Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
River
If the Hollow Oak had felt electric last night, the station this morning felt radioactive.
The moment I walked through the doors with Finn beside me, the entire building seemed to hum, like the storm that’d been gathering all these years had finally blown the roof off Maple Ridge and left the truth exposed and sparking.
Linton sprinted past us carrying three case files, nearly collided with a female uniform on break—I think it was the woman Finn and I had seen at the trailhead—apologized, then kept running.
Phones rang nonstop. Dispatch muttered under her breath like a witch weaving protection spells, fielding calls from freaked-out citizens.
Someone in evidence dropped a box, cursed loudly enough to rattle glass, and I heard someone shout something about “Chain of custody, Doyle, Jesus Christ.”
Normal was a thing of the past in this building. A body had been found. A body of someone most of the town knew and loved.
Finn nodded toward his office with a tilt of his chin. “Five minutes,” he murmured. “Just the two of us.”
My pulse rebelled at that, hope and fear colliding in a way that made my breath hitch. Five minutes alone with Finn tended to rearrange my brain chemistry. But when I stepped into his office, the reality that greeted me wasn’t romantic.
It was war.
His desk had photos spread out from edge to edge, and thumbtacked maps on the corkboard were layered with hand-drawn circles. A whiteboard had been dragged in from an old conference room and had seven columns drawn across it.
All blank for now.
Seven.
A shiver crawled down my spine.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m functional.”
His mouth twitched. “I’ll take functional.”
Finn closed the door, then leaned against it for a breath. For the first time since the woods, I saw the fatigue dragging at him. The pallor beneath his tan. The way the sling made him look somehow both breakable and stubbornly immovable.
“You need sleep,” I said.
“Later.”
“Finn—”
He stepped in close, brushing a strand of hair away from my cheek. The gentleness of the gesture nearly undid me.
“If I close my eyes,” he said softly, “I’m going to see you in the trees with three masked men. I’m going to hear you yelling my name. I’m going to feel that knife slicing through my arm again.” His throat worked. “More sleep than I got isn’t happening. Not yet.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay, fine. Then we work.”
He nodded. The movement was slow and somehow grateful. “Yeah. We work.”
We stood shoulder-to-shoulder facing the mess of the case. Seven possible Watchers. Seven layers of corruption. Seven people who believed the Fund was their divine right to shape Maple Ridge in their image.
Seven people willing to bury citizens like trash when they got in the way, which meant seven possible victims.
Finn tapped the board with a knuckle. “So, the seven behind the scenes. Not all hands-on. Maybe not even all fully aware. Darren indicated levels. Some might be sending memos. Some might be digging graves. We need to figure out who’s who and what the chain of command is.”
“And how it works. Who’s closest to panicking after the things we’ve dug up lately,” I murmured.
Finn glanced at me. “The level of anxiety matters, you think?”
“Yes.” I pointed to a circle on the map pinned to the far-right wall. “People in conspiracies follow patterns—loyalty patterns, fear patterns, guilt patterns. Someone in this structure is going to break sooner than the others.”
“You’re thinking psychological pressure.”
“I’m thinking pressure points. Every hierarchy has one. And breaking it is easier than tearing down the whole building.” I inhaled through my nose. Steadied. Refocused.
“Okay,” I said, lifting my chin. “Let’s chart affiliations. Who has access to the Fund? Who benefits? Who signs off on disbursements? Who closes complaints without documentation?”
Finn opened a drawer one-handed and pulled out a thick binder. “The city’s budget records for the past six years. Public-facing versions, anyway. I requested them after the library permit incident last spring.”
“Before I came home,” I realized.
He froze for half a second. “Yeah. Before that.”
“So, were you guys already investigating corruption?”
“Discrepancies,” he corrected. “We didn’t have proof of a pattern. It was just things that came up in the last couple of cases we took on that niggled at something in my cop brain.”
“Well,” I said quietly, “I’m thinking we have more that points to that now than ever.”
We dove in. Minutes folded into an hour. Each line item opened into three more. Each connection exposed a fault line. We traded calls with the other members of the team, all of us keeping each other updated.
I was leaning over the desk, flipping through Kline’s staff emails as Finn went through all the recent physical evidence from the woods, when he suddenly stilled.
“What?” I whispered.
He didn’t speak, just walked over with a bagged photo that he slid across the desk. “It’s the Polaroid from the drop box in the woods,” he said.
It was that one of my inner office door. My nameplate. The date.
Now that the fear haze of knowing I was at the center of things had burned off, something struck me.
“Can we zoom on this at all?” I asked.
“Yeah, they have digital photos of everything we found. Give me a second.” Finn pulled up the digital file on his monitor and enlarged it.
I leaned in. There. In the reflection of the glass pane to the left of the door was a silhouette. Someone standing far back in the hallway, where I hadn’t looked before on the physical copy. It didn’t look tall enough to be Grant, but it wasn’t heavy enough to be Kline, either.
