It’s very late by now, but Team Ghost Office has mobilized in the low light of my kitchen.

The ghosts materialized half-asleep, startled to be summoned for an emergency meeting after we’d already called it quits for the night. Now, though, everyone is awake and alert. Will and Kasey have been listening in rapt, wide-eyed silence as Aiden and I rushed to explain everything we just figured out.

They both twist sharply to stare at me when Aiden tells them about the woman I saw outside of Finley’s office. The woman we’re pretty sure is Rouge.

“Holy shit,” Kasey whispers, from where she’s perched on my kitchen counter. “We actually have a survivor from this case.”

“Calla said that her person could get in trouble if the facts of the Botswick case came to light,” Aiden continues. “So, if her person is Rouge-”

“Then it’s possible that Rouge killed John Botswick,” Kasey finishes, already way ahead of us. “Between what Calla said, and that cigarette with the lipstick that was found on the beach near the body…”

“It’s a strong theory,” I answer, nodding at her.

There’s a short silence. Kasey’s eyes go to mine, and she reads my expression easily.

“You’ve got a thought, Jamie?”

“Yeah. I was thinking about something that Calla said when she met up with us at the diner.”

“Me, too.” Aiden catches my eye. “Think we’re thinking about the same thing. Calla started to say something about John Botswick. She said - do you even know what he would have done?”

“Does she mean that he was sent there to kidnap the child?” Will asks.

“But if that is what she means,” I say slowly, working through my thoughts as I speak, “Why would Rouge do anything to stop that from happening? The kidnapping is what she was sent there for, too. She was supposed to coordinate with Botswick, help him do it.”

“But she didn’t,” Aiden points out. “Not that we know of. What we do know is that she didn’t show for the meet-up with Botswick. She kept information from him. And - she might have killed him, too.”

Silence falls again, and then Kasey asks the question on everyone's mind.

“Does it sound to anyone else like Rouge declared war on her own agency?”

Another silence, but it’s clear that everyone is thinking the same thing. Yes.

“Why, though?” Aiden shakes his head, his blue eyes narrowed. “Why the hell would she do that? She could have been arrested as a traitor. She could have been killed. It's fucking wild that she wasn't, honestly.”

“What if she was a double agent?” Kasey gestures down at the black and white photo of the little boy and his father, surrounded by all of their bodyguards. “Maybe Rouge was working for the Stasi.”

“But she stayed in Port Sitka afterwards,” I point out. “Just went underground, dropped off the radar, somehow. Why wouldn’t they bring her home, if she worked for them?”

“And the Guardian is the one who rescued the child on the previous kidnapping attempts,” Will adds. “Not the agents assigned to protect him. It sounds as if the Stasi did not know his location had been compromised. Would they not have moved him somewhere else, if they did? At the very least, would Scholz and Jahn not have begun to be careful again?”

“Okay, well - if Rouge wasn’t a double agent, but she was working against her own agency... that means she was working for herself." Kasey shakes her head in disbelief. “It means that she decided to single-handedly take on the entire intelligence arm of the United States, and the Stasi, too.”

We all stare at each other, trying to wrap our heads around that.

“She must have had a damn good reason,” Aiden finally says. “Got no idea how we find out what, though.”

“Well...” I lean my elbows on the counter, nibbling my lip. “I guess - we could ask her?”

Everyone turns as one to look at me, eyebrows raised high.

“Ask her?” Will repeats haltingly. “That, ah - Jamie, my dear fellow-”

“She might have murdered someone, Jamie!” Kasey cuts in, staring at me with very wide eyes. “You want to just go ask her if she did, and why?”

“We don’t know that she did!" I straighten up again, my cheeks starting to burn. “Shouldn’t we at least give her a chance to explain-?”

“Just be like - hey, woman we don’t know, and who doesn’t know us! Did you ever shoot a guy’s face off and leave him dead on a beach? It’s okay, you can tell us, we’re ghost hunters. And please don’t murder us, too, even though we’re here stirring up shit you’ve kept quiet all this time-”

“Alright, you know what, Kase-face? I am gonna go talk to her and get myself murdered, just so that you feel bad about this moment right here-”

“Okay,” Aiden says firmly, planting a hand over my mouth. “Look, talking to Rouge - it’s not even an option, anyways. We don’t know her real name, and we don’t know where she lives. If we start asking around in Port Sitka, word’s probably gonna get back to Calla, who actually will kill us, Jamie.”

“Well, I’m not hearing any other suggestions!”

“I’ve got one." Kasey hops down from the counter, landing next to Will. “We do what we’ve been doing. We keep working. We solve the case.”

