Black Water

AIRowling

An AI-authored novel. Generated end-to-end by the AIRowling pipeline — no sentence written or edited by a human.
waive.online/static/library

Chapter 1

The body was already cold when Don got there. That was the first thing he noticed—not the blood, not the water damage, not the way the victim's eyes had gone flat and glassy like old marbles left out in the rain. Just the cold. A corpse doesn't argue with you about the time of death. It just sits there, temperature dropping by the degree, making its own quiet case.

Don stood at the edge of the stainless steel table and looked down at the dead man. The wildcatter had spent thirty years drilling holes in the ground hoping to find something worth more than the oil he spilled getting there. He'd found something else. Something that killed him.

There was a single wound—a clean incision just below the collarbone, angled upward toward the throat. Professional work. No hesitation marks, no ragged edges where the blade had slipped. Whoever did this knew exactly where to put the knife and how deep to push it.

"You see it?" Jimmy Dixon leaned against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, cheap suit wrinkled from a night he hadn't slept through. He was thirty-four, thin as a rail, and wore his deadpan like armor. "That's not a street killing."

"Don't look like one," Don said. His voice was low, the kind of quiet that made people lean in to hear him. He had a limp he'd gotten playing linebacker at Houston back in '72, and it showed most on long floors like this one, tiled in institutional gray that smelled of bleach and something older underneath.

Jimmy stepped closer, careful not to touch the table. "Tolbert's wearing a suit. Nice one. Not the kind a guy buys for a day at the rig."

Don crouched. Up close, he could see the tan lines on Tolbert's wrists—dark bands where a watch had sat for years, leaving the skin beneath pale as milk. The right wrist was bare. The left still carried a gold band, wedding ring, slightly loose on a finger that had swollen since death.

"Missing a Rolex," Don said.

Jimmy nodded. "Tan line proves it. Guy wearing a watch like that for years would have that mark. Someone took it."

"Or someone wanted it to look like a robbery."

"That's two possibilities."

"Which means we don't know anything yet."

Don straightened. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like trapped flies, a sound that had been building since the building was constructed in the seventies and nobody had bothered to fix the ballast. He'd been in enough morgues to know the sound. It was the sound of bureaucracy trying to pretend it was alive.

He turned his attention back to the body. Tolbert's face was relaxed, almost peaceful, except for the mouth. The lips were parted slightly, teeth visible, and there was a thin line of dried blood at the corner of his right lip. Not from the wound. From somewhere else.

"Anything else?" Don asked.

The medical examiner, a woman named Cho whose name Don had learned on his third week on the force and never forgotten because it was the only thing about her that wasn't generic, shook her head. She was wiping her hands on a towel that had seen better decades.

"One more thing," she said. "His fingers. Look at them."

Don examined the hands. Tolbert's fingertips were clean—no grime, no calluses. Wildcatters worked in dirt and grease. Their hands told the story of their trade. These hands looked like they belonged to a man who'd spent the day at a desk. Or a dinner.

"He was dressed for something," Don said.

"Or someone dressed him," Jimmy offered.

Don considered both. The suit was Italian, probably custom. Tolbert had money, but he wasn't the type to wear Italian suits. He drove a Ford pickup with a dent in the fender and wore Carhartt jackets year-round. This suit didn't fit him. It fit the occasion it was meant for.

"Check his pockets," Don said.

Jimmy reached in carefully. The left breast pocket held nothing. The right held a wallet—thick, leather, worn soft—and a folded handkerchief that hadn't been folded recently. Jimmy pulled the wallet free, opened it.

"Driver's license. Roy Tolbert. Address in Memorial Park. Cash—eighty dollars in bills. Credit cards. All there."

"No Rolex in the pockets either."

"Robbery then."

"Or staged robbery."

Jimmy looked at him. "You think someone killed him, took the watch, and left everything else?"

