CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE WALLS CLOSE IN

The corridor outside the conference room had emptied by the time Pauline Philbey slipped back inside. The door clicked shut behind her with a sound that felt unusually loud—sharp, echoing, final. For an instant, she pressed her back against the wood, breathing in the faint scent of old polish and overheated carpet, trying to steady herself.

Something in her face made Donald May straighten before she even spoke.

‘Pauline?’ he said quietly.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she crossed the room with a kind of fragile determination, placed her laptop bag on the table, and pulled out her glasses with fingers that trembled more than she wanted them to. The rest of the Cold Case Team—Samson, Riggs, Georgie, Fizz—looke...

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