Chapter 12
TWELVE
brooks
The clock on his phone glowed two-seventeen a.m. Sleep wouldn’t come.
Case files from Melissa Clarkson’s disappearance spread across his kitchen table—photos and witness statements that should have held his attention.
Instead, every time he closed his eyes, he saw Vivienne in the flooded tunnels, facing off with Gerald and Jeremy, refusing to back down.
The way her knees had buckled when the adrenaline finally wore off.
He’d caught her before she hit the water, half-carried her through the rising tide to the cave entrance where paramedics waited.
The image wouldn’t leave him: Vivienne soaked and hands trembling from cold and exhaustion. Scared and more worried about Melissa’s well-being than her own.
Case files blurred as exhaustion set in.
He reached for his coffee mug, found it empty, and instead picked up the photograph of Traci Washington that he’d pulled from his wallet.
Her smile in the picture looked forced now that he knew what to look for.
The same expression Vivienne wore when she was maintaining her spiritual boundaries during intense contact—the look of someone managing overwhelming input while trying to appear composed.
Brooks reviewed the case timeline, cross-referencing every piece of information Vivienne had provided through her abilities with the physical discoveries they’d made.
The scientific part of his mind still resisted accepting her abilities as real, but the detective in him couldn’t ignore results.
Lily’s hidden camera in the secret chamber.
The customs inspector’s badge from 1923.
The financial ledgers in the lamp room documenting forty years of smuggling operations.
Her accuracy rate was over ninety percent.
Three months before the warehouse raid that ended everything, Brooks and his partner Traci Washington had been working a human trafficking case that would have made their careers.
The kind of case that got you promoted, got you noticed, got you interviewed by the media about how good police work saved lives.
“Something doesn’t feel right about this,” Traci had said, leaning back in her desk chair and studying the informant file.
They’d been partners for two years, long enough for Brooks to know that when Traci Washington got that look on her face, she was processing information in ways that had nothing to do with proof.
“Define ‘doesn’t feel right,’” Brooks had replied, not looking up from the financial records they’d subpoenaed. “Because the money trail is solid. Twenty-seven shell companies, offshore accounts, transaction patterns that match everything our informant described.”
Traci tapped her pen against her teeth—a nervous habit that preceded her most accurate hunches. “Miguel Santos walks into our station after two years of hunting him, offers to hand us the biggest trafficking ring in East Austin, and asks for nothing in return except witness protection.”
“Maybe he grew a conscience.”
“Or maybe someone’s playing us.” Traci stood and walked to their case board, covered in surveillance photos and financial charts. “His story’s too clean, Brooks. Real criminal operations are messy. This feels rehearsed.”
Brooks looked up from the documents. His partner stood five-foot-four in her sensible flats, her dark hair pulled back in the bun she wore on duty.
Traci Washington was the mother of two teenage boys, married to a high school football coach, and had never fired her weapon in twelve years of police work.
She was also the best detective he’d ever worked with, because she trusted instincts that went beyond normal investigative procedures.
“You’ve closed more cases with gut feelings than most detectives close with proof,” Brooks admitted. “But we can’t ignore solid intel because of intuition.”
“One day you’ll have to trust instincts without proof, Harrington.” Traci’s smile was tired but genuine. “Hopefully that day won’t be the one that gets us killed.”
Two weeks later, their informant Miguel Santos provided detailed intelligence about a warehouse operation on Austin’s east side. Shipping schedules, security protocols, the exact number of guards and their rotation patterns. Information so precise it could only come from someone with inside access.
Traci had paced their office while Brooks reviewed the operational plan with their captain. “The timing feels forced,” she’d said when they were alone again. “Why now? Why this warehouse? Santos has been off the grid for two years—how does he know operational details down to the minute?”
“Because he’s been planning this,” Brooks replied, spreading architectural drawings across his desk. “He wants revenge on his former partners. Criminals turn on each other all the time.”
“Or someone wanted us to have this information. Someone who knows how we’ll respond.” Traci studied the warehouse blueprints with the expression she wore when pieces weren’t fitting together. “Santos knows too much and asks for too little. That’s not how desperate criminals behave.”
