Chapter 20
The station hums the way it always does in the late afternoon—phones ringing in distant offices, the printer spitting out forms two rooms over, someone microwaving lunch that smells aggressively like fish. The kind of calm that usually settles people.
It doesn’t settle me. It feels like a spotlight.
Nothing has settled for days.
I kept a case open based on instinct, pulled threads that seemed promising, and then…nothing. The red truck lead is impossible to follow from a simple bodycam photo, a time, and a place.
How on earth am I going to find out who the vehicle belongs to?
I glance over at Ingram, sitting back casually in his desk chair, reading something on his screen and rolling that baseball in one hand.
No matter how nice and borderline humble he’s been, I’m starting to wonder…is the red truck some wild goose chase?
Why wouldn’t Ingram have thought about this suspicious stranger in town with a smashed-up truck at the time? He would have been in the midst of gathering evidence, writing reports… Why now?
He catches my gaze on him and sends me a brief smile.
I smile back, then turn my attention to my computer screen. No matter how wholesome the guy appears, he makes me nervous.
Ingram.
The quarry.
Chasing leads I can’t stitch together.
I roll my neck. Desk duty in Echo Valley isn’t the low-stress situation I thought I signed up for. I know I brought it on myself, and I shouldn’t be surprised because I often bite off more than I can chew, but still, I have to admit to myself, the temperature is rising.
I place my hand on the bump that is now nearly bursting through my issued uniform. This can’t be good for the baby. Last night, after the impound and junkyard, I couldn’t sleep.
I have my twenty-week scan coming. Soon, the baby will be kicking for real, not just bubbles. We could find out the gender.
These are the things that should be front and center for me right now. Anton and I haven’t even discussed what we’ll do if the pregnancy is high-risk. The scan is upon us. We have so much to talk about, and we’re both obsessed with this case.
I shut down my computer, stack my reports, and try not to dwell on when my mother and grandmother will arrive and meet Anton for the first time.
Just as I push my chair in, I get a call.
Rio.
That’s weird. I didn’t think we were beyond the text stage with each other.
“Hey,” I answer. “Surprised to see your name light up.”
“Sorry we aren’t chatting under better circumstances, but I thought I’d call before emailing you some details. I’m sending through a name, some dates, and details about another case.”
I pull my chair out and sit back down slowly. “Another case?”
“When you decided to keep Zoe’s case open…” He pauses. “I’ve been going back and forth on whether this is relevant, or whether it’s just old history trying to attach itself to something new.”
My eyebrows furrow.
“Ten years ago, there was another fatality at the quarry. Single vehicle. Woman in her twenties. Car went over the edge.”
I lean back in my chair, absorbing that. I can’t jump to conclusions. Accidents happen. “That’s…awful.”
His voice is low. “It was ruled reckless driving. No foul play. Case closed.”
“So why are you telling me about it now?”
The pause is loaded.
“Because Ingram was the closing officer on that case, too.”
The air around me goes still. I flick my gaze to Ingram and just as quickly, stand from my chair and walk toward an empty office to keep this conversation more private.
Rio continues. “Two cases, same location, same officer, a decade apart. That can mean nothing. Most of the time, it does.”
“But sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Exactly.”
The similarities aren’t enough to establish a pattern, but with me already questioning Ingram’s integrity, I wonder if he was sloppy then, too. And what is Rio wondering?
“So why tell me now?” I ask.
“When you decided to keep Zoe’s case open…” He exhales, and I’m not used to hearing hesitation from Rio. “It could be nothing, Freya. Or it could be old history trying to attach itself to something new.”
Old history? His history? Or the history of law enforcement in Echo Valley? I don’t ask because I have a good gauge on Rio, and I know he won’t tell me.
He continues. “Once you chose not to close this, Zoe’s death stopped being just another accident. And it made me think twice about the one before it.”
That lands heavier than anything else he’s said.
“So you think I should reopen it?”
His tone is respectful. “I think you should decide whether it belongs anywhere near your investigation.”
“Thank you, Rio,” I say finally. “Send it over.”
“I will.”
“Bye…”
He stops me short. “One more thing…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want me to get the bodycam information from Enzo and send that in the same email? He’s still working on putting together the dossier on your Red Truck Guy, but I can send some prelim information so you can get started?”
