53. Ava - Off Limits
AVA - OFF LIMITS
I should have been exhilarated.
Jack was.
He paced my apartment like he was already halfway through his victory speech, practically vibrating with adrenaline and ambition.
Kane had sent more video after he left, missing video from the clinic and the precinct.
I’d handed Jack the footage Kane sent me, like it was a live grenade, my hands still trembling, my throat tight, and he’d watched it like a man who’d just discovered fire.
“This is it,” he said, jabbing a finger toward the laptop screen. “This isn’t just enough to sink Erin; this could get us the whole damn precinct. Do you realize what this could mean, Ava?”
“Yeah,” I murmured, staring into the mug of coffee I’d reheated twice and still hadn’t touched. “I do.”
But he didn’t notice my tone. Didn’t notice me at all.
He was already in motion, calling people one after another, DA friends, old journalist contacts, maybe the Pope for all I knew. His voice filled the apartment, loud and charged, bouncing off the walls like static electricity.
I stayed on the couch, unmoving, the knot in my stomach turning tighter with every sentence out of his mouth.
Jack was a good man. A loyal man. But I’d known him long enough to recognize the shift, the way his shoulders squared, his voice sharpened, the way he started talking about headlines instead of justice.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care. He did. But right now, his ambition was pulling him hard and fast.
“Jack,” I said quietly, but he didn’t hear me.
He was muttering something about optics, about the narrative, about maybe making a public statement by tonight.
“Jack.”
He stopped mid-sentence, finally looking at me like I’d snapped my fingers.
“I don’t know if we should release this,” I said. “Not yet.”
He blinked. “What?”
“The videos,” I said, gesturing to the laptop. “If we drop this into the media right now, it could spiral out of control. Erin’s going to go nuclear, and if Harlan is working behind the scenes trying to bring her down from the inside, this could blow up everything. People could get hurt.”
His brow furrowed. “Since when do you care about protecting the police?”
“I don’t,” I lied, too fast. “I care about getting Remi out in one piece.”
He exhaled hard, rubbing the back of his neck. Frustrated. “Ava, we’ve got to stop second-guessing. We have them. This is another brick in the wall. Another way we burn it all down.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “But what if it all comes down on top of us, too? What if innocents get crushed in the process? Good people. We don’t know the full story yet.”
That made him pause.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “I’m not saying we don’t use it, Jack. I’m just saying not yet. Let’s let it breathe. Let’s make sure we’re not risking more than we’re saving.”
He studied me for a long beat.
“What changed?” he asked finally. “Last week, you were ready to light a match and watch it burn.”
“I got perspective,” I said.
His gaze sharpened. “From who?”
My throat tightened. “Doesn’t matter.”
He didn’t believe me, I could see it written all over his face, but he let it go. For now.
I left him pacing my living room, still planning, still spinning this whole thing like a campaign, and told him I needed fresh air.
What I really needed was space.
A minute to stop drowning in the noise.
I didn’t even realize where my feet were taking me until I was standing across the street from the precinct. The air was cool but heavy, the kind of mid-spring dampness that carried the faint scent of lilacs from the park nearby.
It was just after six. The sky was bruised purple and gold, clouds streaking like watercolour.
I waited.
I didn’t want to go inside. Didn’t want to see Erin’s smug face. Didn’t want to risk Remi seeing mine before we had anything worth showing her.
So, I waited.
Twenty minutes later, Harlan came out.
He looked wrecked. Shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, tie hanging loose, his hair damp like he’d showered at the station. There were shadows under his eyes, the kind that no amount of sleep could erase.
He stopped short when he saw me, something sharp flickering in his expression, surprise, relief, and wariness all tangled together.
“Ava.”
My chest ached.
For one split second, I wanted to cross the distance between us. To just… fold into him, forget everything, pretend we weren’t on opposite sides of a war we never asked for.
“Baby,” he breathed, like seeing me gave him life.
“Don’t,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “Don’t make this about us. Not right now.”
He stepped closer anyway, slow and careful, like I was a deer he didn’t want to spook.
“God, Ava. I just want to...”
“I can’t,” I interrupted, my voice sharp and thin. “Remi’s still locked up. Erin is out there setting fires just to watch us burn. And Jack is one press release away from lighting the fuse on the whole damn city. I can’t carry us on top of all that.”
His jaw tightened, but he nodded once.
“I came to talk to you about Kane,” I said.
That got his full attention.
“I don’t know what your connection is to him...”
“Old military,” he said immediately. “Black ops, technically. He was the one they sent in when things got too messy for the rulebook.”
I hesitated, then said, “He came to see me.”
Harlan went still. Taller. His gaze flicked over me like he was assessing for damage. “Are you okay?” he asked, voice low and lethal. “I told him you and Remi were off-limits.”
I nodded. “He didn’t hurt me. But he left me a message.”
Harlan’s shoulders stiffened, but he didn’t interrupt.
“He asked me why Erin’s targeting us so hard,” I continued. “And it got me thinking. What if this isn’t about us at all... not really anyway.”
His brows drew together. “Then what?”
“Remi and I have both pissed off our fair share of men with fragile egos,” I said. “What if this is personal? Not for her, for someone she’s protecting. A relative, a partner, somebody with power or pull.”
I watched as the idea landed.
“You think she’s covering for someone,” he said slowly.
“I think she’s going scorched earth for someone,” I corrected.
“You need to have Gray dig into her history, family, relationships, old cases, everything. Start from the year we opened the clinic and go back from there. If something we did touched someone close to her, it explains why she’s this obsessed.
There has to be a reason, Harlan. People don’t go this far without one. ”
For the first time since I watched him cuff Remi, I saw it, the shift. The way his shoulders squared, the way his eyes sharpened.
He heard me. Really heard me.
“Will you talk to her?” I asked softly. “Remi. See if she remembers anything off. Any case that stands out from those first months.”
“I will,” he said, steady. “I swear, Ava. I’m going to make this right.”
I studied him for a long moment, memorizing the cracks in his voice when he said my name, the lines around his mouth from carrying too much for too long.
I nodded once, sharp and deliberate.
“Then do it,” I said. “Because this time, I need you to be who I thought you were. I need you, Harlan.”
And then I walked away.
Because I still didn’t know if I could forgive him for everything.
But for the first time in weeks, I believed I might be ready to let him try.