Chapter 6
MARC
Sela's breathing shifts sometime late into the night. I hear it through the bedroom door. Still restless, still tense, but quieter. Not sleep. It's exhaustion wearing down her defenses.
She needs rest. We both do.
But I keep moving. Window. Door. Window. The pattern holds me steady, keeps my mind focused on the present instead of spinning through worst-case scenarios.
My laptop sits on the table where I left it, screen dark. It's waiting.
Cara sent a few files earlier tonight. Said she'd cracked the first encryption layer and pulled what she could before the system locked her out again. Told me to review everything, cross-reference names, look for connections we might have missed.
I haven't opened them yet. Been too busy making sure nobody's coming up that access road with suppressed weapons and night vision.
But the cabin's quiet. Forest sounds filter through the walls. Wind in the trees, something small moving through underbrush. It sounds normal. No engine noise. No footsteps. No radio chatter from hostiles coordinating an approach.
There's wilderness and cold and darkness that goes on for miles.
I settle into the chair, angle the laptop screen away from the bedroom door so the light won't wake Sela, and open Cara's encrypted file transfer.
The first image loads.
Julian Montrose sits across a table from a man in business casual. Dark blazer, no tie. A federal employee pretending he's not. A coffee shop setting. Vancouver, based on the storefront visible through the window behind them.
The second man's face is clear. Sharp features, graying at the temples. Confident posture. Hands folded on the table like he owns the room.
FBI Agent Lyle Haywood.
My jaw tightens. I've seen his face before.
Testimony photos from the Stormwatch investigation.
Video depositions where he sat in front of congressional oversight committees and swore under oath that Cara Brennan had compromised operational security.
He presented fabricated evidence of communications she never sent, records she never accessed, decisions she never made.
He buried her career while three agents died and traffickers walked free.
Cara's been hunting the bastard who framed her for a long time. Never had proof. Never had anything concrete enough to challenge his testimony.
Emma photographed him with Montrose.
I click through the next images. Same two men, different locations.
A roadhouse outside Fairbanks. I recognize it, passed it dozens of times on patrol.
A parking garage in Anchorage, a high-end downtown structure where nobody parks unless they're trying not to be seen.
A trailhead in the Chugach Mountains where nobody goes in winter without a specific reason.
Months of meetings. Emma time-stamped each photo, added GPS coordinates, noted weather conditions and potential witnesses nearby. She built a timeline that shows pattern and intent, not coincidence.
The surveillance is professional. Patient. Precise. Evidence built to survive a defense attorney's cross-examination.
She knew what she was doing. Knew she was building something that could stand up in court.
Knew it might get her killed.
The next folder contains transaction records.
Bank transfers, cryptocurrency movements, shell company formations.
Emma traced money from Montrose's operation through layers of corporate structures before it landed in accounts she couldn't directly link to Haywood but that showed the same patterns as his known financial activity.
I zoom in on one transaction. Tens of thousands moved from a Vancouver-based import/export company to a consulting firm in Delaware.
The Delaware firm exists only on paper. No employees, no office space, just a registered agent and a bank account.
Days later, an equivalent amount minus transfer fees appears in an investment account linked to a trust Haywood established for his daughter's college fund.
It's smart. Not direct enough to prove anything in court by itself. But when you stack it with the photos, the pattern becomes clear.
Emma documented dozens of separate transactions following the same structure. Each one laundered through different shell companies, different jurisdictions, different banks. Amounts ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands. The total adds up to millions over the course of more than a year.
It's payment for services rendered. For keeping federal task forces away from Montrose's routes. For redirecting investigations. For protecting a trafficking network that generated millions in revenue.
It's circumstantial. But damning when combined with the photos.
Another folder holds encrypted communications.
Emma intercepted radio traffic, cell phone signals, emails routed through proxy servers.
She didn't crack all the encryption. Some of it's still locked behind layers she couldn't break.
