Chapter 8
Ben
Two days after the raid, seventy-five faces stared back at me from my dining room wall.
Donovan and I had cleared the sparse furniture and covered the drywall with a grid of personnel photos.
Every sworn officer, every civilian employee, every face in the Summit Falls Police Department arranged in neat rows under the harsh overhead light.
The files Chief Rawlings had given us were spread across the kitchen counter, and the takeout we’d picked up an hour ago sat half eaten beside them, going cold.
Somewhere in that grid was a traitor. Maybe more than one.
Donovan stood beside me, arms crossed, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers. We’d been at this for two hours, sorting the department into categories. Low-risk. Medium-risk. High-risk. The system was crude, but it was a place to start.
“This is not what I thought I would be doing when I signed on with Citadel,” Donovan said. “Honestly, I hate this part.”
“Which part?”
“Looking at a wall of cops and knowing one of them sold out.” He took a long pull from his beer. “These people took an oath to protect and serve. And someone decided it didn’t mean anything.”
I didn’t have an answer for that. The betrayal cut deeper than the investigation itself—the knowledge that someone wearing the badge had looked at their fellow officers and decided to sell them out.
So far, only one photo had come off the wall entirely. Chief Rawlings, removed and set facedown on the kitchen counter.
Even that hadn’t been unanimous.
“I still say it would be a brilliant play,” Donovan had argued earlier. “You’re dirty, you suspect someone’s getting close, so you call in outside investigators yourself. Point them at everyone else. You look proactive, concerned, completely above suspicion.”
“You really think Rawlings is playing us?”
“No.” He’d shrugged. “But I’ve been wrong before.”
I’d put Rawlings back on the wall after that. Off to the side, in a category of his own. Not eliminated. Just unlikely.
The low-risk section was growing steadily.
Administrative staff, records clerks, the civilians who kept the department running but wouldn’t have had access to operational details about Monday night’s raid.
The tip-off had come fast—whoever warned those dealers knew the raid was happening while the team was still staging.
That meant someone with real-time tactical information.
Which pointed directly at someone on the entry team.
I found Sergeant Vance’s photo and studied it. He’d run the raid. Professional, competent, helpful since we’d arrived. Nothing about him raised flags.
He stayed in medium.
“Reeves and Martinez?” Donovan asked.
“Same. Anyone who was on that raid stays in medium until we can clear them.” I pinned both photos in the cluster with Vance. Martinez, the guy who always seemed to have his phone out. Reeves, the youngest on the team, still learning. Neither felt like a traitor, but feelings weren’t evidence.
Donovan’s gaze settled on another photo. Seth Briggson. The man’s permanent scowl came through even in his official portrait.
“I want to put him in high-risk,” Donovan said. “Badly.”
“Because he’s an asshole?”
“Because being an asshole that consistently takes effort. Makes me wonder what he’s compensating for.”
“Or he’s just an asshole.” I pinned Briggson’s photo back in medium, though it pained me. “We can’t flag everyone we don’t like.”
“We could.” Donovan’s mouth twitched. “Wouldn’t it be perfect if it turned out to be him? Catch the traitor and take down the department’s biggest jerk in one move.”
“Dream scenario.”
“A man can hope.”
My phone buzzed on the counter. Jace Monroe, Citadel’s tech guru calling from the Denver office. I put it on speaker and set it between us.
“Hey, Jace. You’re on with me and Donovan.”
“Excellent. My two favorite dog handlers, together at last.” Jace’s voice carried the easy amusement of a man who got to watch field operations from the safety of a climate-controlled office.
“How’s life in Ski Town, USA? Befriended any Saint Bernards with tiny barrels of whiskey around their necks? ”
“We’re working,” I said.
“Working. Right. Meanwhile, I’m running data analysis on seventy-five cops while you two play fetch and drink craft beer. The injustice is staggering.”
Donovan snorted. “You wouldn’t last a day in the field.”
“I wouldn’t last an hour, and I’m deeply at peace with that.
God invented remote work for a reason.” Keys clattered in the background.
“Okay, business. I ran those phone records you asked about after the raid. Every device associated with every officer on the entry team—calls, texts, data usage. The hour before, the hour after.”
“And?”
“Nothing. Clean across the board. No burner numbers, no encrypted apps, no contact with anyone outside normal patterns.” More typing. “I know it wouldn’t have been admissible anyway, but I was hoping someone would be careless enough to leave us a trail. Point us in the right direction, at least.”
