“Of course it’s a cover-up.” Hutchinson’s tone sharpens, impatience bleeding through the digital distortion. “But it’s a good one. It’s clean. If the tox screen is clean, her testimony about an ‘injection’ looks like hysteria. She becomes an unreliable witness, a traumatized civilian seeing boogeymen in the shadows. The defense attorneys will tear her apart before she even takes the stand.”
“She knows what she saw.”
“It doesn’t matter what she saw. It matters what we can prove. The body is being released tomorrow morning. Once they cremate him, the evidence goes up in smoke.”
“Who’s the family?”
“Senator Thompson.”
The name lands like a lead weight. Thompson. Intelligence Oversight Committee. A man with the clearance to bury bodies and the budget to pave over the graveyard.
“She’s a loose end.” Hutchinson pauses for a microsecond. “If she persists with this story without proof, she isn’t just a witness. She’s a liability. And liabilities get liquidated.”
“Can she prove it?”
“You tell me. Did she keep a sample? Did she take photos? Does she have anything other than her word against a senator and a clean autopsy report?”
I look at her again. The firelight plays across her face, softening the exhaustion lines, casting long shadows on the wall.
Proof.
She risked her life in that garage. She went back. Why? Not just to run. A woman running for her life drops everything. A woman hunting for justice grabs the weapon.
“Hold on.”
I lower the phone. I walk back to the rug. I move silently, a ghost in my own house, my weight rolling heel-to-toe to dampen the sound on the concrete. I kneel beside her.
The heat from the fire dies out, but she radiates warmth. It hits me in a wave: vanilla, sleep, and life.
“Iris.”
She stirs, sensing my proximity before I touch her. Survival instinct.
“Iris. Wake up.”
She wakes instantly. No grogginess, no disorientation. Her eyes snap open, clear and terrified. She scrambles back, crab-walking across the rug, the blanket falling away. She throws her hand up to protect her face.
“What? What is it? Are they here?”
“No. We’re clear.” I keep my voice low, pitching it to a frequency signaling safety. I hold my hands up, palms open. “I need you to wake up. I need your brain.”
She blinks, taking in the room. The fire. The dark kitchen. Me. She lowers her hand. She sits up, rubbing her face with hands that still carry traces of dried blood on the knuckles.
“My brain.”
“Hutchinson is on the line. The tox screen on the John Doe came back clean.”
She freezes. Her hands drop to her lap.
“That’s impossible.”
The reaction is immediate and visceral. The fear vanishes, replaced by professional outrage. Watching the shift is like watching a blade clear its sheath: the terrified girl retracting, the doctor taking the helm. She straightens her spine. Her posture shifts from panic to focus.
“He tracked. I saw the injection site. Left antecubital fossa. It was fresh. There was a hematoma.”
“They’re saying it was a cardiac event. Brain bleed.”
“Bullshit.”
