Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Finn
I drove back to the station on autopilot.
That wasn’t a compliment, it was merely fact.
Somewhere between Stonybrooke’s parking lot and the station’s back entrance, my body made all the right decisions while my mind was still in that room.
Still reading the words on the page under Marta Bennett’s photograph.
Still hearing Grant’s voice saying the word protocols in the same tone a reasonable man uses to describe municipal budgeting.
The door closed behind us as we entered to fluorescent lights and familiar smells.
“Interview Room 1,” I said to Atlas. “Keep her comfortable, but don’t push yet.”
He nodded and steered Jordyn down the hall—she went without resistance.
River stood beside me in the lobby. Her eyes were still streaming slightly from the chemical agent, but the rest of her face was set in the expression she’d had since we burst out of the building into the cold.
It wasn’t shock. Or grief. It was something past both of those, the place you arrive at when there’s nothing left to be surprised by and you’re deciding what to do with what you know.
“Interview room,” I said. “Not because you’re a subject, but because it locks.”
She came.
I locked the door to Interview Room 2, drew the blinds, and stood with my back to her for a moment as I braced my hands on the table.
The room was small and cold, and I was aware of every inch of it.
The two-way glass we kept dark during non-interviews, the fluorescent bulb that had been flickering for three weeks, the chair River had settled into without being asked, assuming the posture of someone allowing herself to sit down only because the alternative was her knees giving out.
I thought about what Grant had said. Not the part about the Fund, or the protocols, or the other things he said with the calm of a man who genuinely believed the words. The part about Marta.
She was under care. Her deterioration was well-documented. Her death was reviewed and closed.
They’d had her in that building, had completed the paperwork themselves, signed it, and filed it with a state office that reported to Grant’s office. And then he stood in front of Marta’s daughter tonight and described it as appropriate protocols.
I was aware of my hands pressing hard enough into the table that the edge cut into my palms.
“Finn.”
I turned. She was still in the chair, but she’d leaned forward, her elbows on her knees as she watched me.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“I’m okay.”
“I didn’t ask if you were okay. I said talk to me.”
I exhaled, then pulled out the chair across from her and sat.
“He had her in that building,” I said. “He had your mother in that building, and he killed her while she was in his custody. Then he processed the paperwork and closed the file. And tonight, he stood twenty feet from you and described it like he was reading meeting minutes.”
“Yes,” she said. “He did.”
“I wanted to put him through the wall.”
“I know. I watched you decide not to.” Her voice was level. “It was the right call.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “But that’s how you know it was right.”
I looked at her. Took in the streaming eyes—mostly cleared now—the set of her jaw, the way she was sitting—not collapsed, not rigid, just present, both feet on the floor, a person occupying their own body with full intention.
“How are you doing this?” I asked.
“Doing what?”
“Sitting that straight. After…all of that. After he said what he did about your mother.”
River was quiet for a moment. “Because if I stop remaining upright,” she said carefully, “Grant wins that minute. And I’m not giving him anything.”
The tightness in my chest didn’t leave, but it shifted. It turned from the kind that crushes to the kind that steadies.
I reached across the table. She looked at my hand and then put hers into it.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “For what he said about her. For what they did to her. For all of it.”
“I know,” she said. And then, after a beat, she added, “I’m going to be angry about it for a long time. But right now, I need to be here and remain useful. I’ll be pissed later.”
“You’re allowed to be both.”
“I know,” she said again. “You, too.”
A knock.
I stood, and Atlas pushed the door open, holding out his phone without preamble. “He filed while we were still in the parking lot.”
I took the phone.
Lucas Grant, the mayor of Maple Ridge, had submitted a formal complaint to the state oversight board at 1:17 a.m., roughly eight minutes after we burst out of Stonybrooke’s front entrance.
He accused me of unlawful entry into a condemned state facility and added on evidence tampering and endangering an officer in my custody.
He was petitioning for an immediate oversight review of the Maple Ridge Sheriff’s Department. Pending review: suspension of the sitting sheriff.
I handed the phone back to Atlas.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“The state board convenes at nine. If they expedite—which Grant will push for—you could have a suspension order by noon.”
River had followed us into the hall. She read the situation in our faces without needing the details. “He’s not trying to stop you,” she said. “He’s trying to make everything you’ve found and still have inadmissible. Discredit the source before the evidence gets to anyone who can use it.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Which means we have until nine.”
Atlas checked his watch. “A few hours and change.”
“Then let’s talk to Jordyn.”
She was sitting at the interview table with her cuffed hands folded in front of her, staring at a fixed point on the wall. When we came in, she didn’t startle. She’d been waiting.
I sat across from her, River took the chair to my left, and Atlas stood by the door with his arms crossed. It wasn’t an aggressive stance, just taking up room.