Brooks had looked at his partner—really looked at her—and seen the exhaustion around her eyes, the tension in her shoulders.
They’d been working the trafficking case for eight months, following leads that led nowhere, watching proof disappear, losing witnesses to intimidation or worse.
The Santos intelligence was their first real break.
“We can’t pass up the biggest bust of our careers because of feelings, Trace.”
The words hung between them, and Brooks watched something shift in his partner’s expression. Not hurt, but disappointment. The same look she gave her teenage sons when they made choices she’d warned them against.
“It’s not feelings,” Traci said. “It’s pattern recognition.
It’s experience. It’s the same instinct that told me the Henderson case was domestic violence before we found the insurance policy, that warned me about Officer Garrett before Internal Affairs discovered he was selling drugs from the locker. ”
“And you were right about both those cases. But you also had proof to support your hunches.”
“Because you helped me find it. You trusted me enough to look for what I already knew.” Traci gathered the files from Brooks’s desk, her movements sharp with frustration. “This time, I’m asking you to trust me without the proof. Just this once.”
Brooks had stared at the warehouse blueprints, at the operational timeline that promised to end eight months of dead ends and pressure from above. The captain wanted results. The mayor wanted headlines. The families of the missing wanted justice.
“We follow the lead,” he’d decided. “But we do it carefully. Extra backup, extended surveillance, every precaution in the book.”
The warehouse raid began at eleven-forty-seven p.m. on a Tuesday in March. Brooks remembered the time because he’d checked his watch when they received the go signal, thinking about how Traci would tease him later for being obsessive about details.
The entry went smooth. SWAT breached the main entrance while Brooks and Traci covered the loading dock. No resistance, no return fire, nothing but empty shipping containers and abandoned equipment. Too easy, Brooks thought, but pushed the concern aside.
Then everything shifted.
Gunfire came from positions that weren’t supposed to exist, from shooters who’d had time to establish ambush points.
The warehouse blueprints had been wrong—not slightly wrong, but deliberately falsified.
Walls that should have been solid contained hidden firing ports.
Corridors that appeared on the plans didn’t exist.
Brooks took cover behind a shipping container, calling for backup that was already engaged with shooters outside the building. Radio chatter was chaos—officers down, multiple hostiles, unknown number of combatants. Everything was wrong, just as Traci had predicted.
“Brooks!” Traci’s voice cut through the gunfire, and he turned to see his partner twenty feet away, her weapon drawn but her attention focused on something he couldn’t see. “Behind you!”
Brooks spun and saw the muzzle flash from a concealed position above them.
He was moving to take cover when Traci hit him from the side, her hundred and twenty pounds of muscle and momentum driving him behind a concrete pillar.
She’d thrown herself between Brooks and the gunfire, absorbing three rounds that had been aimed at his center mass.
“Medic!” Brooks shouted into his radio, knowing the response time would be too long. “Officer down! I need a medic now!”
Traci’s hands found his face, her touch weak but insistent. “Listen to me,” she whispered, her voice fading. “Santos was turned. Someone fed us bad intelligence.”
“Save your strength. Help’s coming.”
“Trust your instincts next time.” Blood flecked her lips as she spoke. “Don’t let them make you doubt what you know is right.”
Brooks held pressure on her wounds while she bled out in his arms, her brown eyes growing distant. Backup arrived three minutes later—three minutes too late to save Detective Traci Washington, mother of two, wife of fifteen years, best partner Brooks had ever worked with.
The image burned in his memory: Traci’s blood on his hands, her eyes vacant, the warehouse ambush that had been what she’d predicted.
Brooks jerked back to the present, Traci’s photograph still in his hands.
He thought about Austin, about Traci’s intuition that he’d dismissed.
She hadn’t been like Vivienne, just an experienced cop with excellent instincts.
But he’d ignored her gut feeling because it couldn’t be documented, couldn’t be proven in court.
The result: a dead partner and three years of guilt.
He wouldn’t make that mistake again. Whatever Vivienne’s methods—her visions, historical knowledge, or intuition—the information was solid. That’s what mattered for building a case.