Chapter 9 #2
He held my gaze for a beat longer than necessary, making sure I meant it. Behind us, Reeves and another officer hauled the suspect to his feet and started walking him back toward the cabin. The man stumbled through the underbrush, cuffed and deflated, the fight drained out of him completely.
I stayed in the trees for one more second, taking a breath, kneeling down by Jolly. That blade had been aimed at his neck, and I’d gotten my arm in the way by a margin I didn’t want to calculate.
Way too fucking close.
Jolly sat beside me in the pine needles, crunching his ball, perfectly content. I pressed my knuckles against the top of his head, the spot where the bone was thick and warm, and held them there.
Then I stood up. Pulled Jolly back toward the cabin. There was more work to do.
Once the cabin was fully secured, four suspects cuffed and separated, rooms cleared, I sent Jolly back in to sweep.
Just like the first raid, he worked through the rooms as he’d been trained to.
Systematic. Nose to every surface, every seam, every joint where wall met floor.
Past the card table where the product was already bagged and tagged.
That was someone else’s job. Jolly was hunting for the things that didn’t want to be found.
Kitchen. Bathroom. Down the hallway into the first bedroom. Nothing. Into the second.
He stopped. His head dropped. His breathing shortened. He sat.
Strong alert. Something behind the wall.
“Got a hit. Second bedroom, north wall.”
I immediately pulled him out of the room and moved him down the hallway, doing a quick check in case he was showing signs of any exposure to fentanyl.
But his eyes were clear and breathing normal.
He hadn’t lingered, and his exposure was minimal.
He was fine. I took him outside, and we waited on the back porch while they went to work.
It didn’t take long. A section of drywall had been cut and replaced, the seams mudded over and painted. Behind it, a cavity between the studs. Inside, wrapped in plastic and duct tape, enough packaged Drift to fill a grocery bag.
Not a massive haul. But real. Enough to confirm this cabin had been an active distribution point.
Vance appeared in the doorway. He looked at the wall cavity, then at the product, then back at me.
“You okay?” He nodded toward my wrapped forearm.
“Yeah. Fine. Jolly took down the runner.”
Vance smiled. “Good dog. Strong argument for a K9 program here.”
He turned and went back to running the scene. Evidence collection, suspect processing, radio traffic. Everything by the book.
We watched officers move in and out of the cabin for a while, Jolly dozing against my leg, until Vance told us to clear out. Everyone was heading back to the station.
The Summit Falls police station was bright and loud when we got back, which was unusual for a quarter to midnight.
Word had spread. A successful drug raid with product and suspects in custody had pulled people in.
Officers who weren’t on shift showed up anyway, drawn by the energy of a win the department hadn’t had in a while.
The suspects were processed through booking.
The man at the card table had been separated from the three users.
The runner came in from the hospital with both arms wrapped, one from Jolly, one from the knife he’d been stupid enough to pull.
Vance handled the coordination with the same efficiency he’d had all night.
An EMT at the station took one look at my arm, peeled back Donovan’s field dressing, and told me I needed stitches.
I told her I needed to finish my deployment report.
She told me the deployment report would still be there in twenty minutes, and that if I didn’t get the cut closed properly, I’d be explaining to my employer why their contractor was out of commission with an infected forearm.
She had a point.
Six stitches, a fresh bandage, and a tetanus booster I probably didn’t need, and I was back at the desk.
I was finishing the K9 deployment report when Donovan dropped into the chair across from me and set two coffees between us.
“The guy at the table talked after all. No lawyer.”
“And?”
“Says he’s been at it less than two weeks.
Got recruited through a friend of a friend, never met anyone above him.
Product showed up on the porch every few days, already packaged.
He’d sell it to whoever came through the door.
Cash went into an envelope he left in the mailbox, and somebody picked it up overnight. ”
“He can’t ID anyone?”
Donovan shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. Doesn’t know where the product comes from. Doesn’t even know what Drift is, just calls it powder. Swears up and down he was just trying to make a little extra money.”
“You believe him?”
“That’s the thing. Yeah, I do. The guy was shaking so hard he could barely hold a pen to sign his statement. He’s not protecting anyone. He just doesn’t know anything.”
A dead end, then. Four people in custody and not one of them could point us up the chain.
“The three users are all possession charges. Small-time. The runner gets assault on top of whatever they tag him with.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Street-level, all of them.”
“Well, hopefully the department can still shake something loose.”
Donovan leaned back in the borrowed desk chair and kept his voice low. “Funny how this one came together in an hour, and we got a full stash. Ridgeline had a week of planning, and we got an empty cabin.”
“Yeah.” I wrapped my hands around the coffee. “Funny.”
Funny in a way that wasn’t funny at all.
The obvious read was that the Ridgeline operation had leaked because too many people knew too far in advance. Tighten the circle, shorten the timeline, and the raids work. Definitely confirmed someone was leaking information.
I was taking another sip when the front doors banged open hard enough to rattle the glass.
Seth Briggson came through them like a man who’d found someone’s pubes in his coffee.
Civilian clothes. Jeans, a jacket thrown over a T-shirt. He’d come from home. His eyes scanned the room until they landed on Vance.
“What the hell, Eric?”
The bullpen conversations died in a ripple, people registering the tone and turning to watch.
Vance looked up from the intake desk. “Seth.”
“You guys had a possible bust, and nobody thought to call me?” He crossed the room in four strides, stopping close enough that Vance had to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. “I’ve been on this team for eight fucking years. This is exactly the kind of op I should be on.”
“It came together fast. We grabbed who was available.”
“Available.” He repeated the word like it tasted wrong. “You called Reeves, who’s worked here exactly two seconds?” He hooked a thumb at us. “You called the fucking contractors? But I wasn’t worth a phone call?”
“There wasn’t time to build a full roster, Seth. Patrol developed the intel a couple hours ago, and we had a narrow window.”
“You had time to reach Garrison. You had time for his buddy.” He jerked his chin toward me without looking. “You took the contractors but not your own people?”
“They were together when I called. One call, two operators and a trained K9.”
Something shifted in Briggson’s face. The anger was still there, but it rearranged itself around a different question. “Who was in the cabin?”
Vance blinked. “That’s not—”
“Who’d you pick up tonight, Eric?”
“Four suspects. You can read the report in the morning.”
“I’m asking now.”
“And I’m telling you to go home.” Vance’s voice went flat. “Read the report. If you want to discuss staffing decisions, we can do that during regular business hours and without an audience.”
Briggson held Vance’s gaze. Something moved behind his eyes. Anger, obviously, but layered underneath it, something I couldn’t read. He looked like a man with more to say who had just enough discipline to keep it behind his teeth.
He turned and walked out. He didn’t slam the door. He pulled it shut behind him with a deliberate, controlled force that was somehow worse than slamming it.
The bullpen held its breath for a beat. Then conversations came back, tentative at first, the way sound returns to a room after a gunshot.
Donovan was still in the chair across from me. Neither of us had moved during the entire exchange.
Briggson’s fury was the most honest thing I’d seen from anyone in this department. The question was what it was honest about.
A territorial cop who’d been passed over looked exactly like a compromised cop who’d been cut out of an operation he needed to control.
Both versions fit. Neither eliminated the other.
I looked at the deployment report in front of me. Somewhere in this building, someone had a photo on my dining room wall for a reason. And we weren’t any closer to knowing who.