Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The squad room was already buzzing when Jo walked in at seven-thirty.
She'd barely slept—maybe two hours, grabbed in fitful snatches between bouts of staring at the ceiling and running scenarios in her head. But she'd showered, put on a clean shirt, and made sure her face showed nothing but the usual Monday morning fatigue.
Normal. Everything had to look normal.
Kevin was already at his desk, head bent over paperwork. He glanced up when she came in—just a flicker of eye contact, barely a second—then went back to whatever he was pretending to read.
Good. He understood.
Jo crossed to her own desk without stopping, without saying good morning, without doing any of the small things she normally would have done. Anyone watching would see two colleagues getting on with their day. Nothing more.
Wyatt came in a few minutes later, coffee in hand, Lucy trailing at his heels. He looked rough—dark circles under his eyes, shoulders tight with tension he was trying to hide. But he nodded at Jo, exchanged a few words with Reese at the front desk, settled into his chair like it was any other day.
Lucy didn't settle. She circled Wyatt's desk once, then padded over to Sam's office door and lay down there instead, her head on her paws, watching Wyatt from across the room.
Jo noticed. Dogs always knew.
Jo watched him over the top of her computer screen. Cataloging. Analyzing. Looking for cracks.
He pulled up case files. Standard procedure. His fingers moved across the keyboard with their usual speed, but Jo noticed the way his eyes kept drifting to his phone. The way his jaw tightened every time it buzzed.
Something was eating at him. Something bad.
Compromised or coerced? The question kept circling in Jo's mind. She'd seen dirty cops before—the way they got cocky, started covering their tracks with sloppy confidence. Wyatt didn't look cocky. He looked hunted.
Lucy settled at his feet, but she kept lifting her head, watching him with those knowing eyes. Dogs always knew.
Keller arrived mid-morning.
He came through the front doors with none of the federal swagger Jo had seen from other FBI agents. No suit, no power play, just a tired man in a rumpled jacket who looked like he hadn't been sleeping much better than the rest of them.
He stopped at Sam's office first—courtesy knock, waited to be waved in. Jo couldn't hear what they were saying through the glass, but she watched Keller's body language. Shoulders down. Hands open. The posture of someone asking, not demanding.
Ten minutes later, he emerged and crossed the squad room toward the coffee station. Major was perched on the filing cabinet nearby, watching with that slow, judgmental blink cats did so well. Keller poured himself a cup, took a sip, winced at the burnt taste.
"Chief Mason warned me about this coffee," he said, glancing at Major. The cat's tail flicked once. "Should've listened."
Major offered no sympathy. He rarely did.
Jo didn't smile, but something in her chest loosened slightly. Small talk. Human. Not the cold federal machine she'd been bracing for.
Keller caught her eye. "Detective Harris. Heck of a week."
"That's one way to put it."
"Cooper was a good man." He shook his head, staring down at his cup. "Fifteen years I worked with him. Trusted him with my life."
Jo heard the grief in his voice—raw and real. Either Keller was an excellent actor, or he was exactly what he appeared to be: a partner trying to find justice for his friend.
"I'm sorry," she said, and meant it.
Keller nodded, then glanced around the squad room. His voice dropped slightly. “Agent Shaw hasn’t shared much information with me, has she with you?”
“No.”
He shrugged, casual. “Strange.”
He drained the rest of his coffee, grimaced again, and set the cup down. "I'm going to check in with your tech specialist. See if there's anything new on the digital front."
Jo watched him cross the room toward Wyatt's desk. Watched Wyatt's shoulders tense almost imperceptibly when Keller approached. Watched the two of them exchange words she couldn't hear.
Keller was playing a long game. Jo could feel it. But whose side was he really on?
She turned back to her own computer, pretending to work while her mind churned through possibilities.
Shaw on personal leave. Keller pointing fingers. Wyatt hiding something. Kevin's files being deleted by someone with access.
Too many pieces. Not enough pattern.
But the pattern was there. Buried somewhere in all the noise, waiting to be found.
Jo pulled up the case files and started reading again from the beginning. Somewhere in here was the thread that would unravel everything.
She just had to find it before someone else did.
Kevin set the trap that evening.
His apartment was quiet, the only light coming from his computer screen. He’d pulled the blinds, checked the locks twice, made sure his VPN was active before he started.
Old habits from a past he didn’t talk about.
He created the document first: a fabricated witness statement connecting the Binding Chain to the case. He made it look official—proper formatting, realistic details, the kind of thing that would make someone sit up and take notice if they were looking for exactly this kind of information.
Then he saved it. Three copies in three different locations on his desktop. Timestamped. Logged.
He ran a search for “Binding Chain case 2015-7742” and let the results sit on his screen for a full minute. Long enough for anyone monitoring to see it.
Then he closed everything down and sat back.
Waited.
The apartment felt different now. Smaller. The shadows in the corners seemed deeper, the silence heavier. Kevin found himself checking the window, the door, listening for sounds that shouldn’t be there.
He thought about Bridget. About the fear in her eyes when she’d told him what she’d done, what she’d been running from. About the organization that killed people for knowing too much.
If they were watching his searches, they knew someone was looking.
The question was whether they knew who.
Kevin didn’t sleep well that night.
The next morning, Kevin was at his computer before dawn.
He navigated to the first location. Empty.
Second location. Empty.
Third location. Gone.
All three files, deleted overnight. Not moved. Not quarantined. Erased completely, like they’d never existed.
Kevin sat back, his chest tight.
Confirmed.
Someone was watching. Someone with access to his system, someone who knew their way around police files. And whoever it was, they were looking for exactly what he’d been searching for.
The Binding Chain.
Kevin got dressed, got in his car, and drove to the station.
Jo was already at her desk when Kevin walked in.
He didn’t say anything. Just caught her eye across the room and gave a single, subtle nod.
Confirmed.
Jo’s expression didn’t change. She gave the slightest tilt of her head—acknowledgment—and went back to her paperwork.
But her mind was racing.
Someone inside the department was monitoring searches related to the Binding Chain. Actively deleting evidence. And the most likely candidate was sitting fifteen feet away, staring at his computer screen like a man waiting for the executioner.
Wyatt.
She watched him for a long moment. The exhaustion. The fear. The way he jumped every time his phone buzzed.
She needed answers. But she couldn’t get them here—not with Keller and Shaw circling and whatever pressure Wyatt was under making him skittish as a hunted animal.
She needed to get him alone. Somewhere he couldn’t run. Somewhere they could talk without the walls listening.
Jo pulled out her phone and typed a message.
Need to talk. Holy Spirits. Tonight. Just us.
She hit send and watched Wyatt’s phone light up on his desk.
He picked it up. Read the message. His face went through something—surprise, fear, resignation—before settling into something that looked almost like relief.
Jo waited. The seconds stretched. Wyatt stared at his phone, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Then his reply came through.
Okay.
One word. It had taken him a long time to type it.
Jo put her phone away and went back to her paperwork. Tonight, she’d get the truth. One way or another.
Across the room, Wyatt set down his phone and stared at the wall.
Lucy pressed closer against his leg, whining softly.
The clock on the wall ticked toward evening.