Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Holy Spirits was nearly empty when Jo arrived.
The stained glass windows were dark now, no colored light to soften the edges. Just the dim glow of the bar lights and the faint smell of wood polish and old whiskey. A couple of regulars nursed drinks near the front, but the back corner was empty.
Mick was at the bar tonight, which wasn’t a coincidence. Jo had called him.
He caught her eye as she walked in, gave a barely perceptible nod. I’ve got your back, that nod said. Whatever happens.
Jo slid into the corner booth, her back to the wall, and waited.
Wyatt arrived ten minutes later.
He looked worse than he had at the station. His face was pale, shadows carved deep under his eyes. He paused just inside the door, scanning the room the way he always did—exits, threats, witnesses. Old habits from a life Jo was only beginning to understand.
When his gaze found her, something flickered across his face. Fear, maybe. Or relief. It was hard to tell.
He walked to the booth and sat down across from her. Neither of them spoke.
The waitress appeared with two whiskeys, set them down without a word, and retreated to the bar.
Jo didn’t reach for her glass. She looked at Wyatt, studying him the way she’d study a suspect—except this wasn’t a suspect. This was someone she’d worked beside for years. Someone she’d trusted.
She didn’t ease into it.
“I know you’ve been deleting Kevin’s searches,” she said. “I know something’s wrong. Talk to me.”
Wyatt’s hand tightened around his glass. For a long moment, he didn’t answer. The silence stretched between them, heavy with everything unsaid.
Then he exhaled—a long, shuddering breath, like a man who’d been holding it for weeks.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know how to tell anyone.”
“Start at the beginning.”
Wyatt stared into his whiskey like the answers were hidden at the bottom of the glass. When he started talking, his voice was rough. Stripped down to something raw.
“My father,” he began, “is not a very nice man.”
Jo listened without interrupting as Wyatt laid it out. The syndicate his father ran—not street-level crime, but something bigger. Corporate fronts. Political connections. A network that stretched across state lines and buried its mistakes deep.
“When I was a kid, my mother figured it out. Found evidence she wasn’t supposed to find.” Wyatt’s jaw tightened. “She got us into witness protection. New names, new lives. I thought we’d escaped.”
“But he found you.”
“Three weeks ago.” Wyatt’s voice was hollow. “I came home from work and there was a body in my trunk.”
Jo felt the pieces clicking into place even before he said it.
“James Cooper,” she said. “The FBI agent.”
Wyatt nodded slowly. “I didn’t know who he was at first. Just... a dead man in my car. And a message on my phone telling me to wait. That someone would take care of it.”
“They moved the body.”
“To the woods. The dump site.” Wyatt looked up, and his eyes were haunted. “It was a message, Jo. To me. To the FBI. To anyone who thought they could touch my father’s operation. He put a dead federal agent in my trunk to show me he could reach me anywhere. That there was no escape.”
Jo’s stomach turned. She’d seen the crime scene photos. Known the body was staged. But this—this was something else entirely.
“The body in the woods,” she said slowly. “That was your father’s work.”
“Yes.”
“And the demand?”
Wyatt’s hands curled into fists on the table.
“He wants me to change things in a case file and give him information on an old informant. There’s evidence in those files.
Witness statements. Testimony. Things that could corroborate a case against the syndicate.
My father wants it altered before anyone connects the dots. ”
“That’s not all.” Wyatt’s voice dropped. “There’s physical evidence too. A box cutter from a 2012 case—prints that were never processed back then. With modern forensics, it could tie someone directly to the organization.”
“They want you to steal it.”
Wyatt nodded slowly. “From our evidence room. I’ve been stalling on that part. Altering digital records is bad enough, but walking into lockup and making evidence disappear...” He shook his head. “That’s the line I couldn’t cross.”
“That’s why they’re escalating,” Jo said quietly. “They’re out of patience.”
“I think so.”
Jo’s jaw tightened. “Kevin’s searches. You were deleting them.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know it was Kevin?”
“I built a monitoring program years ago. It flags certain keywords—my name, my mother’s name, case numbers my father sent me.” Wyatt paused. “When Kevin’s searches started hitting, I traced the geolocation. His house. That’s how I knew who was digging.”
Jo nodded.
“Someone else was searching too. My father’s people. Same keywords—Binding Chain, witness protection, disposal procedures. But different access level. Read-only. Whoever it was could see everything in the system, but couldn’t change anything.”
“If they can hack in, why do they need you?”
“Because they can look but can’t alter. That’s what I’m for.” Wyatt’s voice was bitter. “I figure it was my father’s people. Probing the system, mapping what exists, preparing for me to destroy it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I got the geolocation for those too. Motel 8. Just the type of place they would stay.”