“Sorry, what?” My voice comes out too sharp, so I cover it with a bright laugh that sounds fake to my own ears.
“Your Red Truck Guy. I’ve been sitting next to Enzo who’s been working on it for you. He told me he has a name and address for you now.”
How did Enzo get the bodycam image? And why does he have it?
Someone sent it over.
Someone Rio would assume had already told me. Someone close enough to what goes on at the Echo Valley PD, at GhostEye…
And there’s only one person who fits that bill.
Anton.
The floor gives out beneath me, and my ribs cave in on my chest. I don’t want to believe it, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.
Anton went over my head? Without even so much as suggesting that using GhostEye was a good idea?
A sick feeling coats my stomach. If he sent this without telling me…
what else did he decide I didn’t need to know?
And what else has he talked to the boys about without consulting me?
Did he tell them he backed me up because I got spooked at the junkyard like some rookie with training wheels?
That he gives me some of my best ideas at night at home because he’s so much better at this than I am?
My face burns, humiliation crawling up my throat so fast, I almost choke on it. But I refuse to let Rio hear even a flicker of that.
“Oh, right.” Lie. “Thanks. For sure, send what you have. I can get the rest later.”
“Alright. You’ll have everything in the next ten.”
“Thanks, bye.”
I press end on the call and stare at my phone.
Anton didn’t think I could handle it on my own? There’s no doubt it occurred to me to ask GhostEye for help when all our own tools failed me. But I need clearance first. And that was my call to make.
I asked Anton to let me lead an…
I head back to my desk, grab my jacket, shove my notebook into my bag, and force myself not to storm out as anger bubbles inside me.
Walking out of the station feels like trying to move underwater—thick, dragging, suffocating. My heart is pounding so hard, I feel it in my wrists, my throat, the back of my eyes. The cold air outside hits my face but does nothing to cool the burn rising under my skin.
He went around me. He handled my lead. Why did he step in like this? Because he thought I wasn’t doing things right?
By the time I reach my car, my chest is hollowed out and filled with hot coals. I sit, grip the steering wheel.
The fifteen-minute drive home is a blur of clenched teeth and swallowed curses. Each mile gives me more time to imagine Anton explaining it in that tempered, infuriatingly protective tone he uses when he thinks he’s doing the right thing.
I know he’s more experienced at this than I am, but I asked him. He agreed. I was in the lead. He was backup… All of this feels too much like all the other times in the various careers I tried when I was marginalized. Pushed to the sidelines or all out not listened to.
Why do I always have to fight for my place at the table?
By the time I reach the gates of Monarch Hills, I’m shaking with the force of holding everything in.
Inside the house, the silence closes in like a blanket I don’t want. I drop my keys into the bowl, and they clatter with a scream.
God, I miss living with Lara. She’d hand me chocolate, validate my every emotion, and tell me I’m right. She’d help channel all this fury into something coherent.
Instead, the house swallows my footsteps.
I open the fridge and grab a ginger beer—the ones he bought for me— and that alone makes my jaw lock tighter. I twist the cap off, the hiss sounding like an insult.
I can’t believe him.
I’m done trying to earn space in rooms I already belong in.
When he walks through that door later, I’m going to have to look him in the eye and ask why he didn’t think I could handle it. Why he made decisions about my case without me. Why he thought I needed protecting instead of partnering.
The questions simmer, then boil.
Why did you go behind my back?
You think I’m incompetent?
You think I can’t do my job?
My throat burns. Emotion surges so hard, it takes my breath. It always comes back to the same thing—proving, proving, proving, until I’m raw.
I brace my hands on the breakfast bar because suddenly, my knees feel unsteady. Hormones. Exhaustion. Humiliation. All of it.
He tells me I’m good at this.
He tells me he’s proud.
He looks at me like I’m strong.
And then he still did this.
I don’t know if I want to scream or cry…or both.
The house has slipped fully into darkness by the time I finally stop pacing and sink onto the sofa.
I curl my feet up beneath me and sit there in the quiet, the only light coming from the lit porch outside, bleeding thinly through the blinds.
It casts long stripes across the room, across the still full ginger beer sweating on the coffee table, across the ache sitting too close to my ribs.
I’ve been here long enough for the anger to settle into a place where this isn’t going to blow over on its own.
The sound of the front door unlocking shatters the silence.