He thought the killer knew what they were doing. Took the watch. Abandoned the wallet with eighty dollars in it. Abandoned the credit cards. Abandoned the handkerchief. Abandoned the body in the bayou instead of dragging it somewhere more remote.

"Why leave the body in the bayou?"

"Because they wanted it found."

That shut Jimmy up. Don could see him working through it—the implications settling in like sediment in slow water.

Don stood and walked to the far wall of the morgue, where a mirror was mounted at an angle so the ME could see the door without turning. He looked at his reflection. Forty-two, black hair with gray starting at the temples, gray eyes that people sometimes described as assessing. He'd been a linebacker once, broad and fast, and the body still carried the architecture of that—shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway, hands big enough to crush a beer can without thinking about it. The limp was the only concession to time.

"Who found him?" Don asked.

"Fisherman. Early morning, near the ship channel. Said the body was floating face-down, arms spread like he was swimming."

He was trying to get somewhere.

Cho wiped her hands again. "Time of death is between midnight and three a.m. Body had been in the water for at least six hours when the fisherman pulled him out."

"Six hours," Don repeated. Midnight to three. That meant Tolbert was alive at midnight. Alive, conscious, moving. And then he wasn't.

"Phone call," Don said suddenly.

Jimmy frowned. "What about it?"

"Any sign of a phone call? Cell tower records? Toll booths?"

Jimmy pulled out his notebook. "It's 1985, Don. Nobody's tracking pagers. And Tolbert didn't have a pager."

Right. Cell phones existed but they were the size of bricks and cost as much as a used car. Most cops didn't have one. Definitely not a wildcatter.

"Then we go back to basics," Don said. "Who knew he was alive at midnight?"

Jimmy flipped through his notes. "His secretary called it in. Said he left the office around five, told her he had a dinner reservation. She didn't see him again until the fisherman called."

"Dinner reservation." Don turned back to the table. "Where?"

"She didn't say. He just mentioned 'dinner downtown.'"

Don looked at Tolbert's face again. The parted lips, the dried blood at the corner of the mouth. Not from the wound. From something else. A kiss? A struggle? A cigarette burned too far down?

"Check the Cattlemen's," Don said.

Jimmy paused. "The steakhouse?"

"Tolbert was wearing a nice suit. Had a dinner reservation downtown. Cattlemen's is the only place in this city where a wildcatter would wear a suit and not look like he lost a bet."

Jimmy was already moving toward the door. "I'll pull the reservations log."

"Don't pull it yet."

Jimmy stopped. "Why not?"

"Because if someone wanted us to think Tolbert went to dinner, they'd make sure the Cattlemen's log showed him there. Go look. Don't tell anyone you're looking."

Jimmy nodded slowly, understanding dawning. "You think the reservation is fake."

"I think the killer planned this. Planned it well enough to leave a body where it would be found by morning. Planned it well enough to take a watch but leave eighty dollars. Planned it well enough to dress Tolbert in a suit that isn't his."

"Who dresses a dead man?"

"Someone who knew him. Someone who had access."

Jimmy was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You think it's someone from the department?"

Don didn't answer. He looked down at Tolbert's body one more time—the clean wound, the missing watch, the dead eyes that had seen whatever had killed him in the last six hours of his life. The fluorescent lights buzzed. The radiator in the corner clanked. Somewhere outside, Houston was sleeping, unaware that one of its citizens had died in the dark and that the people who were supposed to protect him were already standing over his body, guessing at the shape of the man who'd done it.

"Start with the Cattlemen's," Don said. "And Jimmy?"

"Yeah?"

"Bring coffee. The good stuff. We're going to be here a while."

Jimmy smiled for the first time that night. It didn't reach his eyes. "Good stuff costs extra."

"Charge it to the dead man's expense account."

Jimmy left. The door clicked shut behind him, and Don was alone with the corpse and the buzzing lights and the cold that seeped up from the table and into his bones. He pulled out his notebook and began to write, the pen scratching against the paper in the quiet room, each word a small anchor against the chaos of what he didn't yet understand.

