Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
Logan
I slammed the door behind me so hard it rattled the wall. A dozen curses all welled up from my throat at the same time, and the only reason I didn’t start shouting was because I didn’t know which one to say first.
Every person in the office watched me with wide eyes and a silent mouth as I stomped over to my desk and collapsed into my chair. My head hit the solid top of my desk with an audible thunk, and I groaned into my own paperwork.
The noise of the FPA office slowly started up again, but I could tell just from the sound of people’s footsteps that my coworkers were giving me a wide berth.
Eventually, a familiar pair of shoes stepped into my line of sight, and I looked up to see Roland standing beside my desk with an eyebrow raised and a concerned look on his face.
“Soooo, I take it your meeting with my brother didn’t go well.”
In was in moments like this when I regretted that my best friend and partner detective was also our Chief’s younger brother. With anyone else, I could bitch about my boss without consequences. With Roland, I’d feel too guilty saying bad things about his own brother right to his face. Plus, he might end up revealing what I’d said to Mason. He wouldn’t mean to, Roland would never snitch on me, but he was also a terrible liar and would likely end up saying something unintentionally.
“It went fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “Those kidnappers we caught trying to abduct several kids were caught red-handed. We’ve got a watertight case against them. There’s no question that they’re going to jail.”
Propping his hip against the corner of my desk, Roland physically hauled me up so I was sitting upright in my chair. “Then what’s all this attitude about?”
“Those bastards haven’t said a thing about who they’re working for. They claim they were acting on their own, and apparently, there isn’t enough evidence to prove otherwise. I wanted to hold off and continue pressing them, maybe offer them a better plea deal if they’ll give us more info on the Bell ringers, but apparently the decision is out of my hands and above my pay grade. The higher-ups don’t want to risk a surefire conviction for one that may or may not happen in the future. Never mind what keeps people the safest, right. Just go for what’s easiest.”
With another loud groan, I let my head drop back to the table.
Roland’s hand thumped against my back a few times in a show of support. “Well, at least some of the bad guys are going behind bars, right. That’s what we’re here for after all.”
My mouth pressed against the paperwork on my desk, muffling my voice. “Those guys are just lackies. Losing them won’t even slow the Bell ringers down. Plus, how much will attempted kidnapping get? A few years? Soon enough, they’ll be out and free to crawl back to their masters.”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but the Bell ringer case wasn’t going well.
We’d had one good success two months ago, when we set up the sting-operation and managed to catch some of the kidnappers and save multiple kids in one go.
Two months.
That should have been plenty of time to make more headway in the case, but after that night, all evidence of the Bell ringers had seemingly disappeared. Like pruning the limb of a tree, they had immediately erased all evidence of their access to home security systems, making it look like nothing had ever been amiss in the first place.
That wouldn’t stop them, though. They had more than one way to get their hands on vulnerable kids. Without access to home security systems, they’d just rely more on altering adoption records in hospitals, like the case that Damien and Sebastian had brought down. Or any of the other “supply chains” they had set up for their human chattel.
The metaphor was overused, but I couldn’t help but think of the ancient Greek hero Hercules fighting the hydra. When we cut off one branch of the Bell ringers organization, more would just pop up.
Except, unlike with Hercules, we had no way to cauterize the wounds.
“What about your boyfriend?”
Roland’s question had me sitting up so fast my chair tipped onto its two back legs.
“What’re you talking about?”
Roland caught my chair before I topped over. “Clay Dahler. He’s one of the Bell ringer’s victims and was with them for years. We’ve already determined that there must be a lot of influential people backing the Bell ringers. Show him a list of possible suspects. Heck, show him a list of everyone who could possibly cover this kind of thing up. There are only so many people with that much power and resources. See if he recognizes anyone.”
I slammed my hand down on the top of the desk, and several stacks of paperwork fell to the floor.
“No way. I’m not putting him through something like that. He’s already told me everything he knows. Making him look through lists and lists of people, hoping he recognizes someone, will just stress him out for no reason. If he isn’t able to help, he’ll feel like he’s failed, and the guilt will eat him up. And if he did recognize someone…”
I thought back to the multiple times I’d helped him while he broke down or talked him through a panic attack over the phone. He was getting better, but he wasn’t free from his trauma. In the two months since the start of our relationship, he’d called me three times in the early hours of the morning when a nightmare had triggered a flashback, and he needed help finding his way back to reality.
“No,” I said with even more conviction. “I could never put that kind of pressure on him. He’s made so much progress, and I won’t risk setting back his healing.”
Sighing deeply, Roland bent down and retrieved my paperwork from the floor. “All right. Well, in that case, we may just have to accept that this is the best we’re going to be able to achieve for now. Until more evidence is uncovered, there’s not much we can do.”
He was right. It aggravated every instinct I had until I nearly wanted to hiss like a cat whose fur had been rubbed the wrong way, but I had no argument for Roland.
This was the best we could do for now. It was just a shame that our best wasn’t good enough.