Chapter 29
The digits on the wall clock crawled forward like they were swimming through molasses. Four fifty-five.
Five minutes until the vault closed, and Rene Garrison still hadn’t shown.
Tori knocked her knees together, a jittery beat syncing with the clock’s tick. Beyond the glass wall, Blade paced lines across the marble lobby. Left, pivot, back again. His shoulders rode high, one fist flexing open and shut.
Liz Reynolds looked up from her computer screen and pushed her long blond hair behind one ear. She was pretty, with freckled skin and the kind of no-nonsense attitude that said she’d heard every excuse in the book and wasn’t about to fall for anything.
“I’ll have to close the vault in five minutes,” she said. “Is your warrant coming or not?”
“She’ll be here.” But traffic had strangled them on the way over. What should’ve taken thirty minutes stretched to forty. Rene might not make it. “If she’s late, can you wait just five more minutes? Please?”
Liz shook her head. “Federal regulations don’t bend for anyone, hon. I’ve got protocols to follow, and my supervisor breathes down my neck about closing procedures.”
“I understand.”
But the waiting. Every second stretched like an eternity while crucial pieces of her life hung in limbo.
Information about Aletheia, the Mandelbrot Group, Stryker’s condition, who killed Damien and why.
All of it just out of reach. And now, familial DNA results that could reshape everything she thought she knew about herself.
Days. It could take days. Like Tori wouldn’t spend every one of them looking at her own hands and wondering whose they resembled. Wondering whether Jeremy Hoult’s eyes were shaped like hers. Whether the thing that made him violent lived somewhere inside her too.
Her fingers drummed against her thigh. The same restless energy that had her bouncing her knees earlier now demanded some other outlet. Some way to burn through the questions that circled her mind like vultures.
The bank’s front door chimed.
Tori sprang to her feet. Garrison strode across the lobby, warrant folder in hand. She swept into the office at four fifty-eight, slightly breathless.
“Sorry. Traffic was a nightmare.”
Liz reviewed the warrant. Tori watched her eyes scanning every line before nodding. “This’ll work. Let’s go.”
The vault door stood like a monument to security. Thick steel bars behind reinforced glass. Liz’s key turned with a solid click, and the electronic lock disengaged with a soft beep. Inside, rows of safe deposit boxes lined the walls in perfect formation.
“Box 894.” Liz ran her finger along the numbers until she found it. “Dual key system. You’ve got one, I’ve got the other.”
Liz inserted her key, twisted, and stepped back for Blade.
Tori stopped breathing as he inserted his key into the slot. His massive hands blocked her view of the mechanism, and she couldn’t tell if the key had turned or if the box would remain locked forever.
Then he looked at her with that grin she’d known since she was a teen.
The box slid out smooth as silk. A long metal rectangle that could hold a life’s worth of secrets. Liz carried it to the table in the center of the vault.
“I’ll give you privacy.” She stepped just outside the vault door, close enough to maintain protocol but far enough to respect the moment.
Blade pulled on latex gloves and handed Tori a pair. “May need to preserve prints and DNA.”
The gloves felt cold against her sweaty palms. This was it. They might finally get answers.
Blade lifted the lid with his good arm, wincing slightly from the knife wound. Tori stood on her toes, craning her neck, but she was too short to see anything except empty metal space. Her heart plummeted.
Blade’s face fell. “It’s—”
“Empty?”
“No. Wait.” He reached in with his uninjured arm and pulled out a stack of manila file folders. Then his hand disappeared again and emerged with a black leather notebook, the elastic closure strap wrapped diagonally to hold a pencil against the side.
Damien’s blackmail book.
The sight hit her like a lightning bolt. Pure, triumphant adrenaline flooded her system. It was real. Damien hadn’t been lying. All those years of doubt, of wondering if her parents’ deaths would remain unsolved forever. Vindication washed over her in waves.
“It’s actually here.” She reached for the notebook with trembling hands. “Let me see it.”
It was thick, stuffed with loose papers and photographs wedged between pages. The leather cover was worn smooth from handling.
She opened to the first page, steeling herself for whatever horrors lay inside.
The handwriting slanted right in pencil strokes that were smudged and faded in places. But the first thing she saw was a loose sheet of spiral notebook paper. The pocket-sized kind Blade carried.
Her eyes scanned the note.
Barclay’s going to frame me for something big. I can feel it coming. If anything happens to me, this book has everything.—D.S.
“What’s it say?” Blade leaned closer.
“It’s true. Damien knew.” Her voice barely worked. “He knew Barclay was going to frame him before it happened.”
