Prairie Nightingale meditated on the gold-leaf letters decorating the privacy glass in front of her: Prairie Hawk Investigations.

It was quiet on the seventh floor of the antique Baylor Building. So quiet, she could hear muffled voices coming from the only other office on the floor. That office belonged to a therapist Prairie and her ex-husband had seen together before they got divorced.

She wondered what the couple was talking about. When she and Greg saw the therapist, Greg had mostly complained about not being adequately appreciated, while Prairie had fumbled for the words to describe what it felt like to lose herself under the invisible burden of making Greg and her children’s lives amazing, such that she’d once filled out a school permission slip and forgotten her own last name.

It was Nightingale. Prairie Hawk Nightingale.

Now, several years later, here was her name emblazoned in gold on a door leading to a spacious office in a historic downtown Green Bay building. Prairie would have expected this to mean that she finally knew exactly who she was: A mother of two daughters. A homemaker. A woman interesting to a handsome agent of the FBI, not for crimes, but for her mind, and a little bit for how good her backside looked in jeans.

She was also, as the gold letters declared, a private investigator.

It wasn’t an outcome she’d planned on when she inserted herself in the murder investigation of Lisa Radcliffe last fall. Lisa had been a mom friend of Prairie’s. Discovering exactly how she died at the hands of her husband, Chris, had carved a piece out of Prairie’s heart that she could never replace.

Her innate curiosity, along with a talent for vital pattern recognition, were what had inspired Prairie to invite three incredible women to take a leap into the unknown with her: the capable executive assistant who’d been helping Prairie run her household since her divorce; her ex-mother-in-law, who’d become a forensic genealogist in retirement; and a nineteen-year-old up-and-coming true crime podcaster who’d impressed Prairie with her clear-eyed commitment to equity.

So far, the four of them had leaped only to stumble. No one was knocking on their door. This morning would be the first time they’d gathered at the office in months. Frequently, Prairie found herself sitting straight up in bed in the middle of the night, her heart racing, thinking about the zero dollars she and these women were making and the regret they must feel for believing in her.

She reached out and touched the gold letters.

The glass flew backward from her fingertips.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Marian Banks stood in front of her, holding open the door Prairie had just been sadly fondling. “You know I could see your shadow staring in at me through the glass? It was more than a little creepy.”

No doubt it had been creepy. And, Prairie could admit, maudlin. She resettled her trusty crossbody messenger bag on her shoulder, determined to adjust her attitude. “Am I late?”

Marian had called the partners together on a Thursday morning with little more than an hour’s notice, requiring Prairie to inform her ex that he would have to drop off their daughters for their morning activities. Greg had told her, in turn, that this errand was not “on his list,” forcing Prairie to counter that both appointments were “on the shared calendar,” and it was Greg’s day to be in charge of their girls.

“No, you’re early,” Marian said. “I lied about what time I needed you. Good thing, too. I can already tell you’re in a state, and I haven’t told you about the mouse poop on the conference table yet.”

“You’re joking. How?” Had it been that long since Prairie stopped by the office? She crossed the room to inspect the surface of the table. “Motherlover, that is mouse poop. I was hoping it was a few black sesame seeds or something. This is tragic.” Their office had become as dilapidated as Prairie’s dream of a justice-focused private investigations agency—neglected so long, it had fallen into a rodent-infested state of near-abandonment.

“For heaven’s sake.” Marian walked over to the bank of beautiful stone-framed windows on the street-facing wall and pulled up the blinds. A tasteful glimpse of softly rounded belly peeked out from beneath her silky crop top. Marian had turned up for this morning’s meeting with fully contoured makeup and false eyelashes. Prairie couldn’t help but appreciate how the natural light coming through the window caught the shine of Marian’s glossy, artificially messy

brunette updo—though her business partner’s glamour made the office look considerably worse.

“I thought we were paying for housekeeping.” She gingerly sat down on one of the rolling leather office chairs.

“We were,” Marian confirmed. “Until it was no longer safe for our finances to pay them.”

They’d leased the office just over a year ago, riding the high of Prairie’s key role in Chris Radcliffe’s arrest, and then they’d studied and PI-licensed and financial-planned themselves into a state of arrogant certainty. But it turned out that the good people of northeastern Wisconsin were wary of a detective agency composed of women who had no interest in surveilling affair partners or stalking injured factory workers whose supervisors suspected them of workers’ comp fraud.

Green Bay wasn’t keen on outsiders who didn’t seem to be following the rules. And even though Prairie’s business partners had all lived in Green Bay their entire lives, Prairie wasn’t from here, and didn’t follow the rules, and that was enough.

“We’d be making a profit if we took the cheater jobs,” Marian said. “But never mind. I’ve got something up my sleeve this morning that—”

A blaring ringtone drowned out whatever she had been about to say. When Prairie fished her phone out of her bag, she saw Greg’s name on its screen. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to take this.”

Marian’s sour frown at the intrusion came and went so quickly, Prairie would have thought she’d imagined it if she didn’t know Marian so well.

With a sigh, she accepted her phone call.

“Hey, so, there’s a bit of a situation with Maelynn’s thing,” Greg said before a blast of white noise forced Prairie to put the call on speaker.

Wind, she guessed. The university was close to the bay. Their younger daughter was on her way to attend math day camp with adolescents three to five years older than her so she could learn math Prairie didn’t remember ever learning and had certainly never used.

“Why are you still at drop-off?” Prairie asked.

“They’re saying she was supposed to do a prescreen for the session that starts next week. They want it right now.”

“I told you about the prescreen.”

“Well, I don’t have it in my email.”

Greg’s mother, Joyce Ozmanski, clomped through the open office door. Joyce lived in a mother-in-law apartment separated by a breezeway from Prairie’s house, and she was in and out of Prairie’s living space all the time. She’d recently purchased a pair of artsy clogs with wooden soles. Prairie heard the sound of Joyce’s clogs in her sleep.

“Good morning, ladies!” Joyce smoothed a curl of her red-and-golden-streaked hair behind her ear. She looked stylish today in wide-legged gaucho pants and a long teal jacket. “Oh, you’re on the phone, Prairie.”

“I didn’t email it,” Prairie told her ex, throwing Joyce a distracted wave. “I put it in the thread on Slack.”

“Heavens, is this rodent droppings on the table?” Joyce asked at a volume the therapist down the hall could probably hear.

“The Wi-Fi isn’t good where I am,” Greg complained. “I can’t get Slack to load. Can you text me the link?”

“Mom?” Maelynn’s voice broke in, ripe with rising panic. “Would you come pick me up?”

Thirteen years old, gifted, autistic, deeply empathetic, and socially anxious, Maelynn sometimes melted down when things didn’t go to plan.

Math camp had started fifteen minutes ago.

Greg made a choking noise. “Hon, no, we’ve got this. Prairie, I hate to interrupt your meeting or whatever, but if you could just do the form for me quick and then let me know when it’s ready?”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Joyce asked. “Do you need me to go pick up Maelynn?”

“No,” Prairie mouthed back silently. “We’ve got this.”

Marian rolled her eyes.