The first entry was simple: Roy Tolbert. Dead. Murdered. Time of death: midnight to three a.m.

Below that, he wrote: Missing Rolex. Tan line confirms it was worn regularly. Killer knew what they were doing.

And below that, he wrote the thing he wasn't ready to say out loud: Professional job. This wasn't random.

He closed the notebook. The radiator clanked again. Outside, the city continued its indifferent rotation, and Don Redman stood over a dead man he barely knew and tried to imagine the shape of the person who'd ended his life.

The Cattlemen's was already packed when Don pulled up. It was six-thirty on a Tuesday, which meant every suit in downtown Houston had decided dinner was going to be steak. He killed the engine and sat for a moment, watching the neon sign flicker through the windshield — CATTLEMEN'S, the T missing its top bar so it looked like CATTLMEN'S, which felt right for a place that had been operating since 1948 and probably hadn't updated its signage since then.

He pushed through the front door. The heat hit him first, thick with cigar smoke and something sweet that might have been perfume or might have been the fried onions cooking in the back. The jazz band was setting up at the far end — a bass player tuning, a drummer tapping brushes against the rim. The bar area was half-full, stools occupied by men in ties loosened at the collar, women in dresses that cost more than Don made in a week.

Wanda saw him before he reached the bar. She was wiping down the counter with a rag that had probably been clean when she clocked in, her red hair pinned back tight, a cigarette burning in the ashtray beside her register. She didn't look up right away. She finished the wipe, moved the rag to a fresh section, then lifted her eyes.

"Redman," she said. Not a greeting. An identification.

"Wanda." He took a seat on the stool nearest the end, the one with the cracked vinyl that caught your thigh if you shifted wrong. "Whiskey. Neat."

She poured without asking which bottle. Good sign. She'd learned his preference over the years the way she'd learned every regular's order, every face that came through her doors, every conversation that happened within earshot. The Cattlemen's was less a restaurant than an intelligence network disguised as a steakhouse.

"You look like hell," she said, setting the glass down.

"I feel like hell."

"That bad?"

He took a sip. The whiskey burned in the right way, warm and honest. "Roy Tolbert's dead."

Wanda's hand froze on the rag. She didn't turn toward him immediately. She set the rag down slowly, wiped her fingers on her apron, then turned fully. Her green eyes were flat. Professional.

"Who told you that?"

"Bordelon sent me to ID him."

She exhaled through her nose, a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "So Mickey's already moving on it. That's fast."

"Fast enough."

Wanda lit another cigarette from the one burning in the tray. She inhaled deeply, held it, then blew the smoke toward the ceiling fan that wasn't turning because it was still early and the kitchen hadn't generated enough heat to trigger it. She watched him over the smoke.

"What do you want, Don?"

"I heard Tolbert was in here last night. Before midnight."

"I don't keep track of who comes in."

"You keep track of everyone who comes in."

She took a drag. "Everyone comes in. That doesn't make them interesting."

"Tolbert was interesting. He was worth eighty dollars in cash in his wallet. He was wearing a Rolex he took off before he got into the water."

Wanda's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind her eyes — a calculation, a memory being pulled forward. She tapped ash into the tray. "I've got three hundred people sitting in this place tonight. You want me to tell you which one of them talked to a wildcatter last night?"

"I want you to tell me if he was with someone."

She studied him for a long moment. The bass player struck a low note. Somewhere near the kitchen, a plate shattered. Wanda didn't flinch.

"There was a man," she said finally. Quiet enough that only he could hear it. "Sat in the corner booth. Third table from the back. He ordered a scotch, neat. Didn't touch it for the first twenty minutes. Just watched the room."

"Description?"

"Middle-aged. Gray hair. Expensive suit. The kind of suit that costs more than your car." She took another drag. "He had a woman with him, but she left early. Maybe ten past eleven. He stayed."

"How long?"

