6. Rowan
Chapter six
Rowan
A s I pushed through Harbor & Slate's heavy oak door, the floor groaned under my boots.
Converted Craftsman houses always complained—a century of Seattle weather had taught the wood to argue with every footstep.
The café's interior sprawled through what had once been a family's living spaces, mismatched furniture scattered across rooms.
Miles claimed a table near the bay window, fingers drumming against his ceramic mug. He'd been there long enough to drain half his coffee.
I settled into the chair across from him. "You look like someone who's been wrestling with bad news."
The barista—college-aged, nose ring, flannel that had seen better days—glanced up from her espresso machine. Her gaze lingered on my notebook before returning to the milk she steamed. I positioned myself so she couldn't read over my shoulder.
"Not exactly bad news." Miles's voice had a brittle edge. "I've decided to tell you what triggered me to contact you. I got a call—an anonymous one. After dinner at Ma's."
I pulled out my fountain pen, but didn't uncap it yet. Somewhere in the back, a toddler let out a delighted shriek.
Miles wrapped both hands around his mug. "It was a digitally distorted voice, but the words were crystal clear. 'Dr. McCabe, you don't know me, but we need to talk about Iris Delacroix. About what really happened at Riverside. About why she's not the only one.'"
The milk steamer gurgled. Behind us, a group of graduate students debated something urgent about postmodern theory.
"They knew her name," I said.
"They knew about Riverside. That's the part that's been eating at me. Iris mentioned it exactly once, during a panic call at two-thirty in the morning."
"What else did they say?"
"Nothing. Line went dead." Miles met my gaze.
I respected his openness by sharing my own story. "I had a partner at the Bureau, agent Lucia Reyes. Baltimore field office."
Miles leaned forward slightly, concentrating on every word.
"We were working a case, investigating PTSD survivors who died after attending this wellness retreat in Virginia—Healing Horizons. Same pattern as what you're describing. People making progress in traditional therapy, then recruited for intensive programs that promised faster results."
"The other side of the country," whispered Miles.
"Lucia was brilliant. Obsessive like me, but in the best way.
She'd stay until midnight cross-referencing financial records, looking for connections the rest of the team missed.
" My pen clicked rhythmically against the notebook.
"The night before she died, she called me at home.
Said she'd found something in the facility's insurance filings.
Proof that their methods weren't only unethical—they were designed to cause psychological damage. "
Miles leaned forward. "What kind of proof?"
"I never found out—car accident on I-95. Black ice, they said. Vehicle went through the guardrail, down into the Patapsco River."
"Fuck."
"They cleaned out her files before I could access them.
Three months of investigation, gone. The official report blamed the weather, but.
.." I stopped clicking the pen. "Lucia was the most careful driver I knew.
Former military, trained in defensive maneuvers. She'd driven through worse conditions."
Miles was quiet, studying my face. He read my emotional temperature, calculating how much pressure I could handle.
"You think they killed her."
"I think she got too close to something they needed to protect." I capped the pen. "I tried to present evidence to my supervisors about the cases Lucia and I were tracking. They swatted it all down. Six months later, I turned in my badge."
Miles's eyes never left mine. "That's why you started the podcast."
"Information wants to be free. Sometimes the only way to get justice is to make enough noise that ignoring you becomes impossible." I rubbed my thumb across the pen's lacquered surface. "But mostly, I started it because I couldn't stand the silence."
Miles reached across the table and covered my fingers with his palm.
"We're both haunted by ghosts," he said quietly.
"Yeah. We are."
The barista had abandoned any pretense of not eavesdropping, but I didn't care. Let her hear about federal agencies and dead partners and the guilt that came from failing the people you'd sworn to protect.
"Miles, have you ever been to Riverside? Are you prepared for what we might discover?"
His laugh rang sharp and insincere. "I stopped being prepared for anything the moment that voicemail started playing."
"Then we do this together."
He nodded. We'd confirmed our partnership.
The rain held off just long enough for my walk home. It hammered my warehouse windows while I hunched over my laptop for three hours, chasing digital breadcrumbs.
My third mug of coffee of the day sat beside a stack of printed documents.