Garrison looked up from the file folders. “Damien thought Barclay would frame him for the workplace shooting before it even happened?”
Blade frowned. “That’s awfully convenient. Write a note predicting your own frame-up, hide it away for someone to find later. Sounds like premeditation to me.”
Tori shook her head. “If this was all fabricated, if he made this up, why didn’t he pull this out before trial? He went to prison for life, Blade. He never used this to defend himself.”
“She’s got a point,” Garrison said, flipping through the folders. “And you both need to look at what I’m seeing here.”
Garrison spread photographs across the table. Crime scene shots. In one photo, a bloody footprint was clearly visible on white tile. In the next photo of the same location, the footprint was smeared beyond recognition.
Another set showed a stack of drugs and cash on a table. The second photo showed the same table with a much smaller pile.
Garrison turned one photograph over. “Case numbers on the back. Looks like evidence tampering to me.”
“Crime scene manipulation,” Blade said. “Damien was documenting every time Barclay altered evidence.”
“There must be hundreds of photos here,” Garrison said, spreading more images across the table. “This isn’t just a few bad cases. This is institutional.”
Blade pulled out a stack of police reports from beneath the photographs. “Look at these. Copies of the originals and the filed versions.”
Tori took the first set. The original report described a domestic violence call with multiple witnesses and clear evidence of assault. The filed version painted a different picture entirely. Mutual combat, insufficient evidence to prosecute. Both reports bore signatures at the bottom.
Her stomach clenched. “Damien’s signature and Barclay’s. When he was still a sergeant.”
“Check this one.” Blade handed her another pair. A drug bust that originally netted fifty kilos of cocaine and three hundred thousand in cash. The filed report listed ten kilos and twenty-five thousand.
Where had the rest gone? Into whose pockets?
The third set made her throat close completely. A sexual assault case. The original report detailed a victim’s statement, physical evidence, and a suspect in custody. The filed version dismissed the charges due to “credibility issues” and “insufficient evidence.”
“They destroyed this woman’s life,” Tori whispered. “Made her look like a liar when they had everything they needed to prosecute.”
Garrison photographed each page with her phone. “We’ll need the FBI on this. This level of corruption requires federal intervention.”
“Special Agent Sebastian Wells offered to help with anything we needed. He’s been briefed about the possible serial killer.”
Garrison nodded. “Good call, but we do this together. We verify everything quietly, build an airtight case before Barclay catches wind. One leak and he disappears.”
“Got it,” Blade said.
Tori flipped through more notebook pages, searching for any mention of her parents’ case. The entries were chronological, starting in 1995. She skimmed a few.
March 1995: Barclay asked me to lose a piece of evidence. Said the guy was connected and it would go away clean. I told myself it was one time.
November 1996: Third time this year Barclay’s had me bury something. Each time it gets easier. That scares me more than the thing itself.
June 1997: Overheard Barclay on the phone. Names I didn’t recognize. Something bigger than dirty cops covering for each other. I asked him about it. He looked at me a long time before he answered. Said I was either in or I wasn’t. I told myself I was already in.
Her parents died in 1998. She found the October entries and read.
October 12, 1998: Barclay called me in. Says there’s a situation with the Crew thing and it needs to be handled. Scene needs to be clean when it’s done. No witnesses. Told Barclay I’d help bury it.
October 14, 1998: King and I responded to the call at 5486 Flores Drive.
Possible burglary in progress, neighbor reported male subject fleeing.
I had no idea what we were walking into.
Barclay made it sound like the hit would be clean and simple, but we found the parents butchered in the master bedroom.
Male vic was still alive when we got there, throat cut but breathing.
King tried to save him while I secured the scene.
There were kids. Nobody said anything about kids.
I found the girl child in the closet. King found the male child under the bed with the knife.
No way the boy did it, but Barclay insisted on the report as written.
Had me sign off on the psych eval recommendation for the boy. Barclay took care of the rest.
October 15, 1998: Stryker asking too many questions. Barclay reassigning him effective immediately.
Tori couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. The words on the page swam together until only one name remained in sharp focus.
King.
Stryker had been there. That night. He’d been there when Damien found her in the closet, terror-stricken. He’d seen Nikos under the bed with the knife, covered in their parents’ blood. He’d known about her twin brother for twenty-six years and never said a word.
The notebook slipped from her trembling hands and hit the table with a dull thud.
All those years at the gym. All those conversations about family, about loss, about moving forward from trauma.
He’d sat across from her, watching her struggle with the gaping holes in her memory, and kept his mouth shut.
The vault walls pressed closer, stealing her air.
Stryker had saved her that night, but he’d also betrayed her every day since.