That really does seem like the only path forward, and we all know it. Everyone nods in agreement, and an extended silence falls over my kitchen.

It’s strange, but - the significance of tonight’s breakthrough is only now really dawning on me. We’ve just leapt so far forward in the case. We’ve even identified a real, living person who was directly involved in it. I saw her, the actual Rouge that John Botswick wrote about in his notebook.

Kasey’s decision that we should forge ahead with trying to solve the case - it made me realize that we might actually fucking do this. Our little team might actually solve a decades-old cold case that defeated everybody who tried to crack it before. We’re so close. I can feel it.

After all, this is a huge break for us. We found ourselves a spy.

I look around at the rest of Team Ghost Office to find slow, wide smiles spreading across everyone’s faces. We’re all having the same revelation, right now.

The building excitement in the air suddenly sparks and explodes. We all burst into thrilled laughter. Will lifts Kasey into his arms, and Aiden closes his around me. I fold my fingers around his forearms, bouncing on my toes with happiness.

Kasey breaks free of Will and strides directly through the kitchen island to me.

“Jamie!” She puts her fingers around my jaw as if she’s holding it, beaming up into my face. “If you hadn’t noticed Rouge in Port Sitka, we wouldn’t have gotten here - at least, not for a long time, probably!”

“Yeah, he did good,” Aiden rumbles, and bends down to press a kiss onto the top of my head.

I tighten my grasp on his arms, smiling so hard that my cheeks ache. Kasey starts to move like she wants to give me a hug, then remembers that she can’t. She disappears, reappears right next to Will, and throws herself into his burly arms. He catches her, lets out a surprised laugh.

“Finally, I can actually hug someone when we have our breakthroughs!” Kasey groans, burying her face into his chest. “Feels so good! What would I do without you, lumberjack?”

Will smiles silently, his leaf-green eyes bright with happiness. He tightens his embrace, gives Kasey such a hard hug that she laughs, starts struggling to get free.

Will lets her go, and she steps back, then seizes him by the suspenders. She pulls him down and plants an affectionate, enthusiastic kiss on his mouth. Then she whips around to face me and Aiden, leaving Will dazed and smiling.

“Strategy meeting!” she says, so loudly and sharply that we all startle to attention. “Next steps for the case. Let’s make a plan.”

We all take a second to pull ourselves together, to get back into business mode.

“We could follow up with Floyd,” Aiden suggests. “See if he’s been able to find any more information in the Stasi files?”

“We could also look into the babysitter,” I put in. “I don’t know where we’d start with that, but…”

“No.” Kasey’s eyes flit up to me and Aiden, and I can tell that she’s got something. “No, I know exactly what you two need to do next.”

“Well, you’re the manager, Kase-face. What you say goes.”

Aiden nods at her, folding his arms over his broad chest. “Where are you sending us, boss?”

