone's national profiles again. Lonn Temple, Nora Fitzroy, and Riannon Sotello had all been or were fully qualified for their jobs, so there was nothing shady going on there. Janet Temple had, indeed, been a teaching assistant. Frankie Jarsdel was studying biochemistry at Socrico University, just as her aunt had said. And Petr Fitzroy was not only Nora's husband and Riannon's secret boyfriend but also a pharmacist.

Everyone was tied together, and yet I couldn't pin the murder on anyone. Yet.

Twenty minutes of scrolling later, Alex tensed and opened his eyes beside me. I put my tabphone away and slid down the bed so that I was level with him. "Hello."

His mouth curved into a slow smile. "Hello."

"Feeling any better?"

He propped himself up so that he was looking down into my eyes. "You won't believe me, but I really am. One hundred percent."

I searched his face. "Just like that?"

"It must be the power of sleeping. I should listen to you more often."

I smiled. "I'm not going to argue with that."

He leaned closer so that our noses were touching, then tilted his head and pressed his mouth to mine. Chemistry zinged between us, shocking my tired brain. I melted beneath him and twined my hands around the back of his head.

One second later, he pulled away. "Ah, wait. You owe me dinner."

"You tease." My smile widened into a grin. "But I've decided I'm not cooking. We're going to The Silver Star."