EPILOGUE
Washington, DC
Meg Calloway’s office looked exactly the same as always.
That should not have surprised Selena. Meg was not the kind of woman who rearranged a room unless there was tactical value in it.
The desk sat in the same position facing the window.
The same neat stacks of files occupied the same corners.
A framed commendation hung on the wall without drawing attention to itself, which was probably the only way Meg would have tolerated it.
Even the lamp on the credenza seemed to give off disciplined light.
Selena sat across from her with the Harlan County file open on the desk between them and the last of the debrief laid out in clipped, factual lines.
“Pruitt confessed after counsel came in,” she said.
“Not fully at first. He framed it as divine correction. Claimed the women had already damned themselves and he was finishing a process God had started. Once the Donna Murphy connection was established, the rest of it came faster. He blamed her for the miscarriage. In his mind that loss became proof of what women like her were capable of.”
Meg’s face did not change.
Selena had known her long enough to understand that meant she was listening closely, not that she was unmoved.
“The chronology lines up?” Meg asked.
“Yes.”
“No loose ends?”
“Nothing material.” Selena rested her fingertips on the closed edge of the file.
“Croft remains what he always was. Manipulative. Image-conscious. Surrounded by people willing to confuse charisma with holiness. I suspect he didn’t want us snooping around for another reason.
Maybe he’s scared we’ll see he’s moving dangerously close to being a cult leader.
I don’t know. But he wasn’t the killer.”
Meg gave one slow nod. “And Sheriff Chase?”
The question came too evenly to mean nothing.
“Useful,” Selena said. “Steady. Better instincts than I thought he would have, to be honest. But I guess everyone is full of surprises.”
Meg smiled.
“That sounds almost generous.”
“I’m capable of generosity, you know, boss.”
“You ration it carefully, Selena, when it comes to Harlan County.”
That got a faint breath of amusement from Selena, but it passed quickly.
The office window behind Meg showed Washington in its late-afternoon shape.
Gray light on stone buildings. Traffic inching below.
A world of meetings and briefings and men in polished shoes pretending their mistakes were strategy.
Selena had lived inside that machinery long enough to move through it almost without feeling it.
Today it felt farther away than it should have. She already missed the smell of pines and the flow of a slow, simple river.
Meg leaned back in her chair, folded her hands once over the closed file, and looked at Selena for a few seconds without speaking.
Then she said, “You did a hell of a job.”
Selena looked up.
Meg’s voice remained level, but the words landed more heavily because of that.
“But you always do,” Meg added.
Praise from other people usually slid off Selena. Praise from Meg never had.
“Thank you,” she said.
Meg waved it off lightly, then tapped the file with one finger. “Now, off the record. How was it being home?”
For once Selena did not have a ready answer.
She looked down at the file. At her own hand resting beside it. At the faint white scar near her thumb from a training injury fifteen years ago. Little old things had a way of resurfacing lately.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “At first I hated it.”
Meg waited.
Selena let out a slow breath and leaned back in the chair.
“It felt small,” she said. “Too familiar. Like the place knew things about me I’d spent years trying not to think about.
” Her gaze drifted toward the window, though she was not really seeing Washington anymore.
“But then… I don’t know. I’d missed it. The place.
The people. Even the parts that irritate me. ”
Meg watched her with the quiet attention she reserved for moments when she thought honesty might actually happen if she did not interrupt it.
“It’s a strange feeling,” Selena said.
Meg nodded once. “That usually means it matters.”
Silence held for a moment.
Then Meg opened a drawer, took out a single sheet from another folder, and set it aside without yet offering it over.
“You should take a break now,” she said. “Two hard cases back-to-back deserve some downtime.”
Selena raised an eyebrow. “Is that your way of telling me the suits in Washington are still annoyed at me for blowing a hole in their case?”
Meg’s expression remained as calm as ever. “You could put it that way. It’s only been a week.”
