Chapter 3: The Men Who Came When Called
I stared at the text for a long time.
*Let it go, Miller.*
Not Vance.
Miller.
The name I used for groceries and parent-teacher nights and hospital intake forms.
The name that was supposed to be invisible.
They had done their homework.
Which meant they had been doing it for a while.
I deleted the message, walked back to Nora's room, and sat in the chair beside her bed until the sky outside the window turned gray.
At six in the morning, a nurse told me visiting hours would resume at eight.
I nodded and went to the parking garage.
Mitchell was leaning against my car.
He looked older.
The gray at his temples had spread.
But his eyes were the same — still and watchful, the way a man's eyes get when he has spent years in places where being noticed means not coming home.
"Bishop called me," he said.
"I know."
"Lawson and Park are twenty minutes out."
I unlocked the car.
"How did you get here so fast?"
"I was already in the city." He paused.
"I've been keeping an eye on Nora for about six months."
I stopped with my hand on the door.
"She didn't know," he said quickly.
"You didn't ask me to.
I just — after Sarah died, I thought someone should."
Sarah.
Nora's mother.
My wife.
Gone eight years now.
I didn't say anything.
I got in the car.
Mitchell got in the other side.
"Tell me what you know," I said.
"Holbrook's the one who organized it.
Kensington and Sterling went along, but Wyatt Holbrook chose her specifically.
She'd filed a complaint against him two weeks ago — a harassment report with the university's student affairs office.
The complaint was buried within forty-eight hours.
Holbrook found out she filed it."
"He targeted her because she reported him."
"Yes."
The parking garage was quiet.
Somewhere below us, a car started.
"The girl who disappeared," I said.
"The one Bishop mentioned.
Do you have a name?"
Mitchell reached into his jacket and set a folded piece of paper on the dashboard.
"Emma Reyes.
Twenty years old.
Pre-law.
She filed a report fourteen months ago.
Same three boys.
Her family received a wire transfer of two hundred and forty thousand dollars eleven days later.
She withdrew from the university the following week.
Her social media accounts were all deleted the same day."
"Where is she now?"
"Baton Rouge.
Living with an aunt.
She hasn't spoken publicly about any of it."
"Has anyone spoken to her?"
"Not yet."
Lawson and Park pulled in beside us.
They climbed out of a dark sedan and stood waiting.
Neither of them knocked on the window.
They just waited, the way they always had — patient, ready, giving me the space to decide.
I got out of the car.
Park looked at me across the roof.
"Commander."
"Don't call me that."
"David," he corrected, without missing a beat.
Lawson said nothing.
He never said much.
He just handed me a tablet.
On the screen was a photograph — a university security office, interior, taken from an angle that suggested the camera was a button or a pen.
Gerald Pruitt was seated at a desk.
Across from him sat a man in an expensive suit I didn't recognize.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"Holbrook's attorney," Mitchell said.
"That photo was taken yesterday morning.
Before Nora was even out of surgery."
Pruitt had a manila envelope on the desk in front of him.
The attorney's hand was resting on top of it.
"They're already building the cover," Lawson said.
It was the first thing he'd said since arriving.
"Then we move faster than they do," I said.
I handed the tablet back to Park.
"I need Emma Reyes.
I need her to feel safe enough to talk.
I need the footage from that private server before Pruitt realizes we know it exists.
And I need everything on the attorney — name, clients, who he's protected before."
"The attorney's name is Warren Fitch," Bishop said through the car's open window.
I hadn't realized he'd patched in through Mitchell's phone.
"He's handled three separate cases involving the Holbrook family in the past eight years.
All settled quietly.
All sealed."
"Can you unseal them?"
A pause.
"I can find people who were in the rooms when they were signed."
"Do it."
I looked at the four of them.
Mitchell.
Lawson.
Park.
Bishop's voice from the phone on the dashboard.
Men who had answered without asking why.
Men who had shown up before I even understood what I was asking for.
"I want to be clear about something," I said.
"We do this right.
No shortcuts that give Fitch anything to work with.
Everything we find, we find legally or through people who can testify.
We are building a case, not a retaliation."
Mitchell nodded slowly.
"Understood."
"Because when this is over, I want those three boys to stand in a courtroom.
I want their fathers to sit in the gallery and watch.
And I want Emma Reyes to be able to say her name out loud without being afraid."
Nobody spoke.
Then Park said, "We're going to need someone on the inside at the university."
"I already have someone in mind," I said.
My phone buzzed again.
Same unknown number.
A new message this time.
Just one word.
*Careful.*
I put the phone in my pocket.
They were watching.
May you like
They were warning me.
And they still believed that was enough to make me stop.
