Chapter 45
HARLAN - THE GOOD GUYS
The call came in mid-morning.
Code flagged. Dispatch tone urgent.
Domestic terrorism suspected. Raid active at the Carter Sinclair Clinic.
I didn’t need the rest of the briefing.
Because I already knew.
Erin.
I slammed my office door open, didn’t have a plan for what came next. Just keys, badge, and my sidearm. My blood was a livewire, my jaw locked so tight it ached.
She’d done it.
She really fucking did it.
By the time the next dispatch call came through, I was already halfway to the clinic.
Suspicious activity confirmed. Suspect on-site.
My foot hit the gas harder.
When the clinic came into view, it felt like pulling up on a war zone. Tactical vans lined the street like armoured teeth. Uniforms everywhere. Red and blue lights ricocheted off glass and brick. The air itself felt split open.
Patients huddled outside, some crying, some frozen in shock. A little girl with a broken sandal clung to her mom’s leg, her small shoulders trembling. People whispered words like “terrorism” and “trafficking” like if they said them softly enough, they wouldn’t be real.
I wanted to tell them it was bullshit. That it was Erin playing God again. But I couldn’t even convince myself of that, not with the show she was staging.
The moment I stepped inside, the breath punched out of me.
Glass crunched under my boots.
Furniture overturned.
A baby was wailing somewhere near the intake desk.
And Ava...
Christ.
She was standing there behind the desk, arms raised, fury trembling through every inch of her. She wasn’t afraid. But she was cornered. Trapped in her own goddamn clinic.
She didn’t look at me like the man she’d spent nights tangled up with.
She looked at me like a stranger.
Like a traitor.
I fucked up.
I was so busy fighting ghosts from the past, I didn’t see Voss moving pieces in the present.
This was on me.
But Kane’s voice was in my head, steady, cold: “You want this done clean? Then toe the line. Don’t move. Don’t react. Let Gray do what he’s built to do.”
I forced myself forward. Every step felt like moving through wet cement.
Remi stood at the center of it all. Chin high, eyes steady, wrists bare. Unshaken. Even here.
Erin turned to me like she’d been waiting for this. Like she’d scripted it.
“Perfect timing, Chief,” she purred, holding a warrant like it was a trophy. “Our suspect already confessed.”
I wanted to rip the smug smile off her face. Wanted to put my fist through the wall. But Kane’s voice stayed there, anchoring me down. "Don’t blow it. Don’t give her an inch."
“She’s not a suspect,” Ava snapped before I could even open my mouth. Her voice was raw, scraped clean of patience. “And she didn’t confess shit. You’re pinning this on us, and you fucking know it.”
I stayed silent.
Because if I opened my mouth, I’d burn this entire operation down and take everyone with me.
Remi turned her head toward me, her hazel eyes sharp enough to cut glass. Once, those same eyes laughed when she called me grandpa. Now they were stripped of warmth.
“Go ahead, Chief,” she said flatly. “You came all this way.”
A single beat of hesitation.
That’s all it took to damn me.
Then I stepped forward and pulled the cuffs from my belt.
I didn’t look at Ava.
Couldn’t.
I looked at Remi instead.
And cuffed her wrists like I wasn’t tearing out the last piece of myself.
The click of the metal was louder than the shouting, louder than the crying, louder than my own heartbeat in my ears.
Remi’s lips parted just enough to land the killing blow:
“Didn’t know when you said you had my back, you meant you’d be standing there cuffing me.”
No yelling. No theatrics.
Just quiet devastation.
I walked her out because my legs knew how to move even when my lungs didn’t know how to breathe. I read her rights while patients watched like I’d grown horns. Like the badge on my chest confirmed the betrayal they were seeing with their own eyes.
Ava screamed her name.
And I didn’t turn around.
Because if I did, I’d fall apart where everyone could see it.
I didn’t stop driving until the clinic was miles behind me.
Didn’t stop shaking until I pulled off the road and sat there, forehead pressed to the steering wheel, breath coming in jagged bursts.
Then I puked into the dirt.
Kept going until there was nothing left.
When I finally stopped, my hands still wouldn’t steady.
I called Kane.
He picked up on the first ring. “Kane?”
“You okay?”
“No.” My voice cracked on the word.
“Talk to me.”
I stared at the horizon, vision blurred, tasting bile and regret.
“I did what you told me. I played along. I didn’t blow the op.” My voice was low, rough, stripped raw. “But if we don’t burn this from the inside soon, Kane, I’m gonna lose them.”
“You said this needed to be clean.”
“Yeah. But tell me how clean looks when the woman I...” I stopped myself, jaw clenching hard. “When Ava looked at me like I was the fucking enemy.”
“She still alive?” Kane asked.
“What the fuck kind of question...”
“Answer it.”
“Yes,” I snapped.
“Then shut up and stay the course. Gray lands in twenty.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face, bile burning my throat. “That’s not enough. Send more.”
There was silence on the other end, and I knew Kane was hearing everything I wasn’t saying.
“I don't know if I can come back from this,” I whispered. “Not with Ava. Not with Remi.”
“Then make sure it’s worth it,” Kane said. “Or we all burn.”
I hung up without saying goodbye and sat there in the cab, badge on the seat beside me, the weight of it heavier than it had ever been.
I whispered into the empty truck: “Just survive this. Pray she forgives you in the end.”
But I didn’t believe it.
Not anymore.
Because somewhere along the way, I stopped being one of the good guys.