“Back to Port Sitka,” Kasey answers. “But not to find Rouge.”

~~~~

The sandy beachfront of Port Sitka is beautiful at sunset.

Little white birds hop around lazily down by the surf, their soft feathers ruffled by the breeze. The ebb and flow of the tide makes a tranquil, unbroken, rushing sound. The water is rippling gently, pooled with the glowing pastel colors of the sky. Sherbert orange and dusky indigo, with gleaming ropes of white bubbles.

The skyscraper Sitka spruces lining the distant cliffs rise up out of a light, slow-moving coastal fog, adding their brilliant green color into the mix.

The boardwalk is quiet. It’s early in the spring, not quite tourist season for Port Sitka. The few people that are here walk along slowly, lulled by the caressing breeze, the soft sounds of the ocean, the cries of the gulls riding high-up currents of wind overhead.

I take a deep breath of the crisp, salty air, then lean my elbows on the wooden railing of the boardwalk.

“Man, it’s beautiful here,” I sigh, looking up at Aiden.

His chestnut hair is all messy from the wind, even beneath his backwards snapback. He smiles down at me, his ocean eyes picking up the glow of the sunset.

This moment of calm is exactly what I needed. I think that’s why Aiden led us here, when we could have waited for nightfall in any part of Port Sitka. He could tell that I was starting to get anxious about tonight’s plan.

“This one should be a piece of cake.” His deep, slow voice adds to the rush of the ocean, mixes pleasantly with it in my ears. “Compared to some of the other stuff we’ve done.”

“I know.” I fidget with the sleeve of my flannel, looking nervously up at Aiden. “It’s just - I have this feeling that we’re gonna find something there. It’s the place John Botswick signaled Rouge to meet him at, and she never went. And the place has been closed down for ages, all sealed up… it’s spooky, isn’t it?”

Aiden considers that for a moment, then tosses his head to the side, beckoning for me to follow him. I blink and straighten up as he sets off down the boardwalk.

“Where are we going?” I ask, falling into step beside him.

Aiden wraps his arm around my shoulders, then uses it to pull me closer so that he can plant a kiss on my forehead.

“Can’t have my partner in crime spooked or anxious on the job. And I think I know what would calm you down.”

I pick up speed to keep up with him. “Oh, please say that we’re going to the dumpling place we saw on the drive into town.”

“Mkay, obviously we’re gonna get some dumplings. The fuck do you think this is?”

“Fuck, yes!” I break into a wide grin, threading my fingers through Aiden's. “I feel better already.”

“But first, we’re gonna do this,” Aiden says, and strides down the wooden stairs of the boardwalk, steps onto the sand.

I follow him, watching curiously as he leads us out onto the beach, away from the boardwalk. He drops to sit down on the sand, so I sit down by his side, admiring the glow of the soft, dusky light against his skin, his glossy hair.

He closes his eyes, so I do, too.

The connection shimmers open through our intertwined hands. Aiden’s calm, his steadiness - it flows into me in slow, sweeping wave, folds around me like a warm blanket. It slowly begins to untangle the anxiety I’d let myself get knotted up in. It soothes my heart, my whole body.

I let out an unintentional little sigh of relief, squeezing Aiden’s fingers through the connection.

He doesn’t let me go, even after I’m held completely in his peaceful equilibrium. I’m secretly happy about that. Now that my heartbeat has steadied out, I can swim and float through the connection, the blissful feeling of sharing in Aiden’s emotions, his energy, his body, his soul. He’s doing the same to me, and it feels so good.

I could never get tired of this. I could spend an eternity appreciating each and every nuance of this feeling.

A pleasant shiver moves through me as I sense a burst of bright, sparkling happiness from Aiden. A soft huff of silent, internal laughter.

What? I ask, without opening my mouth.

Nothing. I just realized… after all this time, we’re right back where we started, aren’t we?

It takes me a second to get there, but I catch his meaning. The two of us, sitting together on the beach, at sunset.

I open my eyes to look at Aiden. He’s smiling warmly, his eyes still closed, the corners of them crinkled up. A single strand of chestnut hair has escaped from his snapback to kiss his forehead.

I touch my fingertips to his stubbled jaw, and feel the resulting burst of warmth in his heart through the connection.

Not in all ways, I tell him.

He opens his shimmering blue eyes, then blinks around at the beach, caught by surprise.

Night has fallen and grown deep around us. The sky is navy blue, verging on black. Cloudless, so we can see the full brilliance of the stars. Port Sitka is a cluster of warm, glowing lights behind us, and moonlight skips over the quiet ocean waves.

Aiden, like me, clearly had no idea how long we were sitting here with the connection open.

Oh, he says. Yeah, you’re right. No sunset.

Yeah, man, but that’s not what I meant.

What did you mean?

I lean in close to him, keeping my fingertips on his jaw. I place a slow, adoring kiss on his mouth, then sit back and look into his eyes.

Not right back where we started, I murmur, and nuzzle my nose into his. Not really.

Aiden holds perfectly still for a second, then abruptly closes the connection.

“Sorry,” he says, before I can even ask. “I'm - feeling a lot. Didn’t want to, um. Overwhelm you.”

He gets to his feet hastily, clearing his throat, but I've already caught a glimpse of the deep blush spreading across his cheeks.

He offers me a hand up. I take it, then keep my fingers wrapped around his as we start back towards the boardwalk.

“Oh, shit,” Aiden says, after a moment. “We were supposed to get dumplings. The place is probably closed, by now.”

“Aw. Well, it’s fine.” I snuggle my cheek against the side of his shoulder as we walk. “Tonight was perfect, even without the dumplings.”

Aiden looks down at me, his eyebrows arched all the way up, then quickly glances away again. His fingers tighten around mine, and he lets out a helpless little noise.

“Jamie,” he groans, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “Stop it. You know exactly what you’re doing to me, and I can only take so much of it. Go any further, my fucking heart is gonna give out.”

I bite down on my smile, then start to let go of his hand. But Aiden catches my fingers, shakes his head at me, and keeps walking.

He doesn’t let me go until we stop before the abandoned corner store, where he has to make a few fireflies for us to see by in the darkness.

They float up next to the boarded-up windows, the crumbling brick walls.

“Ready for this, Keane?” Aiden asks softly, icy blue light shimmering in his eyes.

I take a deep breath, holding onto the steadiness he gave me through the connection.

“Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s do it.”