“So, I’m being politely benched.”
“You’re being tactically underused for a short while.”
Selena huffed a laugh through her nose.
Meg’s voice softened by half a degree, which from her was practically tenderness. “But to be honest, if I take my boss hat off, as your friend, I think it’s good for you to get back to your home once in a while.”
That sat between them.
Selena looked at her more carefully.
Meg went on. “You’ve spent a long time becoming who you needed to be. That was not wasted effort. But I don’t think every road back is regression.”
Selena said nothing.
“If you wanted to go back,” Meg said, “it could be arranged in a professional capacity. For a while. You could work out of Harlan County.”
The offer did not surprise her as much as it should have. Meg had likely been turning it over since the first briefing note from Harlan County had crossed her desk. The woman rarely suggested anything without already having considered the administrative angles.
Still, hearing it aloud changed something.
Selena looked down at the sheet of paper by Meg’s hand. Blank from this angle. Full of possibility from the other.
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted.
Meg nodded as if that answer pleased her more than certainty would have.
“You don’t need to know today.”
She closed the file, slid it neatly to one side, and pushed the other paper across the desk.
“One week of leave,” she said. “Then we’ll look at things.”
Selena glanced at the paper. Official leave approval. Simple. Clean. Meg had clearly prepared it before the conversation began.
“That an order?” Selena asked.
“Yes.”
“Because I’m overworked?”
“Because you’re stubborn, and if I left this optional, you’d find a reason to ignore it and cause more havoc here.”
Selena almost smiled. “You know me too well, boss.”
Meg leaned back again. “And if you do decide Harlan County is where you need to be, I’ll make sure you have the latitude to do it.”
That one hit harder than the offer itself.
Not because of the logistics, but because Meg, more than almost anyone, knew what it had cost Selena to build the life she had.
Knew how hard she had clawed her way away from the limits of where she came from.
For Meg to say aloud that going back would not be failure meant more than Selena wanted to admit.
“Thank you,” she said again, and meant more by it this time.
Meg inclined her head. “Get out of here before I remember another meeting I can drag you into.”
Selena stood, took the leave paper, and gathered herself in the quiet, automatic way years at the Bureau had taught her to do. By the time she reached the door, her face likely gave nothing away again.
Meg spoke just before she opened it.
“Raven.”
Selena looked back.
Meg’s expression had gone unreadable once more.
“Try not to overthink your next move. Go with your heart, or your gut. Whichever you feel is strongest.”
That, more than anything else, almost made her smile.
“I’ll do my worst.”
Outside the office, the hallway hummed with the ordinary life of the building. Phones. Footsteps. A junior agent moving too fast with a coffee he was about to spill. Selena walked through it all, down to the elevator and out to the parking structure, with the leave approval folded in her hand.
Her car waited where she had left it.
Washington’s air met her cool and faintly metallic as she stepped out onto the concrete level. Traffic noise carried up from the street below in a steady restless wash. By the time she reached the driver’s door, the city had started shifting toward evening.
Selena stopped.
Then she took out her phone.
Connor’s name sat in her contacts exactly where it had sat since she entered it at the start of the case, practical and almost absurdly ordinary on the screen. No photo. No little private marker. Just a name and a number.
Her thumb hovered over it.
For a long moment she did nothing.
The parking structure around her held its own kind of silence. Not true quiet. Engines starting in distant corners. Tires on concrete. Someone laughing one level down. But enough stillness for a person to hear herself think, which was not always a gift.
She looked at his name and felt it again.
Not grief. Not regret exactly. Not the old ache she had spent years carrying like something half-healed and permanent.
Something better.
Unfamiliar enough to make her wary. Good enough to make wariness feel foolish.
Selena lowered the phone at last and slipped it back into her coat pocket.
She did not know yet what the feeling was.
But for the first time in years, the thought of Connor Chase made something in her lift rather than close.
And whatever it was, she thought it might be worth exploring.