“You said you’d help,” I said. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“I know.”
“Start from the beginning. Not what you were told, but what you actually saw.”
She exhaled. And then she talked.
She’d been recruited a handful of years ago.
Deputy position, good salary, a vague understanding that some assignments would require discretion and that the discretion was rewarded.
She’d passed on information, not evidence.
Not physical files, just data. Recently, what River was doing, what I was looking at, when evidence was logged and where.
She’d thought she was protecting the town’s stability while also protecting her future.
She’d told herself that enough times that she’d almost believed it.
“When did things change?” River asked.
Jordyn’s gaze moved to the table. “When I found out that Eleanor Jenkins wasn’t just missing.”
River went very still.
“I didn’t know who was behind it,” Jordyn said quickly.
“Not at first, anyway. But I knew the files that I’d been asked to route had Eleanor’s intake number in the metadata.
I knew she’d been in that building. And then the evidence and body turned up, and it didn’t match anything they’d told me.
I”—she stopped and pressed her lips together—“I kept quiet. Because of my brother. Because Grant had things on Mark that would put him away, and if I stopped cooperating—”
“Your brother killed Eleanor?” I asked.
Jordyn flinched as if I’d struck her. “I didn’t know that then.”
“But you know it now.”
A long pause. “Yes,” she said.
The word cost her something. I let it.
“Jordyn,” River said. Her voice had shifted. It hadn’t gone soft exactly, but it had turned precise. It was the voice she used when she wanted to be heard without being threatening. “Tonight, in that room, the wall, the Bennett file. Had you seen any of that before?”
“No,” Jordyn said, shaking her head. “I was told the basement archive was operational storage. Old intake records, maintenance logs, that sort of thing. I didn’t know what was down there.”
“Grant didn’t show you the room?”
“He showed me the door,” she said. “Gave me the code and told me to retrieve a specific box. He said it needed to be moved before the state review made the building accessible.” She swallowed.
“I think he wanted me down there with him if someone showed up. And I think he was expecting you. He needed a witness. Someone in a uniform who could say she was present under orders.”
“He used you as insulation,” I said.
She nodded again.
Atlas uncrossed his arms. “The box he sent you to retrieve. What was in it?”
“He didn’t let me open it. He collected it himself when he arrived. Before you came in.” Her jaw tightened. “He was already there when I got there. Was in the room before I arrived.”
“Which means he really did know we were coming,” River said.
“He knew the moment you left the station,” Jordyn said quietly. “He still has someone close to you. It wasn’t just me. I don’t know who it is, but someone is still reporting to him.”
I filed that away. It was a problem for after nine.
“Grant seems to have been accelerating. How much of what was in that room has been moved or copied?”
Jordyn hesitated. “The wall is operational,” she said.
“It’s a working file. They update it. But the originals?
” She stopped. Seemed to be working through what she was allowed to say, or what she’d promised herself she’d say if it ever came to this.
“The originals aren’t there. That room is current intelligence.
The source documents. The founding records of the Fund, the original directives, the intake files from the early years… those are somewhere else.”
River leaned forward. “Where?”
“The annex,” Jordyn said. “There’s a sublevel behind the main Stonybrooke building.
It’s a separate structure, different access.
It predates the Fund. It was a maintenance facility in the sixties.
They converted it. Reinforced it. It’s climate-controlled.
” Her voice was flat now, recitative almost, the voice of someone who decided to empty themselves of everything they’d been carrying.
“It’s where they keep everything that can’t be destroyed and shouldn’t be found.
The files the Fund never wanted daylight to touch. ”
The room was very quiet.
“Your mother knew about it,” Jordyn said to River.
“Before they moved her to Stonybrooke, before the institutionalization, she was trying to get access. She’d been corresponding with someone on the outside about what she found.
I don’t know how far she got. But Grant moved on her before she could do anything with it. ”
River’s face didn’t change, but something in her eyes did. I wondered if she was thinking about her mother’s letter.
“The annex,” I said. “Access.”
“There are two entry points,” Jordyn said.
“The main door, which requires a biometric that Grant controls. And a secondary maintenance access that was part of the original structure. It was supposed to be sealed in the 2009 renovation, but I know for a fact that the work order was never completed. It’s in the building permits if you know what to look for. ”
Atlas was already moving toward the door. He didn’t need to be told what to look for.
“One more thing,” Jordyn said.
I stopped.
“When Grant triggered the Void Protocol tonight, that’s an escalation flag. It goes to the full inner circle. They’ll know the annex has been mentioned. They’ll know someone talked.” She looked up at me. “You have less time than you think.”
I looked at the clock on the wall.
We didn’t have much time until the state board convened. Maybe less time than that before Grant moved on the annex before we could.
I looked at River. She was already looking at me.
“We go now,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“We go now,” I agreed.