"Until closing. He was one of the last to leave."

Don set his glass down. "You remember his face?"

Wanda's smile was thin. "Don. I remember faces. I remember what they ordered. I remember who they were with. I remember who tipped in cash and who wrote it on the receipt because they wanted the charge." She leaned forward slightly. "But I'm not telling you who he was."

"Why not?"

"Because the man in the corner booth — the one who stayed until closing — he was sitting with a man named Bordelon when I brought them their drinks. Two scotches. Same brand. Same glassware. They laughed about something. I don't know what. But I know that kind of laugh."

Don felt something tighten in his chest. Bordelon was already involved? He'd assumed the lieutenant was reacting to the case, not steering it from the outside.

"You're saying Bordelon was with this man?"

"I'm saying I don't talk about what I see in here." She straightened up. "Not to you. Not to anyone. You understand me?"

"Wanda —"

"This city has a code, Don. You walk into a bar, you drink your whiskey, you don't ask questions about the people sitting three tables over. You don't describe them to detectives. You don't become a witness because you happened to be holding a cocktail shaker." She tapped ash again. "There are reasons for that code. Reasons you're starting to learn about."

"Roy Tolbert is dead."

"And if I talk, I'm next." Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. No drama. No theatrics. Just a statement of arithmetic. "You think this is about one dead wildcatter? You think Bordelon cares about one dead wildcatter? Don. Look at me."

He did. Her green eyes were steady, unblinking.

"I've been running this bar for eighteen years. I've seen men come in who shouldn't have. I've seen men leave who definitely shouldn't have. I've learned the difference between curiosity and survival. Right now, I'm choosing survival."

Don stared at her. The jazz band had started playing — something slow, a piano ballad with a trumpet that sounded tired. He could feel the weight of the room pressing in on both of them, the other patrons unaware that a negotiation was happening at the end of the bar.

"What if I tell you I'm not going to stop?" he said. "What if I tell you I'm going to come back tomorrow and the day after and the day after that until you give me a name?"

Wanda's expression softened, just a fraction. Not sympathy. Something closer to respect, maybe. Or pity.

"Then you'll find out what happens to detectives who ask too many questions in places like this. And it won't be Bordelon who stops you. It'll be the people who sit in that corner booth and never say a word."

She turned away, reaching for a bottle she didn't need. The conversation was over. He could feel it closing behind her like a door.

Don sat on the cracked stool and finished his whiskey. The burn was the only thing that felt real. Outside, a siren wailed — distant, heading somewhere else, carrying urgency toward someone else's problem. He set his glass down on the bar and stood. His knee ached where the old injury lived, a dull throb that reminded him he was forty-two and still moving through the world with a limp.

He pushed through the door into the humid Houston night. The parking lot was full of Cadillacs and Fords, engines ticking as they cooled, headlights cutting through the steam rising off the asphalt. He got into his car and sat there for a moment, staring at the dashboard.

Bordelon had been with the man in the corner booth. That meant Bordelon wasn't just handling the investigation — he was connected to whoever killed Tolbert. Which meant Don's partner in solving the murder was potentially the person protecting the killer.

Don started the engine. The radio crackled to life — static, then a country station playing Waylon Jennings at a volume that suggested the driver had been driving for hours and hadn't turned it down. He switched it off.

He needed to go home. He needed to think. He needed to figure out how to investigate a murder when the man assigning him to traffic duty was sitting in a booth at the Cattlemen's with the man who'd killed Roy Tolbert.

The car pulled away from the curb. Behind him, the Cattlemen's neon sign continued its imperfect blink — CATTLMEN'S, the T still missing, the word still almost right, the meaning still visible through the damage.

Don drove into the dark, leaving the past behind.