Finn leaned closer, likely thinking the same things I was.
My stomach dropped. “This isn’t intimidation. They had no way of knowing I would ever see this photo. That anyone but those it was meant for would see it. This is a directive.”
“No,” Finn said grimly. “It’s surveillance.”
A slow, icy dread slid through me.
“Seven active members,” Finn murmured, pacing as he roughly ran a hand through his hair. “Fucking hell. What if one of them is embedded in this goddamn department?” He shot a look at his closed door where the sheriff’s department buzzed behind the wood.
My blood went cold. “You trust Linton,” I said automatically.
He nodded. “I do.”
“Torres?”
“He’d rather eat gravel than join a conspiracy.”
“Dispatch? Doyle? Morrigan? Myra?”
“Myra?” Finn snorted. “She’d expose them before lunch.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Then who—?”
The knock on the office door snapped us both to attention.
Finn tensed, and I almost felt it ripple through him.
“Yeah?” he called.
The door opened a crack. Assistant District Attorney Graham Meyer stepped inside with an expression so carefully blank it felt like a threat.
The sight of him landed before I could prepare for it.
Graham Meyer. The last time I’d stood in the same room as him, my father had just been walked out of a disciplinary hearing. Graham had held the door open. He hadn’t met my eyes.
He’d been a young, hotshot prosecutor then. Rising. Ambitious. Not a bad man, I’d told myself after. Just a man on the wrong side of something he didn’t fully understand.
Standing in Finn’s office later, I wasn’t sure anymore which version of that story was true.
Meyer had been heavily involved with my father’s case. Just the sight of him brought back memories I didn’t have time to unpack.
“Morning, Sheriff,” Graham said. “Doctor Bennett.”
My spine straightened. “Graham.”
His eyes flicked to the whiteboard. At the files. At Finn’s bandaged arm.
“Busy night last night,” he said mildly.
Every instinct I owned screamed danger.
Finn’s voice was flat and controlled when he said, “Is there something you need? We’re kind of busy, and we don’t have anything for your office yet.”
Graham’s gaze brushed me before returning to Finn. “The mayor wants an update on the Birchwood recovery. And a copy of any statements made by your suspect.” He shot Finn a polite smile. “For transparency.”
“Transparency,” Finn repeated. “That what we’re calling it? Sounds more like micro-management.”
Graham’s smile didn’t budge. “Just doing my job.”
“Your job,” Finn said, stepping subtly in front of me, “is to prosecute crimes, Meyer. To bring the shitbags I hand you to justice. Not to run interference for city hall.”
Graham exhaled through his nose, the move patient but strained. “Finn. Come on. Let’s not turn this into a spectacle. We’re all on the same side. Just like we’ve always been.” He shot a look at me and my stomach turned.
“I’m not sure we are,” Finn said quietly, never taking his eyes off Graham.
Silence thickened, and Graham’s gaze moved between us—gauging, calculating, filing it all away.
Then his lips curved, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. Not surprised, either. Just...knowing, somehow.
“Well,” he said, stepping back toward the door, “I’ll leave you to it, then. We’ll give you twenty-four hours, but the mayor will expect that case file and transcript tomorrow.”
Finn didn’t answer.
Graham turned to leave but paused with the door half-open. “Oh,” he added lightly, “and congratulations, Finn. On the...developments.”
A beat too long passed after he said it. A beat that made my heart stop.
Then, he smiled at me.
At me.
Then he left, the door clicking shut behind him.
Finn turned to me, his jaw clenched. “Something’s not right.”
My pulse hammered. “He knows. He has to be part of the seven.”
“Developments,” Finn said. “What the hell did that mean? Us?” He shot me a look. “Whatever this is.” He motioned between us. “The investigation? Something else he’s taunting me about that we don’t know yet?”
My mouth went dry. “Finn—”
He stepped closer, his voice low. “Not now. We can paddle that particular creek later. Right now? River, listen to me. Until we know who’s all inside this, until we know who’s watching, until we know why they’ve been targeting you—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Don’t go anywhere alone.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t let anyone in your house.”
“I won’t.”
“And?” His voice dropped to something rough and unsteady. “If anything feels wrong—anything at all—you call me first. Not the station. Not 911. Me.”
My chest clenched. “Finn—”
His hand slid to the back of my neck, his forehead lowering to mine with a soft, aching exhale.
“This isn’t like before,” he whispered. “This isn’t the Fund quietly abusing power. This is the Watchers realizing someone finally sees them.”
“And they’ll come for us,” I said.
“They’ll try.”
I closed my eyes and leaned into him, letting his breath steady mine. “Then we need to stay ahead of them,” I whispered.
Finn nodded against my skin. “Yeah,” he murmured. “We do.” He pulled back enough to meet my eyes. “And we will.”
But even as he said it, even as determination carved itself into every line of his face...
I felt it.
A shift in the air. A pressure change. A new storm rolling in—fast, vicious, and aimed straight at us.