Miles Lindgren's Arc

Chapter 4 of 13

The motel room door hadn't even fully shut behind them before Miles was across the room, case notes slapped down on the desk hard enough that the lamp rattled. He shrugged out of his jacket and let it drop on the floor instead of hanging it, already flipping through the legal pad. "We need a plan for tomorrow," he said, not looking up. "Dale's not going to give us anything else until the lab comes back, which means we need other sources. The general store, the diner, anyone who was around back then." "Miles." "I'm thinking Bertie's first. She's run that diner for thirty years, she'll know who to point us toward, and if she doesn't, she'll know who does—" "Miles." Chase's voice had an edge to it now too. "Can we not do this right now?" "Do what? Work?" Miles finally looked up, pen still in hand. "That's the job. That's why we're here." "I know why we're here, I don't need the reminder." Chase dropped his own jacket over the desk chair hard enough that it scraped the floor. "I'm saying maybe we don't plan the next three interviews thirty seconds after finding out it's a kid down there." "Someone has to." "Someone doesn't have to be you, right this second, white-knuckling a legal pad like it's going to fix anything. You didn't say two words the whole drive back and now you're planning out a week like the last hour didn't happen." "What was I supposed to do instead? Sit here and feel it?" Miles slapped the pen down on the desk. "I've had twelve years of feeling it. I don't need a break to catch up." "I didn't say take a break forever. I said stop for five minutes." Chase's voice climbed to meet his. "You do this every single time something hits. Instead of sitting with it for even a second, you turn it into a checklist." "That's rich, coming from you." Miles's hands curled into fists without him deciding to let them. "You want to talk about turning things into content? You found my private files on Dani, files I never showed you, never planned to show you, and you cut a five-minute teaser out of them and posted it without asking me. My best friend's disappearance, as a hook to get people excited for a new season. That's what you did with the one thing I never wanted touched." "That is not what I meant to do, and you know it." "I don't care what you meant. I care what you did." Miles's voice had gone low and hard. "I came home and it already had forty thousand views, Chase. Forty thousand people had already watched a preview of my probably dead friend's case before I even knew you'd touched the folder." "I have apologized for that a hundred times." "You can apologize a thousand more and it won't undo the fact that I found out from a comment section instead of from you." Miles was breathing hard now, something twelve years old and something two years old tangled together and coming out at once. "You took the one thing that was still just mine and you made it public because you thought it would be good for the numbers." "I thought it would help you," Chase snapped back, voice cracking with real anger now, not just frustration. "I thought if it was out there, you'd finally have to deal with it instead of burying it the way you bury everything. I was wrong. I know I was wrong. I have known I was wrong for two years, and I am so tired of being the only one still trying to fix something you decided the day it happened was unfixable." "Maybe some things are." "Then say that. Say it plainly instead of making me guess every single day whether today's the day you're finally going to actually talk to me instead of just being furious at me." Chase's jaw was tight, his whole body rigid. "You want to know what it's like being on the other end of your anger for two straight years? It's exhausting, Miles. I’m exhausted. I have apologized, I have given you space, I have let you set every single term of how this works between us, and it is still not enough, and I don't know what else you think I have left to give you." "Nobody's asking you to give anything." "That's a lie and you know it. You ask me for something every single day. You ask me to show up. You ask me to put my hand on your back for a camera and act like I'm the happiest man alive. You ask me to sit across from your parents and lie to their faces about a wedding that's never happening. You ask constantly, you just don't call it asking because that would mean admitting you still need something from me." "You act like I invented the arrangement." Miles's voice had gone sharp, cutting back in before Chase could keep going. "We both agreed to keep pretending. We both signed off on it, because losing the channel meant losing the income, and you didn’t want that any more than I did. So don't stand there like I'm the only one who benefits from you showing up and playing the part." "I never said you invented it. I said you act like you're the only one carrying it." Chase stepped closer, voice dropping but losing none of its heat. "You don't get to act like you're the only one performing here. You play the doting boyfriend just as well as I do. You lean into every touch, you laugh at every joke on cue, you're just as good at pretending as I am, so don't stand there like you're the victim of an arrangement you benefit from just as much as I do." "Fine. Then don't show up tomorrow." "You'd love that, wouldn't you. Give you one more thing to be angry about." "Get out." Miles's voice had gone flat and final. "I mean it." "Gladly." Chase grabbed his jacket off the chair, movements sharp, furious. "I'll be back at seven AM, because unlike you, I actually take this job seriously, and we'll do this exact same thing tomorrow, because God forbid either of us actually fix anything." He was almost to the door when Miles's phone started ringing on the desk behind them. Miles crossed the room and grabbed it, jaw still tight, and glanced at the screen. Unknown number, no name attached. He answered anyway, hand not quite steady. "Hello?" A pause on the other end, careful, deliberate. "Is this Miles? From the cold case show, the one filming in town?" "Yeah. Who's calling?" "I'd rather not say. I don't want my name anywhere near this." The voice was pitched low, hard to place as male or female. "I've been watching what you're covering. I know something I think you should look into. I'm not going on camera, not on record, nothing. Do whatever you want with it, just not with my name on it." Chase had gone still by the door, one hand still on the strap of his bag, watching Miles's face shift. "Okay," Miles said, reaching for the legal pad, voice still unsteady from the fight. "I'm listening." "I saw Dani out near the old ice-cutting operation, a few days before she disappeared. I remember because nobody went out there, not even kids messing around, not that late. I didn't think much of it at the time. I've thought about it a lot since." Static crackled faintly on the line. "She wasn't alone, either. There was a car parked near the tree line, somebody else's. I never got a good look at it. I figured it wasn't my business. I don't figure that anymore." "Do you remember anything about the car? Color, make, anything—" The line went dead. Miles lowered the phone slowly, staring at it. "Who was that?" Chase asked, already crossing back into the room, the fight suddenly smaller, pushed aside by something colder. "I don't know. Wouldn't give a name." Miles's mind was already working it, some old instinct pulling him back into focus despite everything still sitting raw in his chest. "They said they saw Dani at the ice-cutting operation a few days before she disappeared. Said there was a car parked near the tree line. Somebody else's." Chase set his bag back down slowly. "That's not nothing." "No," Miles said. "It's not." They stood there a moment, several feet apart, the fight still sitting unfinished and ugly in the space between them, both of them too caught in the pull of the tip to pick it back up, and too stubborn to be the one who brought it up again once the moment passed.