18. Hazel
Hazel
I've been writing since we arrived. Everything from the radio transcripts, organized chronologically, cross-referenced with the evidence we've gathered over the past five days.
My notebook is almost full. I'll need a new one soon, which is a problem I never expected to have during a federal protection assignment.
The conference room has a window overlooking the parking lot behind the building.
It's mid-afternoon. The lot is mostly empty except for three government vehicles and a rusted Subaru that belongs to someone on the clerical staff.
The sky is overcast, flat and gray, the kind of light that makes everything look like a photograph with the color drained out.
I stand and stretch my neck, then walk to the window to watch the street for a minute.
My eyes feel gritty from the early morning and the hours of close writing.
The door to the conference room opens and a young deputy I haven't met leans in. "Ms. Lowe? Marshal Savage asked me to check on you. He says they'll be another thirty minutes or so. Can I get you anything?"
"Coffee would be amazing. And a bathroom?"
"Restroom's down the hall, second left. I'll have coffee waiting when you get back."
I grab my phone but leave my notebook on the table.
The hallway is quiet. Government-building quiet, the kind where the fluorescent lights hum louder than anything human.
I pass two closed office doors, a bulletin board covered in interagency memos, and a water fountain that probably hasn't been serviced since the building was constructed.
The restroom is small and unremarkable. I wash my hands, splash water on my face, and stare at my reflection for a few seconds.
Dark circles under my eyes. Hair that needs washing.
The same flannel I've been wearing for two days because it's Brock's and it still smells like the outpost and I'm not ready to give it up.
I look tired and wired at the same time, which is approximately how I feel.
I dry my hands and step back into the hallway.
She's standing by the water fountain.
My brain registers her before my body reacts. Dark hair, pulled back. Denim jacket. The face I saw behind the bar at the Lucky Moon, wiping the counter with a rag and smiling at me like I was just another lost tourist.
Alice Dermott.
Every nerve in my body fires at once. The conversation through the wall: She's still with the marshal. I can get close but I need a reason to. Make sure she trusts you.
She hasn't seen me yet. She's facing the water fountain, one hand braced against the wall, her shoulders hitching in small, uneven movements. Crying. Or doing a very convincing impression of it.
I have about three seconds to decide what to do.
Option one: turn around, walk back to the conference room, and tell the deputy. Safe. Smart. Exactly what Silas told me to do at Haven 7. Nobody approaches you without being vetted through this room first.
Option two: find out what she's doing inside a federal building.
Because that's the question that overrides everything else.
Alice Dermott shouldn't be here. The Marshals office has a reception desk and a sign-in log.
Visitors get badges. The building isn't high-security, but it's not a walk-in clinic either.
If she's standing in this hallway, someone let her in or she talked her way past the front desk.
Either way, I need to know how, because the answer tells me something about how far this network's reach extends.
I don't approach her. Not yet. I pull out my phone, open the camera, and take two photographs from the hallway. Alice Dermott, inside the US Marshals office in Timber Creek, on the day of the raid. Timestamped. Geotagged. Evidence that she was here, regardless of what happens next.
Then I text Brock. Three words: Alice is here.
I watch the screen. Delivered. Not read. He's in the briefing with Mason. His phone might be on the table, face down, the way he leaves it during operational discussions. He might not see this for twenty minutes.
Alice straightens up and wipes her face with the back of her hand. She turns.
Our eyes meet.
The recognition is instant on both sides. Her expression cycles through three emotions in less than a second: surprise, calculation, and then something that settles into desperate relief so convincing it would fool anyone who hadn't heard her rehearse it through a bar wall two days ago.
"Oh God," she says, her voice cracking. "Oh God, you're the woman from the bar. Please. Please, I need help."
She takes a step toward me and I instinctively take a step back, keeping the distance. My heart is hammering but my voice comes out steady. Journalist voice. Interview voice. The one I use when I need to keep someone talking without revealing what I already know.
