Chapter 3
SELA
Whitewater Junction's sheriff's station looks like every small-town law enforcement building I've ever seen—single story, practical construction, an American flag snapping in the wind outside.
Deputy Wells parks in front and kills the engine, but he doesn't move to get out immediately.
His eyes scan the street, the buildings, the few vehicles parked along Main Street.
He's looking for threats, looking for the man who tried to kill me.
My hands are steady in my lap. My training kicks in, the same way it did when a patient coded or when a trauma rolled in with injuries that would haunt my dreams for weeks. Treat the shock. Focus on facts. Process emotions later when there's time and space and safety.
Except I'm not sure when I'll feel safe again.
"Sela." Wells's voice pulls me back. "We're going inside. I'll be with you the entire time. Palmer PD will need your statement, but I'll coordinate everything from here."
I nod. Reach for the door handle. My fingers close around cold metal and I pause, just for a second, remembering the last time I reached for a car door handle.
The practiced stance. The suppressor on his weapon.
The knowledge that if I'd been a few seconds faster, if I'd walked straight to my car instead of stopping to check my phone, those bullets would have found their target.
My heart kicks against my ribs. Just once. Hard enough that I have to breathe through it.
"Sela?"
"Sorry." I open the door and step out into cold air that bites through my scrubs. Alaska in early spring—winter's last stand. Wind cuts across the parking lot, carrying the scent of snow from higher elevations.
Normal sounds. A truck rumbles past on Main Street. Somewhere a dog barks.
Everything feels surreal. Like I'm walking through a movie set of my own life.
Wells leads me inside. Warmth hits immediately. A dispatch console sits unmanned in the corner, radio crackling with intermittent chatter. Two desks face each other in the main room, both neat and organized in a way that suggests military backgrounds or obsessive personalities—or both.
Framed commendations line one wall. Maps cover another—topographical charts of the surrounding mountains, marked with colored pins I don't understand. A whiteboard near the back holds what looks like a duty roster, names and shifts written in precise block letters.
Everything speaks to order and control—a place where chaos gets managed through procedure and protocol.
I'm standing in the middle of it covered in dried coffee stains, wearing scrubs that smell like hospital antiseptic and fear-sweat, carrying evidence that got a woman murdered.
"Have a seat." Wells gestures to a chair beside one of the desks. "I need to make some calls. You want coffee? Water?"
"Water would be good."
Coffee sounds like acid right now. My stomach hasn't settled since the parking garage, since bullets punched through the windshield where my head had been seconds before.
He disappears through a doorway and returns with a bottle of water, condensation already forming on the plastic.
I take it, crack the seal, and drink. Cold slides down my throat, sharp enough to ground me in the present moment—real and immediate, not the half-numb shock that's been cushioning everything since Wells pulled me into his vehicle.
Wells settles behind the desk and starts making calls. His voice is professional, clipped, efficient. He's coordinating with Palmer PD, arranging for evidence collection at the garage, requesting additional patrols around the hospital.
Each word is another piece of reality I have to accept—Palmer PD processing a crime scene where someone tried to execute me, patrols around the hospital because the shooter might go back, might try for my coworkers, might hurt someone else looking for me.
I hold the water bottle and try not to think about the USB drive in my pocket.
I'd been assigned Emma's old locker earlier today. Nobody wanted it after she died, superstitious nonsense about bad luck. I'd found the drive taped under the shelf liner, hidden behind the metal bracket where nobody would look unless they were really searching.
I couldn't open the encrypted files, but I could see file properties and metadata.
Surveillance photos with GPS coordinates I'd looked up on my phone—roadhouses, truck stops, rest areas.
Transaction records with dates and dollar amounts in the file names.
Text files labeled CONFIRMATION, PAYMENT, DELIVERY.
Timeline documents with column headers visible in the properties: DATE, LOCATION, VEHICLE, SUBJECTS, NOTES.
Documentation spanning over a year. Someone tracking movements, building a case.
I'd called the FBI tip line during my break that afternoon. Reported what I'd found. Gave them my name, my location, my supervisor's contact information. Did exactly what any reasonable person would do when they stumble across evidence that might matter.
And someone tried to kill me for it.
