13. Xander
XANDER
Sleep was a joke. For the second night—or third, who was counting—I was back on the penthouse balcony, watching the city breathe below. The lights weren't a fuzzy blob anymore. They were sharp, distinct. Too clear.
For twelve years, I’d worn the guilt. Played the part of the drunken fuck-up because it was the only role I had left. It’s a hard habit to break.
The sliding door whispered open behind me. Leo.
He didn’t ask if I couldn’t sleep. He knew better. He just joined me at the railing, two glasses in his hand. He passed one to me. Whiskey.
We stood there for a minute, the silence easy.
“She thought I was driving,” I said, not to him, but to the skyline.
Leo took a slow sip from his glass, his gaze fixed forward. “Yeah,” he said, his voice low. “She did.”
“What is it?” The question had been bugging me for hours. “What makes you so sure I wasn’t?”
He leaned against the railing. “It was the little things over the years when you were wasted or half asleep. The way you’d talk about Jimmy—not with guilt, but confusion.
Like you couldn’t put the pieces together.
” He paused, looking straight at me. “And honestly? It never made sense that you’d drive drunk.
Not you. The guy I know fucks himself up, sure.
But you don’t gamble with other people’s lives. ”
He was right. I wouldn’t have put Jimmy at risk. Never.
“But what I could never figure out,” Leo continued, his voice dropping, “is why the cops never made it clear-cut. They’re experts at crash reconstruction. They should’ve known who was driving from the evidence. It’s almost like they didn’t want to.”
He was right . At seventeen, I’d been so scared and so damn grateful not to face vehicular manslaughter charges that I never questioned the vague official report.
I just accepted my banishment. But that missing official conclusion—that’s where the rumors started.
The space where gossip grew, and why my guilt festered.
“I can’t recall what happened that night,” I admitted, my voice raw. “Not really. And I think that’s been the whole fucking problem all along.”
“So what's the plan? How do we fix it?” Leo asked quietly.
I thought of Tara’s challenge, her invitation to meet at sunrise. Not a showdown anymore. A goddamn rescue rope.
“I’m going to solve the mystery,” I said, a new determination hardening my voice. “Not just for me and Tara, but for Jimmy.”
Leo studied me, then nodded. “Good. It’s about damn time.”
I arrived at South Pointe Park at exactly six o’clock, the sky barely brightening with dawn’s first hint. The air tasted like salt; the beach was empty except for a few crazy-early joggers and their dogs.
Tara was impossible to miss, standing at the jetty entrance, hair in a ponytail, wearing expensive running clothes that showed off every athletic curve. She was mid-stretch, one leg kicked behind her, arms up, her body a perfect cutout against the pale sky.
I just stared for a second. This woman who’d been my personal ghost for twelve years. Who’d slapped me in public, then showed up in the middle of the night. Who’d believed I killed her brother, but was now meeting me at dawn to better understand what actually had happened.
She clocked me approaching, her face neutral but not pissed off anymore. Something had changed between us on that rooftop.
“You showed,” she said, dropping her stretch.
“Thought I’d bail?”
She gave a tiny shrug. “Wasn’t convinced either way.”
I pointed to the shoreline path. “So we’re... running?”
“I run every morning,” she stated it as if the fact was obvious. “Five miles minimum. Can you handle it?”
The question came with a dare, and, fuck it, I smiled. “I’m a seasoned athlete, Dr. Swanson. I think I’ll survive.”
Her mouth twitched—almost a smile. “We’ll find out.”
Then she bolted down the path, setting a pace just shy of brutal. I followed, matching her stride. The first mile passed without words, just our breathing and feet hitting packed sand.
I’d expected a casual jog while we talked. But Tara ran like she had demons on her heels, form perfect, focus total. By mile two, I was genuinely working to keep up, seriously impressed by her speed and stamina.
She didn’t just jog to stay fit. She ran like a pro, like someone with years of training. It hit me. I knew jack shit about her beyond our trauma connection and her job as team doctor. What else had I missed about Tara Swanson?
We rounded a curve, and Miami’s skyline appeared—a wall of luxury buildings catching the first sunlight. My penthouse stood among them, a shiny cage I’d walked into without seeing the trap.
At mile three, Tara veered off the main path, leading me up a narrow trail toward the jetty. We slowed on the rough ground until she stopped at a lookout with a killer view of the ocean and city.
We stood there breathing hard, sweat everywhere, the run having burned away some of our awkwardness. Right then, we weren’t victim and perpetrator. We were just two people, hearts hammering, lungs burning, fucking alive.
“You can run,” I said, breaking the quiet. I watched her, trying to connect this disciplined athlete with the vengeful doctor who’d tormented me in the exam room. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, period,” she shot back. She turned fully toward me, intense as hell. “I’ve been digging. Looking at old news about the crash.”
I braced myself. “And?”
“They’re vague. Very vague. Alcohol was ‘believed to be a factor.’ You were ‘involved’ in the crash. Nothing actually says who was driving.” She crossed her arms. “The public police report summary is just as unclear.”
I nodded, goosebumps rising despite the heat. “Leo said the same thing last night. He always thought it was weird they never made a solid conclusion.”
Tara’s eyes widened slightly, as if surprised I was backing her research instead of fighting it. “The whole town believed what they were made to believe,” she said, voice stronger. “What we were all made to believe.”
