Chapter 9 Sloane
Sloane
Awareness seeped in slowly. Like light under a door, like water through cracks.
Soft sheets. Too soft, not my sheets. Wrong angle of sunlight, falling across my face from the wrong direction.
A room that smelled like—
My eyes flew open.
Garrett's bedroom.
I sat up fast, heart hammering, taking in the details with the automatic cataloging of a journalist who'd trained herself to notice everything.
Spare furniture, neatly organized. A dresser with nothing on top except a watch and a small bowl for loose change.
Closet door closed. An attached bathroom, door ajar, showing clean tile and folded towels.
The couch. I'd been on the couch. Working late, cross-referencing property records, and then…
Nothing. Just the vague memory of being warm and safe and carried.
He carried me.
The realization landed somewhere between my ribs, spreading outward like heat.
I'd fallen asleep on his couch, and instead of waking me, instead of letting me stumble home or sleep where I'd dropped, Garrett Stone had lifted me in his arms and brought me to his bed.
And then slept somewhere else.
I pressed my palms to my face. Breathed. Tried to make sense of the ache blooming in my chest.
The bathroom helped. I splashed cold water on my face, borrowed mouthwash, and took a hard look at myself in his mirror.
I looked tired. Rumpled. Like someone who'd spent the night somewhere she shouldn't have been.
I opened the bedroom door.
Garrett was in the kitchen. Gray sweatpants slung low on his hips. White t-shirt that pulled across his shoulders.
He looked up when I appeared, and something flickered across his face.
"You're awake."
Casual. Easy.
Like this was normal. Like I woke up in his bed every day, like the last eight years hadn't happened, like we were still the people we used to be.
"I'm so sorry." The words tumbled out. "I didn't mean to fall asleep, I should have—"
"Don't worry about it." He slid a mug across the counter toward me. Coffee, pale with oat milk, steam curling up from the surface. "You looked like you needed the rest."
He set a plate in front of me. "Eat."
Toast. Barely there butter. Strawberry jam.
The same breakfast I'd made for myself a thousand times in our old apartment, back when we were young and in love, and the future seemed like something we could hold in our hands.
I took a bite. Chewed. Tried not to think about how he remembered.
"Do you need to go to work today?"
The question was casual. Too casual.
He wasn't looking at me when he asked it, his attention fixed on his own coffee like it required intense concentration.
"I have a meeting with my editor. Marianne." I checked my phone. "I need to update her on the piece. We're getting close to having enough to publish."
"Right. Yeah, of course." He nodded, still not quite meeting my eyes. "That's good. That's important."
Something flickered across his face. Disappointment, maybe. Like he'd been hoping for a different answer. Like he'd wanted me to say no, I'm free, I can stay.
I brushed the thought away.
We ate in comfortable silence. Him leaning against the counter, me perched on the barstool, morning light slanting through his kitchen window.
It felt domestic in a way that made my chest ache. Like a glimpse of a life we had, once.
I finished the last bite of toast and drank my coffee. "I should go. I need to shower and change before the meeting. Marianne will have questions if I show up looking like I slept in my clothes."
"You did sleep in your clothes."
"She doesn't need to know that."
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Your secret's safe with me."
I grabbed my bag, my laptop, and the folder of evidence we'd been poring over last night.
At the door, I paused. Turned back.
He was watching me. That steady gaze, those gray-blue eyes that saw too much.
"Thank you," I said. "For the bed. And the breakfast."
"Anytime, Sloane."
He said it like he meant it. Like anytime was an offer, not just a pleasantry.
I left before I could think too hard about that.
Marianne Charlton looked up when I knocked on her office door.
"You're late," she said, though I wasn't. "Sit. Talk."
I sat. Spread the folder across her desk, the same documents Diaz had shared with me, the same evidence Garrett and I had been piecing together for weeks.
"We have something," I said. "Something big."
Marianne pulled on her reading glasses, the ones she still refused to admit she needed, and started flipping through the pages. Bank statements. Inspection records. The web of shell companies that connected every targeted building.
"Three inspectors," I explained. "All connected to the same network of slumlords. All receiving cash deposits within a week of signing off on failed inspections. Diaz pulled their financials, the money trail is solid."
"Names?"