Wells hangs up his phone and turns to me.
"Palmer PD is processing the garage. They've recovered shell casings, all nine millimeter.
Suppressor based on the sound signature witnesses reported.
No cameras in that section of the parking structure, but they're checking nearby businesses for traffic cameras that might have caught the shooter leaving. "
"Will they find anything?"
"Probably not. Whoever sent him knows how to avoid surveillance." He pulls out a notepad. "I need you to walk me through everything. Start with when you found the USB drive."
I take another drink of water and start talking.
The words come easier than I expected—a clinical recitation of facts, timeline, observations. I tell him about getting assigned Emma's locker earlier today, finding the drive taped under the shelf liner, examining the metadata on my break, making the call to the FBI tip line.
Wells takes notes, his pen moving across paper with quick, efficient strokes. He doesn't interrupt, doesn't ask clarifying questions yet. Just lets me talk.
Lets me process by speaking it aloud.
"The woman on the tip line told me to keep the evidence secure," I say.
"Not to discuss it with anyone. She said an agent would contact me to arrange retrieval.
" I pause, remembering the exact phrasing.
"She said for my own safety I shouldn't share the information with anyone outside official channels. "
Wells's pen stills. "For your own safety."
"That's what she said."
"What time did you make that call?"
"Around two this afternoon. During my break."
"And the shooting happened after that."
"At the end of my shift."
Only hours between a call to the FBI and someone showing up to execute me in a hospital parking garage. The timeline is impossible to ignore, the connection too clear to be coincidence.
Wells sets down his pen and meets my eyes directly. "Do you still have the USB drive?"
My hand moves to my pocket instinctively. Fingers brush against the small ziplock bag through the fabric of my scrubs. Proof that this afternoon happened. Proof that I'm not paranoid or overreacting or imagining threats that don't exist.
"Yes."
"I need to see it."
I pull out the small ziplock bag, the USB drive still inside where I left it this morning. There's nothing distinctive about it except what it represents. Wells takes the bag, holding it by the edges like evidence in a chain of custody he's already building in his head.
He studies it for a long moment. Turns it over in his hands without opening the ziplock. Looking for what, I don't know. Maybe just processing the weight of what I've handed him.
"I'm going to secure this," he says. "And then we wait for Sheriff Blackwater."
"He's not here?"
"He's on his way. Should be here any minute."
My stomach tightens. Emma's husband—the man who's spent years believing his wife died in a tragic accident, only to find out she was murdered for evidence I just handed to his deputy.
How do you face someone with that kind of truth?
As if summoned, the door opens. A man walks in who carries authority the way some people carry weapons—visible, undeniable, impossible to ignore. He's tall and broad-shouldered with a weathered beard, and his eyes assess everything in the room before focusing on Wells.
Lines bracket his mouth, deep enough I can see them through his beard. But his gaze is sharp, focused, the look of someone who's learned to function through pain.
"Marc."
"Rhys." Wells stands, holding the evidence bag. "This is Sela Mitchell. The trauma nurse from Palmer Regional."
Rhys's attention shifts to me. His gaze is direct but not unkind, the look of someone who's seen too much suffering to add to it unnecessarily. "Ms. Mitchell. I'm Sheriff Rhys Blackwater."
Blood rushes in my ears. I stand, because sitting feels wrong somehow—disrespectful.
"I'm sorry about your wife," I say, because what else do you say to a man when you've just found the evidence she died protecting?
His jaw tightens. Muscles shift under his beard. For a second I think he might not respond at all, might just shut down the way people do when grief gets poked at wrong angles.
Then he nods once, the motion controlled. "Tell me about the USB drive."
Wells hands him the evidence bag. "Found in Emma's old locker at Palmer Regional. Sela was assigned the locker earlier today. Called the FBI tip line to report it. Hours later, someone tried to execute her in the hospital parking garage."
Rhys stares at the drive through the plastic. His hands are steady, but tension locks his shoulders, fingers pressing against the bag like he's holding something that might shatter if he grips too hard.
Silence stretches long enough that I start counting my own heartbeats, long enough that Wells shifts his weight, uncomfortable with the weight of what we're all not saying.
"You called the FBI tip line," he says finally. His voice is flat, controlled.