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Reluctantly, he nodded. “You’re right. She already buried him and made her peace. I’m not going to blow up her world for a second time until I can assure her, we caught the person responsible.”

“I think that’s best,” she told him as she reached out and gently squeezed his hand.

“In the meantime, there’s a lot to do to get ready for tonight,” he told her.

“For tonight?” She questioned with confusion.

“The station’s annual Christmas party,” he reminded her. “The one my crew’s been talking about for days. The one Kimble and Ruiz hung a banner for in the bay.”

She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Right. The party. Ruiz told me it starts at six.” She zipped her fleece, then unzipped it, then zipped it again. “I should probably head back to the inn and change.”

He looked at her—the county fleece and chuckled. “Do you have an ugly Christmas sweater?”

Her eyes widened with terror. “You’re kidding, right?”

Brandon couldn’t help himself. He chuckled and shook his head. “I am. You can wear whatever you want. And for the record, you look good in whatever you wear.”

Her eyes flicked to his, then away, her cheeks turning pink from a blush. “I’ll figure something out.”

Brandon watched her go, the straight line of her back, the way she didn’t look back. The door clicked shut behind her.

He stood there for a long moment, staring at the empty space where she’d been. The evidence she’d brought still sat on the table, his father’s signature staring up at him. Brandon picked up the page and ran his thumb over his father’s handwriting one more time. All these years, he’d been right. The anger that had fueled him through his training, through every promotion, had been justified.

The station felt too quiet without Desiree beside him. He poured the rest of his coffee down the sink, washed the mug, and set it on the rack. The mundane tasks helped settle the churning in his gut.

He straightened the papers on the table, aligning them with the edge, then gathered them into the folder and tucked it under his arm. The weight of it felt heavier now—not just paper, but proof. Years of suspicion finally validated.

Brandon headed to his office and locked the folder in his desk drawer. He sat there for a moment, elbows on the desk, and hands clasped in front of his face. The image of his father’s signature kept playing in his mind—those decisive strokes, the way he always pressed too hard on the pen. How many times had he watched his father sign documents just like that? How many times had he imitated that signature as a kid, practicing for the day he’d have his own authority to wield?

The station buzzed with activity as the crew prepared for the party. He could hear Kimble barking orders about decorations, Ruiz’s laughter echoing down the hallway. Brandon should be out there with them, helping set up, keeping things light, but it was hard to muster Christmas joy after what Desiree just revealed to him.

He closed his eyes and bowed his head, fingers laced tight enough to ache.

“Lord, I don’t even know where to start. All these years, and You knew. You knew the whole time. I’ve been carrying this anger like it was mine to keep, and now there’s finally proof, and I don’t know what to do with it. My dad—he’s been gone, and I’ve been mad, and now it turns out I had a right to be. That doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like a wound I’ve been picking at for years, and now it’s finally open and bleeding again.”

Brandon pressed his knuckles against his forehead, the words coming rough and unpolished, but he knew God didn’t care about that. “I need You to take this. I can’t carry it and do my job and be what this town needs me to be.”

He paused, listening to the silence of his office, the distant hum of the crew’s preparations. The anger was still there, a live wire under his skin, but something else had shifted—a loosening, like a fist unclenching after holding on too long.

“And Desiree—I don’t know what You’re doing there, Lord. I didn’t ask for her, didn’t plan on any of this. But she’s good at what she does, and she cares about the truth, and even a little about me, and I think maybe that’s the point. So, help me not to mess it up. Help me keep my head on straight while we finish this. Amen.”

He sat there for a moment longer, then pushed back from the desk and stood. The folder was locked away. The anger was still there, but it didn’t feel like it was his alone to carry.

When Brandon joined his crew a little while later, the fire station’s engine bay looked like a Christmas store had exploded its contents all over the place. Two folding tables ran the length of the garage. Both tables sagged under the weight of slow cookers, crockpot chili, and platters of store-bought cookies, all covered by a sheen of green and red plastic. A string of LED lights blinked unevenly along the cinderblock wall, anchored by duct tape. Somebody—probably Ruiz—had looped an inflatable Grinch over the garage door and rigged it so that it wobbled in the breeze whenever anyone came in from the lot.

Ruiz had on a Santa hat and was three cups deep in the spiced cider, challenging one of the probies in an arm-wrestling contest where both of them pretended not to notice the table’s near collapse.

Brandon floated through the chaos, clapping shoulders, laughing, asking after spouses and kids and pretending not to see the bottle of peppermint schnapps that someone kept passing around. This was the part of the job that still felt right—bringing people together, keeping things moving, making it seem like tradition was stronger than whatever real-world mess waited outside.

But every few seconds, his attention drifted to the wall by the supply closet, where Desiree stood with her back to the party, nursing a Styrofoam cup of cider. He couldn’t help but notice how her red sweater and dark denim jeans hugged her curves in all the right places. She was doing what she always did—observing. Not bored, not aloof. Just taking the measure of the room before deciding if and how she’d join in.

Brandon snagged a cup from the table and filled it. He worked his way around the perimeter until he was beside her. “Don’t tell me you plan on being a wallflower all night,” he teased, bumping her cup with his.

She watched the party over the rim of her cup. “I think I’ve made it pretty clear—I don’t do well with groups. I like looking for patterns and solving problems. This” —she gestured at everything going on in the room with her cup— “is chaos.”

“But the good kind,” he countered with a playful grin. “Cutting loose isn’t a code violation, Investigator Garcia.”

The noise from the white elephant exchange peaked as Kimble unwrapped a singing trout, which immediately started trilling “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” in a tiny, robotic voice. Laughter ricocheted off the concrete.