On the second day, I woke gasping, heart racing, hands already reaching for my phone before my eyes were open.
Stillnothing.
Every morning felt like that now; the first five seconds between dreaming and remembering where we were and why were brutal. For a moment, I’d think maybe this was over. Then reality came flooding back, sharp and cold.
Jack was already up, pacing by the window, coffee forgotten and cooling on the sill. Gray hadn’t slept at all; he was still hunched over his laptop, scrolling through precinct rosters and sealed records like he could crack open Erin’s sins if he just stared hard enough.
Harlan came over with two fresh mugs and crouched beside me. He didn’t speak right away, just scanned the chaos around me, stacks of files, mugs of now cold coffee, and my laptop syncing our backup data to Kane’s secure cloud.
“You keeping track of what we’ve already flagged?” he finally asked.
“Colour-coded folders,” I said, pointing at the mess on the table like a deranged kindergarten teacher. “Red is confirmed corruption. Blue is new info. Yellow’s inconclusive but suspicious.”
He huffed out a low sound that was almost a sigh of amusement. “Of course it is.”
I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling the exhaustion settle into my bones. “There are so many I haven’t even touched yet. It’s like… I haven’t stopped moving since the raid.”
Harlan’s voice softened. “Don’t be hard on yourself, Ava. That’s what this is for, to catch up, to fight back.”
That was when he froze, brows knitting like a memory had just clawed its way to the surface.
“Shit… Remi mentioned a woman,” he said, kneeling beside me. “Rachel… something. She couldn’t remember all the players, told me I should ask you.”
I nodded slowly, rifling through the files until I found the thin one near the bottom of the stack. Rachel. One of our first clients, when the clinic was still fighting to prove its legitimacy.
“Rachel was married to a cop,” I said quietly, unfolding the notes in Remi’s handwriting, messy, frantic scrawls like she was chasing the truth before it slipped away. “Emotionally abusive. Controlling. She said he had connections that no one would believe her. Never said who, just that he ‘knew people’.”
Gray wheeled closer, leaning over my shoulder. “What’s his name?”
"Hmmm, let me look." I put the folder down, searched our digital database and found nothing on Rachel. "I am going to have to dig through Rem's notes."
The room went quiet again as I dug through post its, ripped notepad pages, scribbles in margins of her case file. I flipped the page, and there in Remi's handwriting was a name and a question mark. “Martin Rourke.”
Gray went still. “Officer Rourke?”
“Yeah, I mean, that is what it looks like. I think Remi was digging into him without wanting to have it flagged. Why?”
He didn’t answer. Just spun back to his laptop, fingers flying. “Hold up… give me... I need to look into this.”
On the third day, sleep was impossible.
Every sound outside had me jerking awake, the creak of branches, the groan of the cabin settling, the distant whine of tires on a road we couldn’t see. Every time, I reached for my phone before I even knew I was moving.
Still nothing from Remi. Harlan told me not to worry that if she had gone quiet, it was likely for a good reason and that he was reaching out to the MC. But the tightness in his jaw and the uncertainty in his eyes made my gut sink.
Jack was making breakfast or trying to. Something hissed on the stove and filled the cabin with the faint smell of burnt eggs, but no one complained.
Gray finally spoke, his voice hoarse from too much caffeine and not enough sleep. “I think Erin was sleeping with Rachel’s husband.”
My head jerked up. “What?”
“Wait, wait…” He pulled up precinct rosters, old HR complaints, and archived images. “Here. Martin Rourke. Flagged for inappropriate conduct with another officer. Erin was never named, but…”
Jack leaned over his shoulder. “There. That’s Erin.”
I stared at the photo on Gray’s screen, an old district party. Erin and Martin are in the background, too close, too familiar.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, flipping through Remi’s notes again. “Rachel found texts. Said she thought she was losing her mind. Then one night she confronted him and he… he attacked her.”
