Chapter 28
Ben
Briggson’s vehicle had already disappeared around the bend by the time I pulled out of the Ridgewood Apartments lot, but there was only one way out of this part of town, and I’d watched the direction he’d turned.
Jolly stood in the back seat, his body taut, locked on to whatever was running through me. I hadn’t said a word since we’d gotten in, hadn’t given a command, but the dog didn’t need either. He felt the current and he matched it.
I spotted Briggson’s car three blocks later. Dark blue sedan, personal vehicle, moving north at a steady clip through the residential streets on the east side of town. Not speeding but not hesitating either. The driving of a man who knew exactly where he was headed.
I fell in two cars back and kept my hands loose on the wheel.
Briggson turned east, away from the ski corridor, heading toward the older part of Summit Falls where the roads narrowed and the houses got smaller and the tourist money hadn’t reached yet. He kept going. Away from the station. Away from anything I associated with police business.
I let another car slide between us. Jolly settled onto the seat behind me, eyes forward, steady.
The first stop was a house on Delancey. Single story, chain link fence, patchy yard.
Briggson pulled up to the curb, tried the front door, found it locked, walked around the side and came back thirty seconds later.
Got in his car and pulled away. The second stop was an apartment building four blocks east. Same pattern—inside through a side entrance, out in under two minutes, jaw tighter than when he’d gone in.
Both stops were brief. Both were purposeful. And evidently, neither provided what Briggson wanted.
I called Jace, read off both addresses, and asked him to cross-reference them against the investigation files.
“Hold on.” The typing stopped. “Aren’t you supposed to be done with this? Didn’t you and Donovan close the book on the leak?”
“Yeah. But I think we might have been wrong.”
A beat. Then the typing resumed, faster. “Got it. Yeah, both addresses are in the system. First one was flagged six months ago as a suspected distribution point. The second showed up in the phone records of one of the suspects from the cabin raid.”
“So both are drug-related.”
“Both are absolutely drug-related.” His voice had lost any trace of casual. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you back.”
I hung up and stared at Briggson’s taillights through the windshield. Two addresses, both connected to the Drift investigation. This was looking worse and worse.
I called Donovan.
He answered on the first ring. “Hey. How’s lemon ginger tea life without me?”
“I think we might have fucked up with our investigation.”
The banter dropped out of his voice immediately. “Go.”
I gave him the short version. Briggson’s phone call at the OD scene. The personal tone. The lie about never having heard the victim’s name before. And now, hitting known drug addresses, one after another, with purpose and familiarity.
Donovan was quiet for a long beat. “That’s not how a cop talks to a source.”
“No. It’s not.”
“And now he’s going from place to place, all somehow connected to the drug syndicate.”
“Exactly.”
The line went quiet again. I could hear Donovan breathing, could almost hear him running back through every interaction we’d had with Seth Briggson since we’d arrived in Summit Falls and watching the picture change.
“And now you’re telling me that the cranky asshole with a charity habit might have been our dirty cop all along.”
“Yes. Martinez was either a patsy or shit timing.”
Another silence. Longer this time.
“You need me back there?” No hesitation. No qualifications. Just the question.
“Not yet. You couldn’t get here in time right now anyway. Let me see where this goes.”
“Copy. Be careful. If he’s what you think he is, he’s been doing it a long time, and he knows how to handle himself.”
“I will.”
The call ended. I set the phone on the console and kept driving.
Jolly had rested his chin on his front paws, his breathing steady, his eyes half closed. Not sleeping. Just conserving, the way he’d always done on long ops. Saving himself for whatever came next.
Briggson hit a third location. A duplex on the south side, windows dark, driveway empty. Same pattern. In and out in under two minutes, his face harder when he came back than when he’d gone in.
I didn’t call Jace again. The pattern was established.
Every stop was brief, every location connected to previous narcotics offenses.
Briggson was searching for something or someone.
The way he checked doors and windows, the way he peered into darkened rooms and came back empty-handed each time, looked less like a cop working contacts and more like a man turning over every rock he could find.
Then he turned onto a road I didn’t recognize, heading south past the commercial district into a stretch of town where the buildings got lower and the lots got emptier. The streetlights thinned. A storage facility on the left. A gas station shuttered for the night on the right.