Chapter 2

The radiator in Don Redman’s apartment clanked like a dying engine, a rhythmic, metallic cough that echoed in the hollow spaces of his small living room. It was 8:15 PM on a Tuesday, the kind of evening that felt heavier than it had any right to be, saturated with the humidity of a Houston summer that refused to break even after the sun went down. Don sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the scuffed toes of his shoes. He had spent the last forty-eight hours in purgatory. Lt. Mickey Bordelon had done exactly what he promised: he had sidelined Don, burying him under a mountain of minor traffic violations and parking citations, effectively turning the lead detective on the Roy Tolbert murder into a glorified meter maid. It was a punishment for asking questions, a bureaucratic shackle designed to keep Don’s hands off the evidence and his mind off the connections that were starting to look less like coincidences and more like a net closing around his throat.

Don rubbed his face, feeling the grit of stubble and the exhaustion settling into his bones. He needed to leave the apartment. He needed to breathe air that didn’t smell like stale coffee and wet wool, or worse, the phantom scent of the Ship Channel that seemed to cling to his jacket no matter how many times he washed it. He needed to see his daughter.

His daughter lived in a modest brick building in the Heights, three blocks from a park that used to be safe but wasn’t anymore. Don pulled on his jacket, a worn leather thing that had seen better decades, and checked his service weapon. It was heavy against his hip, a comforting weight, though he knew it wouldn’t do much good if the enemy was inside the walls rather than outside them. He took the stairs two at a time, avoiding the creaky step on the third landing that the landlord had ignored for six months, and knocked on 3B.

The door opened before he could knock again. Cassie stood there, looking tired. She wore a simple cotton dress, her hair pulled back in a loose clip, dark circles under her eyes that mirrored his own. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“Don,” she said, stepping aside to let him in. “I didn’t expect you.”

“I’m off the clock,” Don said, his voice rough. “And I’m bored. Traffic duty is hell, Cassie. You’d hate it.”

She laughed, a short, brittle sound, and closed the door behind him. The apartment was small but tidy, filled with books and potted plants that struggled against the dim light. It smelled of lavender and lemon polish, a stark contrast to the grease and decay of his work. Don walked into the kitchen, where she was pouring two glasses of iced tea. He watched her hands. They were steady. Good.

“Trent’s coming over soon,” she said, handing him a glass. Her voice was casual, but Don noticed the way her fingers tightened around the condensation on the glass. A micro-expression, fleeting and sharp. “He wanted to pick up some things from my storage unit. Said he had his truck parked nearby.”

Don took a sip of the tea. It was too sweet. He set the glass down on the counter without drinking more. “Trent?”

“Trent Hollister,” Cassie said, as if the name itself should explain everything. As if the surname was a shield that rendered further explanation unnecessary. “We’ve been seeing each other for three months, Dad. You know this.”

Don nodded slowly. He did know. Cassie had mentioned him in passing a few times, always with a hesitation that Don had attributed to the usual awkwardness of introducing a new partner to her father. He hadn’t pressed. He had told himself that if Cassie was happy, if she was smiling, then it was none of his business. But now, sitting in the quiet of her apartment, with the radiator humming in the other room and the weight of the Tolbert case pressing on his chest, the name Hollister felt like a stone dropped into his stomach.

Wade Hollister. The name was associated with dredging contracts, with political donations, with a level of influence that operated in the shadows of the city’s infrastructure. And now Trent. Son of Wade? Or cousin? Don didn’t know the exact lineage, but in Houston, names carried weight like lead vests. You didn’t wear them lightly.

“He’s a nice boy,” Cassie said, reading the silence. “He’s studying engineering. He works with his dad sometimes. He’s… he’s good to me.”

Don looked at her. Really looked at her. He saw the hope in her posture, the desire for normalcy. She wanted to believe that love was just love, that it existed in a vacuum separate from the rot of the city they lived in. But Don had spent twenty years in HPD learning that nothing existed in a vacuum. Everything was connected. Every handshake had a price tag. Every smile had an agenda.

“Is he?” Don asked. His tone was neutral, but the air in the room shifted. The temperature seemed to drop a degree.