Riverside Mental Health Retreat should have left a paper trail thick enough to choke on—insurance documents, state inspections, and zoning permits for residential treatment facilities.
Patricia Hendricks insisted it was a facility thoroughly investigated.
I found almost nothing.
The business license listed a P.O. Box in Bellevue. No physical address for patient treatment. No residential facility permits, and no inspections for medical equipment or housing compliance.
"What the hell?" I muttered, leaning closer to the screen.
The corporate registration pointed to something called Meridian Wellness Group, a holding company that owned dozens of similar entities across six states, all with the same pattern—administrative addresses, no treatment facilities, and no evidence that patients ever set foot in actual buildings.
I pulled up Dr. Celeste Harrow's published research, cross-referencing her methodologies with Riverside's stated treatment protocols. From a layperson's view, her papers were brilliant, but they described clinical trials conducted in university settings, not luxury retreat centers.
My phone buzzed—a text from an old Bureau contact I'd reached out to earlier.
Kyle: Can't find any federal oversight records for Riverside. No Medicare billing or insurance claims processed. Are you sure this place actually treats patients?
I stared at my evidence wall with Iris's photo pinned beside eight others who'd allegedly attended similar programs.
If Riverside didn't operate a treatment facility, where would these people have gone?
My hands shook as I opened a new browser tab, searching for the address listed on Meridian's corporate documents.
Street view images loaded slowly, revealing a generic office park in Bellevue's tech corridor.
Glass and steel buildings that housed accounting firms, software companies, and dental practices.
Suite 418 occupied the fourth floor of one of those buildings.
"Son of a bitch," I breathed.
The intensive residential treatment program that had recruited Iris was a front. Whatever happened to her didn't happen at a licensed medical facility with trained staff and ethical oversight. It happened somewhere else entirely that didn't exist in official records.
I grabbed my phone, typed a text to Miles, and then deleted it. Started again.
Rowan: Need to show you something. Can you meet me tonight?
Miles: How bad?
Rowan: Bad enough that we need to see it ourselves.
I pushed back from my desk. If Riverside operated out of a Bellevue office building, we needed to see what happened there after business hours. We needed to understand how they'd convinced Iris and countless others to trust them with their healing.
And we needed to do it before anyone realized we were asking the right questions.
My phone buzzed.
Miles: Where and when?
I looked at the rain streaking my windows, then at the address glowing on my laptop screen.
Rowan: 8 PM. Bellevue. Bring a raincoat. And Miles? Don't tell anyone where you're going.
Bellevue's office parks transformed after dark into monuments to corporate anonymity. Identical glass towers loomed along NE 8th, their mirrored skins catching only the sodium glow of streetlights and the red pulse of traffic on I-405.
My car idled in a visitor parking space with a clear view of 3250 156th Avenue SE.
My wipers squeaked every few seconds as rain drummed against the windshield.
The building looked exactly like what it was—expensive mediocrity designed to house accountants and insurance adjusters and whoever else made their living pushing paper through fluorescent-lit cubicles.
Miles pulled into the space beside me, his hybrid making no sound except the soft hiss of tires on wet asphalt. He climbed out clutching a thermos that steamed when he opened his car door.
I rolled down my passenger window. "Get in before you drown."
He slid into the seat beside me. His hair was damp, and water droplets clung to his eyelashes.
"So this is where the magic happens," Miles said, peering through the rain-streaked windshield at the building. "Very corporate dystopia meets suburban dental practice. I'm getting strong vibes of root canals and quarterly reports."
"Suite 418—this building," I said, pointing toward the doors. "Meridian Wellness Group. That's Riverside's parent company."
Miles unscrewed his thermos cap, releasing a cloud of coffee-scented steam. "Looks like a place where dreams die slowly, one performance review at a time. Are we sure this is right?"
"Corporate registration, business license, insurance filings—they all point here." I pulled out my notebook, fountain pen ready. "Whatever happened to Iris, it started in that building."
Miles took a sip of coffee, then another. "Okay, we're officially the world's least intimidating surveillance team. I'm half expecting someone to ask if we need directions to the real stakeout."
I studied his profile in the dashboard's green glow. "You're nervous."