He pulled into the lot of a motel. Single story, exterior doors with numbers, sign were missing letters. A vending machine near the office glowed a sickly yellow against the fading light.
He parked and went inside. Unit seven. The door was unlocked. He walked straight in and didn’t come back out.
I parked at the far end of the lot and waited.
Five minutes. Nothing.
Fifteen minutes. The door stayed closed.
Every other stop had been quick—checking a location and moving on. This time, Briggson had gone inside and stayed, and the length of it changed the calculation entirely.
Jolly shifted in the back seat. He’d been in the vehicle for over an hour now, patient as always, but I could see the restlessness building. I cracked the rear windows on both sides to let the evening air through and ran my hand along his flank.
“Easy, boy. Hang tight.”
He pressed his nose into my palm and settled.
I was a contractor, not a cop. I had no badge, no warrant, no authority to enter that room.
Briggson was armed and trained, and if he was what I now suspected, he’d spent months operating under pressure without getting caught, which meant he could think clearly in tight situations.
If I walked through that door and he decided I was a threat, the confrontation would happen fast, and it would happen close.
I had no backup. Donovan was in Denver. Rawlings didn’t know where I was. Nobody did.
None of that changed what was on the other side of that door. And none of it was enough to keep me in the truck.
I opened the door and stepped out.
“Stay,” I told Jolly. He looked at me with an expression that said he disagreed with this decision, but he stayed.
I crossed the lot. The motel was quiet. No one around. No one at the office window. Just the hum of the vending machine and the distant sound of traffic on the highway.
My hand stayed near my weapon, but I kept it holstered. Drawing on a cop, even one I suspected, would change this from a conversation into something that couldn’t be walked back.
I reached unit seven and stood to the side and listened.
Briggson’s voice came through the thin door. I couldn’t make out the words, but I didn’t need to. The tone was wrong. Everything I knew about Seth Briggson’s voice—the bark, the bite, the permanent edge—was gone. What came through was low and strained and almost unrecognizable.
Then another voice. Female. Most of the words running together in a way I couldn’t follow. But three of them came through clean.
“…please, Uncle Seth…”
I froze. What the fuck? Had she just said UNCLE Seth?
I went in.
The door wasn’t locked. It swung open on a room that was exactly what the exterior promised. Stained carpet, a bed with a polyester spread, a lamp on a pressboard nightstand casting weak light. The television was off. A fast-food bag sat on the dresser, barely touched.
Briggson was on his feet before I’d cleared the threshold. He planted himself between me and the girl on the bed, shoulders squared, blocking her from view completely, his hand going to his hip.
“Get out.” His voice had dropped into something dangerous. “Right now, Garrison. Turn around and get out.”
I held my ground. My hands were visible, my posture open, but I didn’t step back.
Behind him, I could partially see the girl sitting on the edge of the bed. Young, maybe eighteen, maybe not even that. Dark hair tangled at the ends, a hoodie two sizes too big with the strings chewed ragged.
She held a cup of water in both hands, gripping it near the rim with her thumbs hooked over the edge, the way a child held something they were afraid of dropping. She looked at me with hollow eyes that tracked too slowly.
She wasn’t restrained. She wasn’t injured. She was sitting on the bed the way a person sat when they’d stopped having the energy to do anything else.
And she’d called him Uncle Seth.
“What’s going on, Briggson?” I kept my tone calm. No accusation. “I heard her call you uncle. I’m not here to cause problems.”
The aggression in Briggson’s posture didn’t disappear, but it recalibrated. He was still between me and the girl, still ready to put me through the wall if I moved wrong, but his hand moved away from his weapon.
“She’s my niece.” He said it like a challenge, daring me to do something with the information. “My sister’s daughter. Her name is Mia.”
Mia watched us from the bed without speaking. Her thumbs kept working the rim of that cup, circling it over and over in a small, repetitive motion that said her body had found one thing it could control and wasn’t letting go.
“She got in with the wrong crowd, ran away four months ago,” Briggson said. His voice was rough at the edges, scraped thin. “My sister called me in pieces. I’ve been trying to find her. I knew she was involved with Drift.”
“You’ve been using department resources.” Not a question.