“Right.”
“The investigating officer,” she continued, voice tight, “was Detective Rick Morrison. His name’s all over the reports, but the conclusions... they’re missing. Or someone deliberately left them out.”
“Morrison,” I repeated, noting the name. First real clue I’d ever had. “He wrote the report?”
“He’s the one who didn’t write the entire conclusion,” she corrected, eyes sharp. “I’m sure he’ll remember you. And he knows what really happened that night.”
The gray water smashed itself against the jetty rocks, a pointless, repetitive violence I understood. For twelve years, I'd done the same thing to myself. I’d swallowed the story whole, never once asking if it was poison.
Now I had a name. Morrison. A target. It wasn't hope, but it was a direction to point the anger.
I turned to her. The look in her eyes wasn't soft. It was the sharp, jagged edge of a world that had just been shattered. Good. We were on the same page.
“He fed us a lie,” I said. It was all that needed saying.
“And we both got fat on it,” she shot back, her voice tight. “So we find him. We find Morrison.”
There was no question in her tone. It was a damn order. An order I was ready to follow.
“A cop who cashes out on a kid’s death doesn’t just vanish,” I said. “He buys a quiet life.”
“Then we make his life loud,” she said, already turning from the water. “He has to be in the system somewhere. Pension, property records… something.”
“And Hank?” I asked.
Her jaw tightened. “He can’t know. He finds out we’re digging, he’ll bury Morrison for good.”
I nodded. “Just us, then.”
She started walking back toward the path, her pace quick, deliberate. “There’s a coffee shop down the road. They’ll have Wi-Fi.”
The coffee shop screamed hipster heaven—outdoor tables, chairs that didn’t match, and enough plant life to qualify as a mini-jungle.
We snagged a corner spot away from the morning zombies still waiting for caffeine to kick in.
Tara ordered two black coffees and whipped out her laptop from the backpack she’d lugged during our run.
“Let’s start with the basics,” she said, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Richard Morrison, a former detective with the Palo Alto Police Department.”
Her fingers flew across the laptop keys, fast and certain.
She attacked a keyboard the same way she did everything else—like she was trying to solve a problem that pissed her off.
Her hair was still damp from our run, pulled back tight, but a few strands had escaped, clinging to the flushed skin of her neck.
And just like that, my head was somewhere else entirely. A few nights ago. Her skin, salty under my tongue. The taste of her. My name, a ragged sound torn from her throat in the dark. A low heat coiled in my gut, and I had to shift in the shitty cafe chair, adjusting my legs. Pathetic.
“He retired about five years ago,” she said, clicking through search results like I wasn’t having a full meltdown across the table. “Thirty years on the force. Decorated officer who specialized in traffic incidents and vehicular homicides.”
“So he’d know his shit,” I said, fighting for a normal voice. “The kind of guy who could look at a crash and tell exactly what went down.”
She nodded, eyes glued to the screen. “Exactly. Which makes the vagueness of that public report even more suspicious.”
I leaned closer. “Does it say where he located to after retirement?”
She clicked another link and let out a surprised “Huh.”
“Naples, Florida.”
“Florida?” I repeated, shock temporarily cooling my hormones. “He’s in the same fucking state as us?”
“Looks that way.” She spun the laptop toward me. The screen showed a local news piece with a photo of an older dude sporting gray hair and a face that had seen some shit. Caption read: “Retired Detective Richard Morrison, now serving as a volunteer with the Naples Marine Conservation Society.”
“Naples is what… three hours from here?” I asked suddenly buzzing with possibility.
“About that,” she confirmed, excitement coloring her cheeks. “We could drive there. Talk to him face-to-face.”
This wasn’t just talk anymore. We could actually do this—find Morrison, grill him about that night, finally get the truth.
“When?” I asked, mentally canceling whatever bullshit I had scheduled.
Tara frowned. “We both have tight schedules. The team, practice, my patients.” Her fingers drummed on the table. “This weekend? Saturday? We could drive down early, be back the same day.”
“Saturday,” I nodded. “I’ll make Leo clear my schedule.”
She hesitated. “Xander... we need to be careful. If my father finds out what we’re doing...”
She didn’t finish. We both knew what that prick was capable of.
“We’ll be sneaky as fuck,” I promised. “Nobody needs to know our business.”
She closed her laptop with a snap. “Saturday, then. I’ll pick you up at six. We should get an early start.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “Another six AM meetup? You really get off on torturing people with early mornings, don’t you?”
Her mouth twitched. “It’s the best time to get stuff done without people bothering you.”
“I can think of other activities that are better without interruption,” I said, voice dropping as I eyed her lips.
Her cheeks went pink, and she looked away. Then she stood up fast, gathering her stuff, the softness gone from her face as quickly as it had come.
“I’ll see you at the facility tomorrow, McCrae,” she said, all business. “Don’t be late for your session.”
As she turned, I nodded toward the cups. “What about your coffee? You didn’t even take a sip.”
She hesitated, a ghost of a smile tugging at her mouth. “Guess I was already wired enough.” Her eyes flicked to mine, softer for a heartbeat, before it was gone. “You can have it.” Then she was gone, walking out without looking back.
I watched her go, grinning like an idiot. Too fucking late for walls now. We both knew it. This truth-hunting mission was already tangled up in something way more complicated.