Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Keir held out his hand. “Let me see the photo again.”
I passed him my phone, and he studied the grainy still, brow furrowed.
“I’ve never seen this guy standing next to the mayor before,” he said slowly. “Not in public or the background, but something’s off…” He trailed off, thinking hard. Then— “Do we have a shot of the van driver?”
Kai was already texting before the words were even fully out. “Mark might. He was nearby when they loaded him into the ambulance.”
The wait stretched, taut, and thin like a wire about to snap. I kept my breathing steady, forcing myself to focus on the here and now, not the what ifs. Not on Sayla’s face twisted in fear, Kaida crying in the dark, or Kairo trying to be brave when he was just a baby.
If I let myself spiral, I’d crash. So, I didn’t.
I reminded myself that Judd was back in Palmerstown, probably already ten steps ahead, with Kapono combing through every piece of evidence they’d pulled from Topper’s place. That man’s brain could make sense of anything. He saw patterns where most of us saw noise. And Imogen was nearly as good. If there was something to be found in those files between the two of them, they’d find it.
Kai’s phone buzzed. He looked down and swore under his breath.
“He got one just before they loaded the guy into the ambulance.”
He turned the screen toward us, and suddenly, the air shifted.
Even with the neck brace, even with the blood and bruising and the paramedics crowding around him, I recognized the face. It took a second, but then it clicked, and when it did, it hit like a punch to the chest.
Kai’s voice dropped. “I might not know the first guy, but I know exactly who this is.”
He didn’t even need to say the name, but he did anyway. “AJ Huntley.”
I stared at the screen, and my breath caught halfway up my throat.
He’d worked beside us and broken bread with us. He told stories about his kids—his kids, damn it. We’d never suspected him and put his name on a list. Not once.
Keir swore quietly. I did, too, the sound sharp and bitter in the cold morning air.
We hadn’t seen him clearly at the scene—between the wreckage, the paramedics trying to keep him stable, and what was left of the windshield, he’d been just another injured suspect, not one of ours.
How long had he been watching us? Listening in, slipping through the cracks, feeding information to people we were trying to bring down. And worse—how much did he know about Sayla and the kids?
My heart pounded hard in my chest, a steady, brutal rhythm that I forced myself to breathe through. I kept my face still, my focus locked in tight, unwilling to let the weight of it all show—not now, not yet.
This was a lead, one of many, if we were lucky. And somewhere in the middle of all of this—AJ, the mayor, Titian—was the answer I needed. The one that would take me straight to Sayla and the kids.
All I had to do was hold onto this thread and start pulling. And I wouldn’t stop until the whole damn thing came apart.
Judd’s SUV roared into the lay by, engine growling as it skidded to a stop on the gravel. He jumped out without even bothering to shut it off, the vehicle humming behind him as he stalked toward us with a laptop tucked under one arm and a thick folder clutched in the other. His face was drawn, focused—he looked like a man who’d been breathing adrenaline for hours and wasn’t ready to stop anytime soon.
“I found something,” he said without preamble, slapping the folder onto the hood of my truck. “Kapono and Imogen are still combing through the rest of Topper’s files, but this is the kind of thing you don’t keep unless you plan on using it as leverage.”
He flipped the folder open to reveal a worn ledger, each page filled with neat, deliberate handwriting. There were payments in and out, scribbled notes, and addresses—some that sent a cold chill down my spine. They were all real places, all connected to real people. Most of them didn’t even know they were being watched, let alone used.
“No digital backups,” Judd said, his voice hard, “just ink and paper. You only do that if you want to blackmail someone or if you’re scared it’ll come back to bite you electronically.”
Then he opened the laptop and turned the screen to face us. “But this is worse.”
The desktop was almost empty—just one folder labeled Chess. Inside, there were three audio files. Judd didn’t wait, he clicked on the first one, and the moment the audio started to play, I felt a fresh surge of fury rise in my chest.
The voice was unmistakable: the mayor of Palmerstown.