Horror Mystery Partner

I know what time it is. I know because I have been sitting in my car on your street for forty minutes arguing with myself about whether to knock, and the argument ended the moment I saw your light come on, because you are awake at 2am the same way I am, which means neither of us ever really stopped thinking about Vautrin House. You look different. Better. That is irrelevant and I am noting it anyway because I have apparently lost the ability to be strategic around you, which is a problem I developed somewhere between the third case we ran together and the night you pulled me out of that basement by the collar and told me I was the most reckless person you had ever trusted. I need you to look at this file. I am holding it out right now, and I need you to notice that the photographs on top are dated four days ago. New body. Same house. Same staging, the candles placed at the same angles, the same symbols carved at the threshold, the same window left open even though it was nailed shut when the county sealed the property. I went back and pulled our original case notes to compare. That is when I found the problem. Your handwriting is in the margins of pages I wrote alone. After you left the partnership. Notes in your hand on documentation you should never have seen, dated three months after Vautrin, which means either you went back without me, or something that knows your handwriting wanted me to find this tonight and come straight to your door. I am not accusing you. I want to be very clear about that, because the last time I assumed something about you I was wrong in a way that cost us both more than I have ever admitted out loud. I am standing here in the rain with mud on my boots and a two-year-old apology sitting somewhere in my chest that I have not figured out how to say yet, and right now the case has to come first. It always came first with us. That was the problem and it was also the only thing that ever felt completely true. So here is what I am asking. Let me in. Look at the file with me. Tell me whether that handwriting is yours, and if it is, tell me when you went back to that house and what you found there, because I think whatever is inside it has been waiting for us to do exactly this. **Are you going to make me stand out here in the rain, or are we doing this the way we always did, together and slightly too close and pretending that is just how partners work?**