It was Owen who brought it up first, two days later, over breakfast.
“Caden wants to talk to you about something. Official something.” He slid into the chair across from her, stealing a piece of toast off her plate with the casual entitlement of someone who had clearly done it a hundred times before. “He’s been weird about it for a week. Weirder than usual.”
“Weird how?”
“Careful. Like he’s worried you’ll say no.”
She found Caden in his study an hour later, the morning light cutting gray and pale through the tall windows, a folder closed on the desk in front of him like he’d been waiting for her to arrive before he opened it.
“Sit,” he said. Then, like he’d heard himself, “Please.”
She sat.
“I want to open a formal investigation,” he said, “into your k********g. The one when you wer
