14. Smoke Usually Comes From Somewhere
Smoke Usually Comes From Somewhere
Jacob
Imove to the side of the bed until I'm close enough to study every line of his face, searching for something that tells me he's closer to the surface than the monitors want me to believe.
My hand comes up almost absently, my knuckles settling against the center of his sternum before I lean my weight into them.
A ragged sound catches somewhere deep in his throat. His chest tightens beneath my fist. His head shifts weakly across the pillow, trying to escape the pressure, and a slow, cold satisfaction settles low in my stomach as I bear down harder.
Good.
Pain still reaches him.
"Wake up," I murmur, leaning close enough that the words never travel beyond the space between us. "Come on."
Another strained breath. Another twitch.
I watch every tiny movement, waiting for the one that matters, refusing to blink in case I miss it.
The door opens behind me. Tamara crosses the room without a word, slipping into the gap beside the bed before positioning herself with her back to the door. When her hand comes out of her pocket, there's a syringe between her fingers.
I reach for it automatically and lift it toward his mouth.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, not like that!" she hisses, snatching it back before I can do anything stupid. "Here."
She catches his hand instead, steadying it as she slides the syringe into the cannula port taped over the back of it. The plunger sinks beneath her thumb in slow, deliberate increments, and I find myself watching the clear liquid disappear into the line, knowing there's no taking it back now.
"If anyone finds out..."
"They won't."
The words barely register.
My eyes never leave his face.
I'm watching for the moment he comes back to reality—regardless of how fucked up reality is these days.
His chest rises and falls. The monitors continue their steady rhythm, indifferent to the fact that the room feels like it's holding its breath.
Somewhere beyond the door, a cart rattles along the corridor, its wheels squeaking over the linoleum, the noise so ordinary it feels out of place amid the chaos.
A long breath escapes me as I lean to place my elbow on the chair arm, then rest my chin in my palm.y gaze fixed on the faint rise and fall of his chest.
Every breath is another second closer. Most people think waiting is passive. They mistake stillness for inaction. They're wrong. Waiting is a weapon if you've got the patience for it.
And patience has never been something I lacked.
The rhythmic beep of the monitor is becoming its own kind of fucking torture.
Every pulse is another second she's still inside Rivers Ridge. Another second Jackson Moore has his hands on her. Another second I'm trapped in this hospital room while that psychopath gets to decide what happens next.
I lean forward in the chair, my forearms braced against my knees, my phone clenched so tightly in my hand my knuckles have long since turned white.
The satellite map fills the screen, rain dragging down the windows behind it until it reflects nothing but the fluorescent lights humming overhead.
The room reeks of antiseptic, burned coffee and that metallic smell hospitals never manage to get rid of—the smell of blood scrubbed away but never quite gone.
The bastard in the bed doesn't move.
My eyes move from him to find the map again, tracing the same roads for what has to be the hundredth time. They're burned into my head now. Every bend. Every tree line. Every stretch of mountain road that disappears beneath thick woodland before the satellite can show me a fucking thing.
Three routes. That's all I've got.
One cuts north through old logging land. One disappears into private property before it's swallowed by the trees. The last loops west and vanishes beneath forest so dense it may as well have been designed to hide people.
An entrance.
An exit.
Somewhere they bring women in.
Somewhere they take bodies out.
My hands flatten against the desk. I should already be up there. I should be walking that ground, learning every inch of it with my own eyes instead of staring at pixels on a fucking screen hoping one of them suddenly gives me the answer I've missed ninety-nine times already.
Sitting here feels like a mistake. Every muscle in my body is wound so tight I can feel the adrenaline looking for somewhere to go, my leg bouncing once before I force it still.
I thought about drones. Thermal imaging. Hell, I even caught myself wondering whether I could get a helicopter over the area without anyone asking questions. Anything to give me an advantage before I walked into whatever Jackson's built out there.
But the second one of his men spots something that doesn't belong… He’ll move her again. Bury her somewhere I'll never find. Or he could decide to make an example out of her before I ever get close enough to stop him.
Fuck.
