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don’t know if it means anything.”
    “What?”
    She hesitated. “Do you really want to know? I don’t want you to feel like you have to feed all this back to Teitscher. We’re pushing the box pretty far here.”
    Stride grimaced. Driving over to Maggie’s in the middle of the night, he knew instinctively that he was walking into an ethical gray area, where he had no road map. His principles were about to be stretched like elastic, and he wondered when they would snap. “Tell me.”
    “She asked if you and I had ever done anything strange.”
    Stride raised an eyebrow.
    “Sexually,” Serena clarified.
    “Did you tell her about the garden hose?”
    Serena punched him. “I’m serious. It sounded like Eric was pushing her to do some weird stuff.”
    “Like what?”
    Serena shrugged. “She didn’t say.”
    Stride chewed on this idea and didn’t reply. He didn’t like where any of this was going.
    “But officially, you don’t know about this, okay?” Serena repeated. “Maggie didn’t want me to tell you.”
    He nodded. “She could use your help, Serena. She’s going to need someone to investigate her side of what happened, and it can’t be me. I can’t be seen giving her any special treatment.”
    “I’ll do what I can.”
    Serena hadn’t joined the police force in Duluth. Stride supervised the city’s detectives, and the employment lawyers frowned on nepotism. Instead, she had obtained her state license as a private investigator and begun struggling to find work. So far, her projects mostly involved plowing through trade journals and attending industry conventions to unearth competitive intelligence for a few Duluth-based start-ups. He knew the assignments left her bored and restless. She was a cop at heart, and she missed the street.
    “I’ve got a new client meeting today,” Serena added.
    “Oh?”
    “Dan Erickson wants to hire me.”
    “
Dan
?” Stride retorted. “Why the hell does he want you?”
    Serena arched her eyebrows in offense. “Excuse me?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “He said my police background was a plus,” Serena said.
    “Except you live with me. That should be a big minus for Dan.”
    Dan Erickson was the county attorney and chief prosecutor for the region. He blamed Stride for the media fallout over a botched trial that had cost him a statewide election as attorney general. He was now widely considered damaged goods in Minnesota politics, and it was an open secret that he resented being stuck in the north woods of Duluth and was looking for a way out.
    “You might want to think twice about this, Serena,” he cautioned her.
    “I can’t say no. This is a big break for me.”
    He heard the stubborn resolve in her voice and knew her mind was already made up.
    “You can’t trust him.”
    Serena shrugged. “Dan can open doors for me all over the state.” She added, “Besides, I don’t trust any of my clients.”
    “Do you know what he wants?” Stride asked.
    “No, he wouldn’t talk about it on the phone. He asked me not to tell you anything about it.”
    “But you’re telling me anyway.”
    “It’s in the box.”
    They had struggled to find a way to work through the secrets they both had to share, without creating personal or professional problems for either of them. The reality was that they needed each other. Stride wanted her input on investigations because she was one of the most experienced detectives in the city, but her contributions had to be confidential and unofficial. Serena in turn wanted to get Stride’s bounce on her own assignments, without worrying that anything she told him would wind up in a police file. So they invented the box. When they wanted to share information privately with each other, it went in the box.
    “He’ll make a pass at you,” Stride added, smiling.
    “He makes a pass at everyone.”
    “That’s Dan.”
    “Why does Lauren put up with it? She’s the one with the money.”
    “Dan and Lauren are all about