"Thomas Breck. James Chen. Robert Holloway." I tapped Breck's file. "Breck is the big one. Fire marshal. He's been burying violation reports for years, including reports filed by my source at FDNY."
Marianne's eyes lifted from the page. Sharp. Assessing.
"Your source. Lieutenant Stone."
I kept my face neutral. "He's been documenting this corruption for years. Filing reports through proper channels, all of it dismissed. Meanwhile, the firehouse that keeps flagging violations just landed on the shortlist for closure."
"Convenient."
"Exactly."
She returned to the documents, her pen tapping against the desk in that rhythmic way that meant she was thinking. I'd learned to wait out these silences. Marianne processed information like a chess player, three moves ahead, always calculating.
"The arson angle," she said finally. "Where does that fit?"
"Every building targeted by our arsonist was signed off by these same inspectors. Same shell company network. Same pattern of violations ignored."
I leaned forward. "Someone figured out what Stone figured out. But instead of filing reports, they started lighting matches."
"Vigilante justice."
"That's the theory. Someone who lost something to one of these buildings. Someone who watched the system fail and decided to burn it down—literally."
Marianne removed her glasses. Set them on the desk.
Fixed me with that gaze that had made senators sweat.
"This is explosive, Harper. Corrupt fire officials, city inspectors on the take, a vigilante arsonist targeting the buildings they protected.
" She tapped the folder. "If we publish this, we're accusing a fire marshal of taking bribes.
We're implicating city officials in negligent homicides. We better be right."
"We are."
"You have documentation?"
"Years of it. Stone's files are meticulous. Cross-referenced, timestamped, sourced. And Diaz is building the criminal case on her end — she's bridged the FBI's public corruption unit. They've got the subpoena power, the financial forensics, access to records we'd never get through NYPD alone."
"Detective Diaz running point for the feds." Marianne's mouth twitched. "The one from the Lang case?"
"She's solid. And she wants this as much as we do."
Silence stretched. Marianne stared at the documents, then at me, then back at the documents. I could see her weighing it—the risks, the rewards, the potential for this story to blow up in our faces or blow the lid off something rotten.
"This is good work, Harper." She set the folder down. "Solid sourcing. Clear documentation. The kind of piece that wins awards and makes enemies."
"But?"
"But we sit on it."
I blinked. "Sit on it?"
"Until the case is solved." She held up a hand before I could protest. "Think about it.
We publish now, we tip off every corrupt official in that network.
They lawyer up, they destroy evidence, they circle the wagons.
The FBI loses their shot at federal charges and those are the charges that actually stick.
Your arsonist either goes to ground or accelerates their timeline, and someone ends up dead. "
She was right. I hated that she was right.
"We wait until the feds have enough to make arrests," Marianne continued. "Until you and Stone have identified the arsonist. Then we publish, and we publish everything. The corruption, the cover-up, the vigilante burning it all down. The whole story, start to finish."
"And if someone else breaks it first?"
"They won't have what you have." She tapped the folder. "No one else has years of documentation from inside FDNY. No one else has a federal pipeline feeding them financial records. You've built something here, Harper. Don't blow it by rushing to print."
I exhaled. Nodded. "Okay. We wait."
"Keep working. Keep documenting. The moment this thing breaks open, I want us ready to go." She slid the folder back across the desk.
I nodded, gathered the folder, and stood.
"Harper."
I paused at the door.
"Good work," Marianne said. "Really."
Coming from her, that meant something. Marianne didn't hand out compliments like party favors. In five years of working under her, I could count on one hand the number of times she'd said those words.
"Thanks," I said. "I'll keep you posted."
I walked back through the newsroom, past the cluttered desks and the hum of keyboards and the low murmur of phone calls.
The folder felt heavier in my hands than it should have. Weeks of work. Years of Garrett's documentation. A case that was finally coming together.
Now I just needed to find the person lighting the matches.
Later that night, I was back at Garrett's apartment.
Diaz had called while I was leaving the Times office. She was impressed with the direction we'd pointed her, cross-referencing the arson targets with victims of fires in buildings owned by the shell company network.
But the list was long. Dozens of names spanning years of negligence. People who'd been injured, displaced, traumatized. People who'd lost family members to fires that never should have happened.
Any one of them could have a motive.