The thought drives itself beneath my ribs and stays there. Every time I close my eyes, she's still there, looking straight out of the helicopter window, begging me to get to her.
My stomach rolls violently.
I should've protected her better. The thought has rooted itself somewhere beneath my ribs, festering every hour she's gone.
No matter how many times I replay it, it always ends the same way.
The helicopter lifting into the sky. Me standing there, powerless, while she disappeared.
One mistake. One fucking mistake, and she's paying for it.
My hand drags slowly over my face as another thought forces its way in.
Sarah.
The butler told me she'd been there. I'd seen the devastation in his face before he'd even said the words.
Rivers Ridge hadn't been the end of her nightmare—it had been one stop along the way.
Somewhere women were stripped down until whatever made them them barely existed anymore before they were moved somewhere else.
A sorting facility. A training ground. A place built to erase people.
I don't know what the fuck to call it anymore, only that Sarah survived it, and judging by the look in her father's eyes, surviving didn't mean she'd escaped it.
The questions keep coming whether I want them to or not.
Should I have gone looking for her instead?
Should I have found the women who'd already made it out?
Followed the trail forward instead of backward?
Because if Rivers Ridge is only the beginning—if Summer survives that place only to disappear somewhere deeper inside whatever Jackson has built—then every second I spend chasing the wrong lead gives him another chance to bury her somewhere I'll never find.
No.
I refuse to let my mind finish that thought.
I'll tear every fucking property he owns apart.
Every warehouse. Every house. Every business.
Every bastard connected to him. I don't care how long it takes or how many bodies I leave behind.
If Jackson thinks he can build an empire big enough to hide her from me, then he's forgotten the one thing men like him always forget.
Everything burns if you keep the fire going long enough.
The quiet click of the door breaks the thought before it can spiral any further.
Tamara steps inside carrying two coffees, a patient file tucked beneath one arm.
She looks worse than she did a few hours ago, the exhaustion obvious now—dark shadows beneath her eyes, her ponytail half-fallen loose, the kind of fatigue no amount of caffeine is going to fix.
She eases the door shut with her foot before holding one of the coffees out to me.
I take it automatically.
"Any change?"
"No."
The word comes out rough enough that I barely recognize my own voice.
She glances at the man lying motionless in the bed before lowering herself into the chair opposite with a tired sigh.
For a while neither of us says anything.
The rain continues its slow assault against the windows while the monitors keep their relentless rhythm, measuring out the seconds I'm losing one heartbeat at a time.
"So..." she says eventually, wrapping both hands around her coffee. "Your girl."
My shoulders tense before I can stop them.
"I'd heard there was someone younger living with you. People talked, but I figured it was some kind of protection arrangement that got complicated. I didn't realize..."
"Yeah," I interrupt, my voice flat. "She's younger than me."
Tamara studies me, reading the warning in my tone exactly the way I'd intended it. She knows where the line is, but instead of backing away from it, she carefully steps around it.
"And she's Michael Miller's daughter."
I'm already sick to death of hearing his name attached to hers, but something in the way she says it makes me lift my eyes from the coffee and really look at her.
“Yes,” I snap. “What about it?”
Tamara doesn't answer straight away. She watches me before her eyes flick toward the door, lingering on the narrow window as though she's making sure nobody's standing outside. Only when she seems satisfied does she look back at me.
“There was talk around the hospital after Annalise Raynor's post-mortem.”
The name lands like a stone.
Annalise Raynor.
Jackson Moore's victim. The woman whose murder put him behind bars.
“What kind of talk?”
“The pathologist was Dr. Khan.” She lowers her voice instinctively. “Apparently something about the case never sat right with him.”
My fingers tighten around the coffee cup until the cardboard buckles.
“Something about what?”
She gives a small shake of her head. “Nobody knows. Or if they do, they kept it to themselves. All anyone ever said was that after the post-mortem he started asking questions he wasn't supposed to be asking.”
“What questions?”
“He wanted access to evidence handling records. Witness statements. Interview transcripts. Chain-of-custody logs.” She hesitates. “Basically everything outside the scope of the post-mortem.”
I stare at her.
“A pathologist doesn't need witness statements.”