"What's wrong? What are you doing here?"
"It's Dale." The tears are flowing again, and they look real.
Wet cheeks, red-rimmed eyes, the blotchy flush of genuine crying.
She's either telling the truth or she's the best actress in three counties.
"He found out I talked to someone at the bar.
He thinks I told you about the operation.
He came to the Lucky Moon last night after the raid and he was out of his mind.
He said if I didn't help him find you he'd kill me.
He said he'd make me disappear like the others.
" Her breath catches in a ragged sob. "I came here to turn myself in.
To tell the marshals everything. But I got to the desk and I panicked.
I couldn't do it. I've been standing in this hallway for twenty minutes trying to make myself walk into one of those offices. "
The story is good. It's very good. If I hadn't overheard her in the Lucky Moon's back room two days ago, I would believe every word.
A woman terrorized by a dangerous man, desperate enough to come to the federal building but too frightened to follow through.
It hits every instinct I have as a journalist who's spent years interviewing survivors.
The trembling hands. The broken eye contact.
The way she keeps checking the hallway behind her like she expects Dale to appear at any second.
But I did hear her. Make sure she trusts you. That's all you need.
The question is: what does she want? If her mission is to get me outside the building, I need to understand what's waiting out there. And the best way to find out what someone is planning is to let them think their plan is working.
"Alice." I say her name deliberately, watching her react.
If she's startled that I know it, she doesn't show it.
"You came to the right place. There are federal marshals in this building who are actively working this case.
They raided the logging camp this morning.
Dale's operation is being dismantled right now.
If you have information, they need to hear it. "
"I know about the raid." She wipes her nose with her sleeve.
"That's why Dale is panicking. He wasn't at the camp.
He got out before they moved in. He's regrouping.
He's got a backup plan and I know what it is.
" She grabs my arm and the contact sends a cold shock through me.
"Please. I can't go in there alone. Those men in those offices, they'll think I'm part of it.
They'll arrest me before I can explain. But if you come with me, if you vouch for me, they'll listen.
You're the journalist. You broke the story. They trust you."
There it is. The pivot. She doesn't want to go to the marshals. She wants me to leave with her.
I need to keep her talking. Every second she spends here is a second Brock might check his phone.
"Tell me what Dale's backup plan is," I say. "Right now. If it's time-sensitive, I need to know before we go anywhere."
She hesitates. The calculation behind her eyes is visible for just a fraction of a second before the mask slides back into place.
"He's moving the rest of the cargo tonight.
Not from the camp. From a second location the marshals don't know about.
He's got a truck staged at the old mill road turnoff, the one past the south fork bridge.
If the marshals don't get there in the next few hours, everything moves and he disappears. "
I file the detail. Old mill road turnoff. Past the south fork bridge. It might be real intelligence she was fed to make the trap convincing. It might be completely fabricated. Either way, it needs to be reported.
"That's important information," I tell her. "We need to get it to the marshals immediately. Come with me. Mason's office is right down the hall. I'll walk you in and stay with you the entire time."
Her face changes. The tearful desperation flickers and underneath it I see something harder.
Frustration. The plan isn't working the way she expected.
I was supposed to follow her outside. I was supposed to trust her the way the man in the Lucky Moon's back room told her to make me trust her.
Instead I'm steering her toward the one room in this building where she'd be identified and detained.
"I can't," she whispers, shaking her head. "Not yet. I left something in my car. Evidence. A phone with recordings of Dale making threats. Without it they won't believe me. It's in my glove box. It'll take thirty seconds. Please just come with me. I can't be alone out there."
The glove box. The parking lot. Just come with me.
"Alice." I keep my voice calm and kind, the same tone I'd use with a real victim, because there are scenarios where she is one.
People inside criminal operations can be both perpetrators and victims. I can't know which she is from this hallway.
But I can know that going to the parking lot is the trap, and I'm not walking into it.