I’d expected as much, but hearing it confirmed still landed heavy. Whoever leaked the raid intel knew what they were doing.
“What about financials?” Donovan asked.
“Still running. Bank records take longer, even with my don’t-ask-how-I-got-this-definitely-not-admissible-in-court methods.
I’m looking for the usual red flags—mysterious deposits, lifestyle changes, sudden debt payoffs.
Stuff that screams I’m taking bribes, but I’m too dumb to launder properly.
” A pause. “Should have something in a day or two. Sooner if one of them is exceptionally stupid.”
“Let’s hope for stupid,” I said.
“Always do.” Jace’s tone shifted, the humor draining away. “Seriously, though—watch yourselves out there. Whoever this is has solid tradecraft. They know how to cover their tracks. You’re not dealing with some rookie who got greedy. This is someone with training, experience, or both.”
“Noted.”
“Good. Now go scratch behind Jolly’s ears for me. Tell him Uncle Jace says hi and that I’m deeply jealous of his life choices.”
The line went dead.
Donovan finished his beer and set the empty on the counter. “Uncle Jace.” He rolled his eyes.
“He’s always wanted a dog. Allergies.”
“That tracks.”
I turned back to the wall, but the faces were starting to blur together. Suspicion had a way of spreading like a stain until everyone looked guilty. That was the danger of this work—paranoia was useful right up until the moment it made you see enemies everywhere.
But I slid everyone who’d been part of the raid from medium- to high-risk. Martinez, Briggson, Reeves. Even Vance.
Donovan didn’t argue.
He picked up one of the files on the counter, flipping through the pages Rawlings had provided. His finger stopped on a photo clipped to the inside of a folder. Not a cop. A businessman.
“Jonathan Porter,” he read. “Real estate developer. Owns half the commercial property in town.”
I nodded, turning away from the suspect wall. “Rawlings thinks he’s connected to the syndicate.”
“Based on what?”
I joined him at the counter. “Porter’s properties have been completely untouched by the drug crisis. No overdoses, no deals gone bad, no complaints from tenants about suspicious activity. In a town where this stuff is showing up everywhere, his buildings are clean.”
“Could be good management.”
“Could be.” I didn’t believe it. Neither did Donovan. “There’s more. Six months ago, an anonymous tip came in about suspicious activity at one of Porter’s warehouses out by the highway. Patrol unit responded, found nothing.”
“Nothing as in empty?”
“Nothing as in scrubbed. The responding officer noted in his report that the floors looked recently cleaned. Industrial grade.”
Donovan shook his head. “Sounds like the kind of cleaning you do when you’re eliminating evidence.”
“Yep.” I pulled out the report and handed it to him. “Tip gets logged, word gets out through whatever channel the leak uses, and by the time anyone shows up, there’s nothing to find. Case went nowhere. No follow-up.”
Donovan’s jaw tightened as he scanned the report. “Someone inside the department warned them. Gave them time to clear the place before officers arrived.”
“That’s Rawlings’s read.”
We both looked at Porter’s photo. The man had the polished look of someone who’d never worried about a bill in his life. Styled hair, expensive suit, teeth too white to be natural, and a smile that belonged on a campaign poster.
“What a prick,” Donovan said.
“Probably.”
Porter wasn’t our primary target. Finding the dirty cops was. But if Rawlings was right, whoever we identified inside the department would eventually lead us up the chain to Porter and the rest of the operation. Might as well take down as many people as we could.
I pulled another file from the stack. The county coroner’s summary on the drug itself.
“Drift,” I said. “That’s what they’re calling it on the street.”
“Drift. Sexy.” Donovan leaned in to read over my shoulder. “Designer fentanyl?”
“Fentanyl base with modifications that make it harder to detect with standard field tests. The name comes from ski culture—drifting down the mountain, floating, that kind of thing.” I flipped the page.
“Also describes what happens when you overdose. Users drift away. Five deaths in the past eight months, all tourists.”
“Tourists,” Donovan repeated. “Convenient.”
“That’s part of how it’s stayed under the radar. Victims aren’t locals. Families don’t stick around to ask questions. Easy to write off as out-of-towners who brought their own supply and got unlucky.”
The cynicism of it sat heavy in my chest. A distribution network operating in plain sight because the bodies were easy to dismiss. Outsiders with problems. Not Summit Falls’s concern.
“Fentanyl variant,” Donovan said, reading over my shoulder. He was quiet for a moment. “You know what that means for Jolly.”