“Yes, Dad,” Cassie said, her voice sharpening slightly. “Why are you looking at me like that? Like I’m hiding something.”

“Like you’re trusting someone you don’t know,” Don said. He moved to the window, looking out at the street below. The streetlights flickered, casting long, distorted shadows across the pavement. “The Hollisters aren’t known for their charity, Cassie. Wade Hollister built half the Ship Channel expansion on contracts that were awarded to companies he owned. There are audits buried under layers of shell corporations. There are bodies—metaphorical ones, mostly, but sometimes literal ones—swimming in the bayou because they got in the way of the money.”

Cassie sighed, leaning against the counter. “That’s your job, Dad. That’s what you do. You look for corruption. You dig until you find dirt. Trent is just a guy. He drives a Ford F-150. He likes jazz. He helps me change lightbulbs. He isn’t Wade.”

“Blood runs thicker than water,” Don said quietly. “And in this city, that water is often poisoned.”

Before Cassie could respond, the sound of an engine cut through the hum of the city outside. A truck. Heavy, diesel-powered, idling roughly. Then the crunch of gravel as it pulled into the driveway of the adjacent building.

Cassie straightened up. “That’s him.”

Don turned from the window. He felt a prickling sensation at the base of his neck, the same instinct that had saved him from a crossfire in the Fifth Ward ten years ago. It wasn’t fear. It was recognition. It was the primal alarm of a predator sensing another predator in the brush.

“Stay here,” Don said.

“Dad, don’t make a scene,” Cassie warned, her eyes wide.

“I’m not making a scene,” Don said. “I’m checking the locks.”

He walked to the front door, his hand resting on the knob. He didn’t open it immediately. He listened. He heard footsteps on the porch, heavy boots on wood. Then the doorbell rang. Once. Twice. Impatient.

Don opened the door.

Trent Hollister stood on the threshold. He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a crisp white shirt that seemed impossibly clean against the grime of the neighborhood. He held a duffel bag in one hand. He smiled, but it was a practiced smile, tight at the corners, devoid of warmth. His eyes were pale blue, almost gray, and they swept over Don with a detached curiosity, like a scientist observing a specimen in a jar.

“Mr. Redman,” Trent said. His voice was smooth, cultured. “Cassie mentioned you might drop by. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Don didn’t smile back. He stepped aside, allowing Trent to enter, but he positioned himself between Trent and Cassie, a subtle barrier. He watched Trent’s eyes. They didn’t linger on Cassie. They scanned the room. The bookshelves. The kitchen. The windows. Assessing threats. Assessing exits.

“No,” Don said. “You’re fine. Just keeping an eye on things.”

Trent shrugged, walking past Don into the living room. He set the duffel bag down on the coffee table with a thud. “I appreciate that. Cassie says you’re… protective.”

“I’m a father,” Don said. “It’s the job description.”

Cassie moved to Trent’s side, placing a hand on his arm. Trent didn’t flinch, but his posture stiffened imperceptibly. He looked down at her hand, then up at Don. There was no affection in his gaze. Only a cold calculation.

“Trent is helping me sort through some old boxes,” Cassie said, trying to lighten the mood. “From my mom’s estate. Some of them are heavy.”

“Family heirlooms,” Trent said. He picked up a book from the shelf, running his thumb along the spine. He didn’t read the title. He just looked at the binding. “Sentimental value. Hard to discard.”

Don watched Trent’s hands. They were large, capable. There was a scar across the knuckles of his right hand, pale and thin. A fight wound? Or a tool mark? Don’s mind raced, connecting dots that shouldn’t connect. The scar reminded him of the dredge workers he’d interviewed near the Ship Channel. Men who worked with steel and fire, men who didn’t mind breaking things to get what they wanted.

“You work with your father?” Don asked.

“In a limited capacity,” Trent said. “Consulting. Logistics. I help him navigate the… complexities of the business.”