Jo went still. “Motel 8?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Shaw is staying at Motel 8.” Jo’s mind was racing. “And she’s on personal leave. No official assignment. Whatever she’s doing here, it’s not Bureau business.”
Wyatt stared at her. “You think Shaw is—“
“Running searches on the same files? On leave but showing up uninvited? Taking surveillance photos of the station?” Jo’s jaw tightened. “Yeah. I think Shaw might be our problem.”
The implication hung in the air between them. An FBI agent, working with the syndicate. It would explain so much—her unexplained presence, her questions, the way she seemed to have her own agenda.
Wyatt was quiet for a moment, processing. Then he shook his head slowly. “There’s more. Something worse.”
“Tell me.”
Wyatt hesitated. His hands were shaking slightly—Jo could see it even in the dim light. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper.
“I found a list.”
“What kind of list?”
“Loose ends.” The words came out ragged. “People the syndicate is cleaning up. Witnesses from old cases. People who saw things they shouldn’t have, knew things they shouldn’t have known. Names, descriptions, last known locations.”
Jo’s blood went cold. She already knew what he was going to say.
“There was an entry,” Wyatt continued, his voice hollow.
“No name. They don’t know who she is yet.
But the details—female, mid-twenties eight years ago, involved in disposal of evidence, last seen in the northeast.” He looked up at Jo, and his eyes were wet.
“All the details matched. Age. Region. Timeline. The description of her involvement.”
Jo couldn’t breathe. “Bridget.”
“I didn’t know for sure. Not at first.” Wyatt’s voice was desperate now, pleading for her to understand.
“But the more I dug, the more the pieces fit. And when Kevin started searching—when I saw what he was looking for, the Binding Chain, disposal procedures, witness protection—I knew if his searches hit the wrong servers, if the wrong people saw what he was hunting...”
“They’d find her.”
“Yes.” Wyatt’s face crumpled. “So I deleted his searches. Changed some of the details in the file—her age, her description. Anything that might throw them off the trail. I couldn’t let them find her, Jo. Not through me. Not because of something I did or didn’t do.”
Jo stared at him. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears.
“You’ve been protecting my sister.”
Wyatt met her gaze. “I couldn’t let them find her. Not through me.”
The words hung in the air between them. Jo felt something shift in her chest—the anger she’d been holding, the suspicion, all of it reshaping into something else.
Wyatt wasn’t the enemy. He never had been.
He was just another person caught in the same web—trying to protect the people he cared about, trying to find a way out of an impossible situation.
Just like Bridget. Just like her.
“Why didn’t you come to us?” Jo asked finally. Her voice was softer now. “Sam, me—we would have helped.”
“And put a target on all of you?” Wyatt shook his head. “My father kills people, Jo. FBI agents. Witnesses. Anyone who gets in his way. If he thought you were helping me, if he thought Sam or Kevin knew anything—“
“So you carried it alone.”
“It was the only way to keep everyone safe.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Except it didn’t work, did it? You figured it out anyway. Kevin figured it out. And now—“
“Now we figure the rest out together.” Jo leaned forward, her voice firm. “You’re not alone in this anymore, Wyatt. Whatever happens next, we face it as a team.”
Wyatt looked at her like he wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “You’re not—you don’t think I—“
“I think you’ve been trying to do the right thing in an impossible situation.” Jo reached across the table, gripped his arm. “I think you’ve been drowning, and you didn’t ask for help because you were afraid of pulling us down with you. That stops now.”
Something broke in Wyatt’s expression. The walls he’d been holding up for weeks, maybe years, crumbled. He didn’t cry—he was too exhausted for that—but Jo could see the relief flooding through him. The weight lifting, just a fraction, from his shoulders.
“What do we do?” he asked.
Jo thought about Bridget, waiting at the cottage.
About Kevin, who’d been searching for answers and stumbled into something far bigger than any of them expected.
About Sam, who trusted his team even when he knew something was wrong.
About Shaw, circling closer, running searches from a motel room for reasons Jo still didn’t fully understand.
“First, we bring Sam in. He needs to know what we’re dealing with.
” Jo released Wyatt’s arm and sat back. “Then we figure out how to handle Shaw without tipping her off. And we protect those files—because if they contain what I think they contain, they’re not just evidence against your father’s organization. ”
“They’re leverage,” Wyatt said quietly.
“They’re weapons.” Jo’s eyes hardened. “And we’re going to use them.”
At the bar, Mick caught her eye. He raised an eyebrow—Everything okay?
Jo gave him a small nod. Not okay. Not by a long shot. But better than it had been an hour ago.
They had the truth now. All of it.
And tomorrow, they’d start fighting back.