Chapter 25 #2
“Ryan Calloway. This is my Omega.” He’s brought his Alpha game to the party but isn’t barking yet. “Her attorney is on her way. We’ll wait.”
“Her attorney—”
“Is on her way,” Ryan repeats.
Hale looks at him. Sweeps his gaze over the crowd. Glares at Doris Harrow, who is standing in her good coat with the dignity of someone who has been a fixture of this town for fifty years and is prepared to remain a fixture for fifty more.
“This is obstruction—” the younger officer starts.
“This is a public street,” Jenny says pleasantly, from her lawn chair. “We live here.”
“We’re just standing,” Elsie confirms.
“In our town,” Danny adds.
Hale breathes. “I have a warrant—”
“For what specifically?” Ryan asks.
A pause. “For a thief—”
“Who has requested the presence of her lawyer.”
“I need her to come with me,” Hale says.
“We’ll wait for her attorney,” Ryan replies. “And you’re welcome to wait with us.”
The standoff has an atmosphere I couldn’t have anticipated.
It’s not tense in the way I expected tension to feel with sharp-edges, and the imminent-threats of someone about to run or fight.
It’s more like pressure. Sustained and collective.
The pressure of a community that has made a decision and is holding it, quietly, without drama, without the need for drama.
Hale and his officers on one side.
The town on the other.
Me in the back.
The pack around me.
Doris Harrow brings a chairs from a store and sets it beside me. “In case you want to sit, sweetie,” she says.
“I’m all right standing,” I reply. “Thank you, Doris.”
She nods. Stays beside the chair.
Ten minutes pass.
Then fifteen.
Hale makes two phone calls. His officers confer in low voices. The crowd stands. Nobody leaves. Jenny drinks her tea. Elsie says something to the woman beside her that makes them both laugh quietly.
The town is patient in the way of people who have nowhere else to be because this is where they’ve decided to be.
At the twenty-minute mark a car comes down Main Street.
Not a police vehicle. A dark sedan, moving at the pace of someone who knows where they’re going and intends to get there efficiently. It parks at the edge of the cobblestones, the door opens, and Scarlet gets out. I have never been happier to see her before.
I’ve known Scarlet since grade school and I have always found her alarming in the best possible way.
She’s compact, with the energy of someone whose brain runs faster than most rooms can keep up with.
She’s carrying a briefcase and a tablet and the expression of a woman who has been on the phone for three hours and has arrived ready.
She finds me through the crowd immediately.
She finds Hale immediately after.
“Detective,” she says, walking toward him rather than toward me, which is the right call and exactly Scarlet. “Scarlet James. I’m Ms. Wilson’s attorney.” She opens the briefcase without breaking stride. “I have some materials I’d like you to look at before this goes any further.”
Hale looks at her. “Ms. James—”
“It won’t take long.” She holds out a folder. “Please.”
He takes it. He opens it.
I watch Hale read. The crowd watches Hale read.
Nobody speaks. The only sound is the carnival, the river, and forty people breathing in the same direction. Hale reads for a long time. He passes something to his younger officer. He reads again. He looks up at Scarlet, then down at the folder, then up again.
“This is—” he starts.
“A full documented account of Daniel Marsh,” Scarlet says.
“His real name, his prior operations, the structure of the framing of my client, the evidence chain that places him as the primary operator, and a statement from the bank’s own investigators confirming that the evidence against my client is inconsistent with the physical record.
” She pauses. “Specifically, the areas of the bank where my client’s fingerprints were found are entirely inconsistent with the areas from which the money was actually taken.
She was walked through that building deliberately to leave a trace in the wrong places. ”
Hale looks at the folder.
“Additionally,” Scarlet says, “I have a signed statement from Amber O’Connor.”
I go very still.
“Ms. O’Connor contacted my office this morning,” Scarlet says, and her eyes find mine briefly—quick, direct, a full sentence delivered without words.
“She has provided a full account of Daniel Marsh’s involvement, her own coercion, and the deliberate construction of the evidence against my client.
” She pauses. “She would like that noted.”
The street is very quiet. I can barely breathe. Amber did that?
“Detective,” Scarlet continues. “My client has been in this town for almost three weeks. She found somewhere safe and she stayed. She is not a flight risk, she is not a danger, and the case against her is built on fabricated evidence placed by a man who has done this before and will do it again if he isn’t found.
” She closes the briefcase. “I’d suggest your resources would be better directed at Daniel Marsh than at a woman standing in the middle of a small town running a cafe. ”
Hale grimaces at me.
He looks at the crowd—the full sweep of it, forty people in a public street, patient and warm and completely immovable.
He makes a decision. I watch him make it. The closed folder, the weight shift, the signal to his officers that doesn’t need words.
“Ms. Wilson,” he says. “We’ll need a formal statement at a later date, through your attorney.”
“Of course,” Scarlet replies for me.
“In the interim—” He stops. Looks at the folder one more time. “In the interim, we’re not in a position to proceed.”
“Thank you, Detective,” Scarlet says.
He looks at the crowd one more time.
The crowd looks back unabashedly. Nobody blinks. Nobody moves. Everybody is holding their breath.
“We’ll be in touch,” Hale says, to me specifically.
“Through her attorney,” Ryan adds.
Hale nods. He goes.
His officers go.
The unmarked car sits for thirty seconds and then it goes too. The street watches it go, and nobody moves until the last vehicle has cleared the main entrance of town.
“And don’t come back!” Elsie shouts, at the retreating vehicles, with the volume of a woman who has earned the right to shout things at retreating vehicles.
The laughter starts before the echo does.
And then Danny starts clapping slowly, the clap of someone deeply satisfied. Jenny joins in from her lawn chair, and the bookshop owner claps with reserved enthusiasm. Doris Harrow puts her hands together with the dignity of someone who knew exactly how this was going to go.
And then the whole street.
Not a roar. Sweetwater Valley is not a roaring kind of town. But it’s full and warm, the sound of forty people who did something together and are collectively, quietly proud of it.
I stand in the middle of it.
Ryan’s hand is at my back.
Jack hugs me.
Tristan’s hand finds my shoulder briefly and squeezes.
Archer is at my right, solid and present.
I look at Scarlet, who is closing her briefcase with the efficiency of someone who has done what she came to do.
“Scar,” I say, quietly, just to her. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“No thanks needed. I owed you one. Amber called this morning,” Scarlet replies. “She asked me to tell you—” She pauses. “She said she’s sorry. And she said she knew you’d find somewhere good to land.”
“If you speak to her again,” I start. “Please tell her that I forgive her. I know she was in a difficult situation and felt forced into framing me. I forgive her.”
“I’ll tell her.” We hug. “It looks like you’ve found a good place here. I’m happy for you, Lol.”
“Thank you.”
I breathe. I look at Main Street.
The town that came out this morning in its good coats and its lawn chairs.
The town that stood between me and the law and didn’t move.
Ryan’s hand is warm at my back.
“Okay?” he asks.
I look at Sweetwater Valley.
“Yeah,” I say.
The cheering is still going.