“Jenkins—you and me go through her cruiser again. Every inch. Under seats. Console seams. Trunk. Wheel wells. Anything someone could’ve touched, moved, planted, or removed.”
Jenkins swallowed hard. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Hale,” Tessa said, turning. “You pull every case she touched in the last ninety days. Anyone she arrested. Anyone she wrote up. Anyone she testified against. Anything she reopened.”
Luke lifted his head, eyes bloodshot but steady. “I can do that.”
“You won’t do it alone,” Tessa said. “You’ll have one of my team with you. We’re not missing something because we’re tired.”
Luke’s throat bobbed. “Thank you.”
Tessa pointed to the board again.
“Dash-cam. GPS. Stop logs. Every timestamp. If her cruiser moved, we map it. If it didn’t move, we prove it. We rebuild her last shift minute by minute.”
“If this was a message,” Luke asked, voice rough, “what does he want?”
Tessa met his eyes. “He wants you to see two things,” she said. “Those bones say he’s done this before. Sara’s badge says he has her now. That’s what he’s telling us.”
The words settled over the table like weight.
She let a beat of silence stand, honoring it, then went on. “So that’s how we answer. We find her. We find him. We don’t give him anything in between.”
Tessa swept her gaze across them—deputies who’d worked wrecks and drownings and domestic calls, men who’d stood in blood and grief and still managed to go home. But this was different. This was one of their own.
“We work straight through,” she said. “No hero runs. We move as a unit, and we move smart.”
He hadn’t just taken Sara. He’d taken one of their own. This wasn’t Charlotte or Atlanta. This was Sylva.
Burke’s voice came out hoarse. “No leaks. No mistakes.”
Tessa’s nod was sharp. Final.
“Let’s bring her home.”
Chairs scraped back. Boots hit the hall. The door shut behind them one by one.
Tessa stayed at the board alone, staring at the two red circles and the black line between them.
Then she drew a third circle—small, tight—between the two.
Not a place.
A person.
A point of leverage.
Somewhere between these points, she left us something.
Tessa wrote one last line beneath it.
BRING HER HOME
Then she capped the marker and stepped back.
The room stayed empty.
But the weight of Sara Parker’s absence didn’t move at all.