“No,” she says quietly. “He doesn't.”
The monitor continues its relentless rhythm beside us.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I look at the unconscious bastard lying in the bed before my eyes drift back to Tamara, my brain trying to force the pieces together into something that resembles sense.
Jackson Moore murdered Annalise Raynor. Michael Miller built the case that put him away.
I remember every fucking press conference.
Every interview. Every time Miller stood in front of a camera promising Rosefield they'd caught the man responsible.
I remember the relief that spread through the town after the conviction, people finally believing they could sleep again because the monster had been locked away.
Hell...
I believed it too.
"Khan could've been wrong."
"He could have."
"You don't believe that."
She doesn't answer. She doesn't have to, her face gives everything away. Something settles cold in my gut.
"Tell me what happened."
Tamara wraps both hands around her coffee.
"He was told to stop."
"By who?"
"I don't know." She shakes her head.
"You do."
"I don't." She meets my stare without flinching. "All I know is there was a meeting. Hospital administration, Dr Khan and...Michael Miller was there.”
I genuinely think I've misheard her.
“Miller?”
She nods once.
“No.” The word leaves me before I can stop it. “No, that doesn't make any fucking sense.”
I push back in the chair, dragging a hand hard across my jaw, trying to force my thoughts into some kind of order and failing miserably.
Michael Miller spent fucking months building that case.
I'd watched him tear Jackson Moore apart in court, watched him dedicate every waking hour to making sure the bastard never walked free again.
If Khan had found something that strengthened the prosecution, Miller would've welcomed it.
If he'd found something that weakened it...
Fuck that.
No.
I kill the thought before it can go any further.
“Miller wanted Moore convicted,” I mutter, more to myself than to her. “He hated the piece of shit. Everyone knew that. Why the fuck would he have anything to fear from a pathologist asking questions?”
“I don't know.”
“You're telling me he sat in a meeting with a forensic pathologist who thought something about the murder didn't add up.”
“I'm telling you he was there.”
“And after that?”
“Khan stopped asking.”
Silence settles over the room again, broken only by the rain tapping against the windows and the steady beep of the monitor measuring out seconds I can't afford to lose.
It's fucking hearsay.
That's all it is.
A rumor passed between exhausted doctors over bad coffee. No reports. No statements. No evidence. If one of my deputies had brought this to me six months ago, I'd have thrown it straight back at them and told them to come back when they had something worth a damn.
So why can't I let it go?
My jaw tightens until it clicks.
Because smoke usually comes from somewhere.
Because a pathologist doesn't start asking for witness statements without a reason.
Because Michael Miller had absolutely no business sitting in that meeting.
And because if there is even the smallest chance we've all been looking at Annalise Raynor's murder the wrong way…
Then what the fuck else have we got wrong?
“What happened to Khan after that?”
Tamara doesn't answer immediately. She looks away. Whatever she's about to say, I already know I'm not going to like it.
“He disappeared.”
The words hang in the room.
Outside, rain continues crawling down the windows in uneven trails while the monitor beside the bed keeps marking out the seconds with the same relentless indifference it has all night.
“What do you mean disappeared?”
“I mean he never came back to work. Officially, he resigned.”
“And unofficially?”
Her eyes find mine again.
“Nobody believed that.”
I lean back in the chair, the coffee cooling forgotten in my hand as my mind tries to reject what it's hearing and keeps failing.
I don't want this.
I don't want questions hanging over Michael Miller.
I don't want doubts creeping into a case that was supposed to be finished months ago.
I don't want Annalise Raynor's name bleeding into Summer's, because the two of them should have nothing in common beyond the man sitting in that bed. But I can't shake it.
Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe I'm so fucking desperate for something—anything—that I'm trying to force pieces together that were never meant to fit.
Or maybe...
Maybe the case that sent Jackson Moore to prison wasn't as clean as everyone believed.
The thought leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
I hate it. Because if there's even the slightest chance that's true, then every answer I've been relying on since Summer disappeared suddenly feels a hell of a lot less certain.
My eyes drift back to the unconscious bastard lying in the bed.
The monitor answers with another steady beep.
He doesn't move.