I turn back to Cipher. "How fast can you trace the IP address that initiated the footage deletion?"
"Give me a few hours." He doesn't look up from his screen. "But the IP will only tell us where the deletion command originated, not who gave the order."
"Start there." I lean against the counter, rolling the timeline forward in my head. "Harlan either knew about the surveillance system before the murder or discovered it after. Either way, thedeletion happened within twenty-four hours. That kind of speed means coordination, and coordination leaves traces."
Cipher nods. "I'll have the trace done by tonight."
Harlan made a mistake when he killed a man who was more careful than he realized. Tom Pritchard installed cameras, filed reports, and documented every concern. He also trusted his sheriff to protect him and died for it. And now his diligence is going to be the thing that brings the whole operation down.
All we have to do is keep pulling the thread and see what else comes apart.
14
JESSE
Raven's text comes through in the early afternoon while I'm running perimeter checks with Rook along the eastern ridge.
We've got Harlan on video killing Pritchard. Concrete proof. Get back when you can.
I read it twice. Then I make two calls. Knox first, then Beckett. Both conversations are the same four sentences.
"Be at the cabin tomorrow morning. First light. Full team briefing. Raven found the break we needed."
Twenty minutes later, I pull up to the cabin with Rook, Torque, and Hawk and park next to Cipher's truck. I kill the engine and head inside.
Raven looks up from the kitchen island when I walk through the door, Cipher beside her with multiple screens open. The flatness in her eyes tells me everything I need to know before she speaks.
"We found surveillance footage from the morning Tom Pritchard died."
I cross to the counter. "Show me."
Cipher angles the laptop toward us, the video file already queued, and the rest of the team fills in behind me. We watch in silence as Tom Pritchard walks to his barn in the predawn light, coffee in hand, keys in the other. Harlan's truck pulls up the drive. They shake hands. They walk into the barn together. Then the interior camera captures the conversation, the shift in body language, the taser, the drag across the concrete, the tractor rolling forward. Twelve minutes from a handshake to a staged accident.
Nobody speaks for a long time after the footage ends.
Hawk steps back from the counter with his jaw set hard. Torque's knuckles have gone white around his coffee mug. Rook's expression hasn't changed, but his eyes have gone cold in a way I recognize from Kandahar, the look of a man filing information away for later use.
"Thank God for cloud backup," Cipher says into the silence. "Harlan accessed the Blue Ridge Security Solutions system and deleted the local files the day after Pritchard's death, but the cloud copies survived on a third-party server he didn't know about."
"You traced the deletion? You're certain it was Harlan?"
"The IP trace leads back to Fredericksburg. Someone accessed Pritchard's account remotely and wiped everything stored on it within twenty-four hours of the murder." Cipher pulls up another screen. "And I kept digging."
"Turns out the Sheriff's Office computer systems aren't built to keep people like me out." Cipher's voice carries a note of professional satisfaction. "I found emails between Harlan and Alvarez going back two years."
I lean against the counter. "What kind of emails?"
"Most of the traffic is routine inter-agency communication. Cover. But buried in the volume, there's a separate encrypted thread I managed to crack." Cipher's fingers fly across thekeyboard as he pulls up the files. "Harlan provides local cover for the cartel's staging operations, keeps investigations away from the pipeline properties, and handles problems when ranchers push back. Alvarez facilitates transport logistics through his ATF position and makes sure federal attention stays pointed in the wrong direction. The cartel pays both of them, and I've got the account numbers to prove it."
"Good work." I straighten. "Everything stays backed up across multiple servers. Redundant copies, encrypted, stored separately. We brief the full team tomorrow morning at first light."
Cipher nods and turns back to his screens.
I catch Raven's eye and nod toward the bedroom. She follows without a word, and I close the door behind us.
She stands with her arms crossed, her expression controlled, but the tension running through her shoulders carries the weight of everything we just watched. Twelve minutes of footage that turned a suspicion into a prosecution.
"This changes everything," she says quietly.
