54. Harlan - Flex of Power
HARLAN - FLEX OF POWER
The precinct felt like a ticking bomb.
Every sound was too loud: every slammed door, every ringing phone, every muffled voice echoing down concrete halls.
It all vibrated under my skin. The press hadn’t let up.
Bureau agents were crawling the building like vultures, picking apart files and statements.
Internal Affairs had started running background checks on my entire team, and it felt like every hour, another name got flagged.
And Erin Voss?
She was unravelling.
I’d seen it before, the way cornered animals lash out at shadows, snapping teeth just to taste blood. She was getting reckless. Sloppy. And reckless people with power always cost someone everything if you didn’t get ahead of them.
I was halfway to check on Remi when I passed the holding area and stopped cold.
Her cell was empty.
An ice-pick panic drove straight up my spine.
I checked the logs, nothing. No clearance for movement, no scheduled transfer, no escort signed off. She was supposed to be guarded. Safe. Locked down until Jack could get her out clean.
Instead, she was gone.
I was already moving before I had a plan. My boots pounded the hall, turning hard into the interrogation wing, and when I hit the door, my stomach bottomed out.
She was there.
Remi sat in one of the steel chairs, her arms crossed tight, her posture rigid, her hair loose and curling around a new bruise on her face. She looked starved, exhausted, and ready to take someone’s head clean off.
Across from her sat Erin Voss.
And leaning against the far wall like a silent threat, Bishop. One of hers.
Something in me snapped.
I pushed the door open so hard it ricocheted off the wall.
“What the fuck is going on in here?”
Erin didn’t flinch.
Remi did, though, just barely, enough to tell me she was unsettled. Before turning her head slowly, her gaze locked on mine. There was no anger in her eyes anymore. No fury.
Just… nothing.
Like she’d finally stopped expecting anyone with a badge to save her.
Erin stood, voice dripping saccharine poison. “Remi was clarifying some discrepancies in her statements. Tying up loose ends for her arrest report.”
“You’re not cleared to be alone with her,” I snapped.
She pointed at Bishop as an answer.
“And certainly not with one of your people hovering over her.”
“She waived counsel.”
I turned to Remi. “Did you?”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t even blink. She gave me a look that said: Are you fucking kidding me right now.
I turned back to Erin, teeth grinding. “Get out. Both of you.”
Her brows arched, faux innocence twisting her face. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Effective immediately, you’re suspended pending the internal review. Badge. Gun. Out. Now.”
Erin stared at me like she was weighing whether to laugh or kill me.
“You’re serious.”
“You think I’m not?”
For a moment, the silence stretched razor thin.
Then she moved. Slow. Deliberate. Slapped her badge onto the table hard enough to make it skid. Then she unholstered her gun and, without breaking eye contact with me, pointed the barrel in Remi’s direction before sliding it onto the table with a soft scrape of metal.
Message received.
Bishop did the same, too close to Remi, leaning just a fraction too far into her space before stepping back. My hand went to mine in response.
Another message.
Erin brushed past me on her way out, close enough that her perfume and venom stuck to my skin. She stopped in the doorway, turned just enough to let the words cut.
“You’re going to regret taking her side.”
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of answering.
When the door shut behind her, the air shifted.
I exhaled, rougher than I meant to.
“You okay?” I asked.
Remi didn’t answer.
“Remi…”
Still nothing.
I dragged the empty chair out and sat across from her. Up close, she looked even worse, wrists scraped, dark circles under her eyes, bruises blooming down her jaw. The jumpsuit hung loose on her frame like it belonged to someone else.
She kept staring past me, into some place I couldn’t see.
"You were supposed to have a guard. What happened to Reid?"
She swallowed roughly and then finally answered, "She scared him away, figured he'd come get you soon enough."
“I will make sure Gray always has an eye on you,” I said, leaning forward. “He says you scare him more than the rest of us combined.”
That earned me a twitch at the corner of her mouth.
Small victory.
“He’s good,” she muttered. “Quiet. But smart. Doesn’t miss much.”
“You trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone in a badge right now,” she said flatly. “But I like him better than most.”
I nodded. “Ava thinks Erin’s vendetta started before she ever met me. Wants us to dig into the early days of the clinic, first few months, maybe the first year. She thinks the answer’s there.”
Remi leaned back, staring at the ceiling like it might give her strength.
“I didn’t think of it before,” she said finally, her voice gone soft, distant. “Didn’t think it was important.”
I waited.
She rubbed the edge of her wrist, like pulling the memory forward cost her something.
"A few months after we opened the clinic, a client came in. Bruised badly. Scared out of her mind. Said her husband nearly killed her after she caught him cheating.”
“What stands out?” I asked.
“She stayed with us for weeks,” Remi said slowly.
“Used a fake name. I’d have to pull her file, but…
Rachel. I think she went by Rachel something.
Said it wasn’t the first time he’d hit her.
Said her family had been trying to pull her out for years.
She wouldn’t go public, something about him being too connected.
Powerful. That pressing charges would ruin her and wouldn’t stick anyway.
But she kept coming back. We worked on a plan to move her out of state. ”
“And then?”
“One day… she just stopped showing up.”
A cold weight settled in my gut.
“She ever tell you who he was?” I asked.
Remi shook her head. “No. But she was scared of him in a way you don’t forget. Told me once that if anything ever happened to her, I should forget her name. Forget everything.” She swallowed hard, voice barely audible. “Because people like him don’t leave loose ends.”
My jaw locked.
It fit. Too perfectly.
The pressure building around us. Erin’s scorched-earth obsession. This wasn’t just about optics or politics anymore. It was personal.
I didn’t have time to say it out loud before Reid burst into the room, face flushed, breath ragged.
“Chief... there’s something you need to see. Now.”
I looked at Remi.
She lifted a brow like she was daring me to leave her here.
I turned back to Reid. “What is it?”
He hesitated just long enough to make my chest tighten.
“You’re going to want to see this yourself.”