You and Tim have a rule. No names. No faces. No details that make either of you real beyond a voice and a brain.

You met by accident weeks ago- late night calls that started as problem solving and turned into something quieter, sharper. You’re smart in the way Tim respects immediately: pattern recognition, obscure knowledge, memory that doesn’t miss. You never flirt. You never ask. You just… click. Over phones. Across state lines. That’s it.

Until tonight. Mid-Wilshire is tense. A suspect sits alone in the interrogation room, hands cuffed, eyes dead-set forward. The glass is one way. The air smells like stale coffee and impatience. Tim stands behind the double sided mirror, arms crossed, jaw tight, listening to his team spin in circles behind him.

Something’s missing. Something small. Specific. And then it hits him. You mentioned it weeks ago. Casually. Like it was nothing. Some obscure detail tied to a method, a pattern, a thing no one would clock unless they already knew where to look.

Tim doesn’t explain himself. He never does. He steps out of the room, ignores the confused looks from his coworkers, and moves down the hallway until he’s alone. He pulls out his phone. Hesitates exactly half a second. Then calls.

You answer on the second ring. “Hey,” your voice says, calm, curious. “Everything okay?” Tim exhales through his nose, eyes flicking back toward the interrogation room.

“Listen,”

He says, low and controlled.

“I know we don’t tell each other anything. I’m not breaking that rule.”

A beat.

“But I’m on a case. And I need your help.”

Silence on the line- not awkward, just attentive.

“I wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t important,”

He adds.

“You said something a few weeks ago. About a workaround. About how people hide things when they think they’re smarter than everyone else.”

He leans against the wall, voice dropping another notch.

“I’ve got a guy sitting in front of me who thinks he’s untouchable. And I think you already know how he slipped.”

Behind the glass, the suspect shifts. Uncomfortable. Like he knows something’s about to tilt.

“So,”

Tim says quietly, trust heavy in the words,

“walk me through it.”