Chapter 46
AVA - SHE'S GONE
The clinic looked like a war zone.
The windows were still shattered, glass dust glittering across the floor like cruel little stars. A chair lay on its side, one leg bent at an angle that would never be right again. Someone’s notebook had been trampled into mud and coffee, pages smeared and illegible.
And Remi’s mug, the one with the chip in the rim and the stupid little cactus on the side, was smashed near the counter, splintered into five jagged pieces.
I hadn’t picked it up.
Couldn’t.
Not yet.
Instead, I swept around it.
Not because it helped.
But because it gave my hands something to do. Something to keep them from shaking.
The cops were long gone.
The press hadn’t arrived yet.
But the rumours? They were like wildfire.
Every buzz of my phone was another ember catching.
Emails. Texts. Questions I couldn’t answer.
The internet was already eating us alive, churning with words like fraud, illegal shelter, trafficking, and investigation.
None of it true.
All of it louder than I could silence on my own.
I closed my eyes for half a breath and let the weight of it settle on my shoulders, the wreckage, the whispers, the image of Remi’s wrists in cuffs and Harlan standing there, silent.
And then the door creaked.
I didn’t turn. “We’re closed.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” a familiar voice said. “Because I came all this way.”
I looked up.
Jack.
How long had I been cleaning?
He wasn’t in a suit jacket. Just a navy button-down, sleeves rolled to his elbows, top button undone like he’d gotten and ran out the door without looking back. His tie was shoved into his pocket. His jaw was tight.
His eyes scanned the wreckage. The overturned chairs. The scattered papers. Me.
“You look like hell,” he said softly.
I let out something between a laugh and a scoff. “I’ve had better Thursdays.”
He stepped further inside, his expression grim in a way that stripped all pretence. “I heard.” He hesitated, glanced toward the jagged glass and overturned furniture. “Everyone’s talking.”
“Can’t look great for you,” I said, bitter around the edges of exhaustion. “Running back to the place you just left under a cloud of disaster.”
Jack didn’t flinch.
“I don’t give a shit about optics,” he said. His voice was quiet. Steel wrapped in velvet. “I care about her.”
Something in my chest pulled taut, sharp enough to hurt.
“She’s gone, Jack.” My throat burned as I said it. “They took her.”
His jaw locked. “I know Ava, and we’re going to get her back.”
He said it like fact. Like a promise. Like gospel.
And God, I wanted to believe him.
“Do you have the backup files?” he asked, already moving toward the desk, scanning the chaos like his mind was ten steps ahead. “Everything you and Remi found, the flagged records, the altered paperwork, the footage?”
I reached for the hidden drawer beneath the counter and pulled out the small black external drive we’d started loading before the raid. I handed it over carefully, like it was the most fragile thing in the world.
“We didn’t get to finish,” I said. “Some of the logs were already tampered with.”
“We’ll trace it,” he said. His voice was all clipped precision now, prosecutor mode engaged. “Piece by piece. Everything she touched, everything she didn’t. We’ll follow the trail.”
“And then?” I asked, my voice quieter than I meant it to be. “What happens when you find her fingerprints on something she didn’t touch?”
Jack finally met my eyes. “Then we burn whoever put them there. Whoever is working with her.”
I blinked, and for a second, I didn’t see the prosecutor.
I saw the man who once told Remi she was the best thing that ever happened to his moral compass.
The man whom I knew deep down still loved her.
He tucked the drive into his bag and adjusted the strap across his chest. “Let’s finish cataloguing what we can,” he said. “Then we’ll go see Remi.”
The thought made me nauseous, but I nodded anyway.
That’s when the knock came.
Sharp against the splintered frame.
I turned, expecting another officer. Or a reporter.
Instead, it was Margie from the sandwich shop down the street.
She stood there in her flour-dusted apron, holding two thermoses and a tray of paper cups.
“Heard what happened,” she said simply. “Figured you haven’t had coffee.”
Before I could answer, she stepped past me like she owned the place and set the tray on the front desk, moving around shattered glass without hesitation.
“I’ll help clean,” she added, like it was obvious.
“Margie, you don’t have to...”
But she was already rolling up her sleeves.
Ten minutes later, it was Liam from the shelter.
Then Andre from the rec center.
Then Mrs. Chan, with her three teenage grandkids, each of them holding brooms and grocery bags full of cleaning supplies.
And they kept coming.
One by one.
People who’d walked these halls. Who’d sent someone here for help. Who’d survived something and come out the other side with a little more light than they started with.
And now?
They were here to stand for the woman who never stopped fighting for them.
Remi.
Jack stood off to the side, arms crossed, watching as people picked up broken things and set them upright again.
“We can use this,” he said quietly.
I glanced at him. “Use what?”
He gestured to the crowd, the hum of quiet determination filling the clinic.
“Let them rally,” he said. “Let them make noise. Spread truth louder than the lies.”
“Remi wouldn’t want a circus,” I said, my voice hollow.
Jack shook his head. “No. She’d want a revolution.”
I looked back at the doorway.
At the people still pouring in.
We were tired.
We were broken.
But we weren’t backing down.
Not this time.
Not again.
We were going to hold the fucking line.