But what she did decrypt shows coordination between Montrose and someone with access to federal databases and law enforcement communication networks.
Someone who knew when task force operations were planned. Who redirected resources away from Montrose's routes. Who fed intel that kept traffickers one step ahead of every raid.
Another folder is labeled "Task Force Redirections." Emma documented every time the federal trafficking task force shifted focus, changed priorities, or abandoned promising leads. She cross-referenced those decisions with who had authority to make them.
Haywood's name appears in the authorization chain for every single redirection.
The final folder stops me cold.
It's labeled with a case number and a date. Nothing else. No description. No name.
I open it.
ER admission records from Palmer Regional.
Same patient, multiple visits over the course of several months.
A sixteen-year-old girl. First admission: facial contusions, defensive wounds on her forearms, cigarette burns on her shoulders.
Claimed she fell. Refused to file a police report.
Discharge notes flagged concern for trafficking.
Second admission, three weeks later: fractured ribs, internal bruising consistent with assault, signs of malnutrition. Again refused police involvement. Handler visible in waiting room security footage. Middle-aged male, not family, stayed close.
Third admission: severe dehydration, infected wounds, malnourishment. Patient disappeared from hospital before morning. Signed out AMA by same male from security footage.
Fourth admission, a month later: DOA. Blunt force trauma. Cause of death ruled homicide. Investigation assigned to Palmer PD. Case went cold within weeks.
Emma documented everything. The girl's vitals, her injuries, the pattern.
Time-stamped notes in Emma's handwriting tracked the dates, the handlers, the gaps between admissions.
She'd photographed the waiting room footage, isolated the handler's face, cross-referenced him with known associates of Montrose's network.
Found the connection.
The girl's name was Lisa Reynolds. Seventeen years old at time of death. Foster system kid, aged out at sixteen with nowhere to go. Recruiters got to her within a month.
Emma tried to save her. Kept trying even after Lisa disappeared from the hospital. Kept documentation, kept searching, kept building evidence because she knew someone was trafficking this girl and nobody else was stopping it.
Then Lisa came through the ER doors on a gurney. Already gone.
That's when Emma started building the case. Not abstract justice. A specific girl she couldn't save. A face she'd seen too many times, injuries she'd treated too often, fear she couldn't fix with medicine.
Emma knew exactly what she was doing when she started documenting Montrose and Haywood. Knew she was building something that could stand up in court. Knew the risk.
Did it anyway because Lisa Reynolds deserved justice and nobody else was going to get it for her.
I close the laptop for a moment. Can't look at that anymore. Can't see those admission records, that progression of injuries, the final entry that just says DOA.
Rhys doesn't know about this folder. Emma kept it separate, probably didn't want to tell him until she had enough evidence to act. Didn't want to make it personal until she could prove the connection between Lisa's death and the trafficking network.
Now Emma's dead too. And Haywood's still running his operation.
I lean back in the chair, processing what I'm seeing.
Emma didn't know she'd photographed the Marshal. We can’t be certain that’s who it is, because he’s not in frame, but it’s clear Haywood is talking intently to someone.
She thought she was building a case against a corrupt FBI agent protecting a trafficking network.
Which she was. But she didn't realize the corrupt FBI agent was the one running the entire operation from inside the bureau.
She came close enough to get herself killed.
I close my eyes for a moment. Emma appears the way Rhys described her.
Sharp, dedicated, couldn't let injustice slide even when letting it slide would have kept her safe.
She'd been a nurse, same as Sela. She saw Lisa Reynolds come through that ER multiple times.
Saw the progression of injuries, the fear, the handlers in the waiting room.
Saw a girl she couldn't save no matter how hard she tried.
She started asking questions, started documenting, started building a case because Lisa deserved justice and nobody else would get it for her.
And Haywood killed her for it.
They ran Emma off the road. Made it look like an accident. Something the local police investigated and closed as a tragic loss of control on a mountain highway.
Rhys eventually got justice for Emma. Hunted down her killer and made him pay.