“Complexities,” Don repeated. He tasted the word. It was a euphemism. Like ‘adjustment’ or ‘realignment.’ In the Hollister vocabulary, it probably meant intimidation, bribery, or disposal.

“I should go,” Trent said, checking his watch. It was a expensive piece, gold and leather, but Don noticed the strap was worn, the metal scratched. He didn’t care about appearances. He cared about function. “I have a meeting in the morning. Early.”

“Already?” Cassie asked.

“The dredging contracts in the Southeast district require oversight. If we fall behind schedule, the city fines us. My father doesn’t like fines.” Trent smiled again, but this time it reached his eyes. It was a shark’s smile. Friendly, but deadly. “I’ll see you later, Cassie.”

He walked to the door. Don followed him, his hand hovering near his belt, where his keys hung. He watched Trent step onto the porch. The humidity hit them both, thick and suffocating. Trent paused, looking out at the street. For a second, Don thought he saw Trent’s eyes scan the shadows, checking for tails. Checking for witnesses.

“Mr. Redman,” Trent said, not turning around. “Take care of yourself. This city can be dangerous for people who ask too many questions.”

Don felt the blood drain from his face. It wasn’t a warning. It was a statement of fact. A reminder of the hierarchy.

“And you,” Don said, his voice low. “Take care of your father. He’s a big fish. Big fish attract sharks.”

Trent turned then. His expression didn’t change. He tilted his head slightly, studying Don with the same detached interest he had shown the book. “Sharks are just part of the ecosystem, Mr. Redman. You learn to swim with them, or you drown.”

He got into his truck. The engine roared to life, a deep, guttural growl that vibrated in Don’s chest. The taillights flared red, cutting through the twilight, and then the truck pulled away, disappearing into the traffic.

Don stood on the porch for a long moment, watching the empty street. The air felt thinner now, harder to breathe. He could still feel the weight of Trent’s gaze on his back, a physical pressure that made his skin crawl. He went back inside and locked the door, engaging the deadbolt and the chain.

Cassie was standing in the middle of the living room, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked pale.

“He’s gone,” she said.

“He’s gone,” Don confirmed.

“Do you hate him?” Cassie asked, her voice trembling.

Don didn’t answer immediately. He walked to the window and looked out. He saw the truck merging into the flow of cars, becoming just another anonymous vehicle in the endless stream of Houston traffic. But he knew better. Nothing was anonymous. Not in this town. Not when you were digging into the wrong holes.

“I don’t hate him yet,” Don said finally. “But I trust him less than I trust the rats in the basement of the precinct.”

Cassie flinched. “That’s not fair, Dad. You’re judging him before you even know him. Before you know us.”

“I’m judging him by his name,” Don said. He turned to face her. “And by his eyes, Cassie. Those eyes don’t see people. They see assets. Liabilities. Obstacles. Your mother knew that. That’s why she left Texas. That’s why she changed her name.”

Cassie’s eyes filled with tears. She turned away, walking toward the bedroom. “I’m going to shower. I’m tired, Dad. Please don’t do this tonight. Just… just be my father. For one night. Can you do that?”

Don wanted to say yes. He wanted to walk out, to drive home, to drink a beer and forget the smell of diesel and the cold calculation in Trent Hollister’s eyes. But he couldn’t. The image of the scar on Trent’s hand was burned into his retina. The mention of the dredging contracts was a thread that pulled tight in his mind, connecting to the lighter Jimmy had found, to the body in the bayou, to the silence of the Cattlemen’s booth.

If Trent Hollister was involved with his daughter, then the Hollister family was involved with his life. And if the Hollister family was involved, then Roy Tolbert wasn’t just a random victim. He was a message. And Don was the recipient.

“I can try,” Don said. It was the most honest answer he could give.

He watched Cassie disappear into the bedroom and close the door. The click of the latch sounded final. Don stood in the dim light of the living room, surrounded by the quiet domesticity of his daughter’s life, feeling the weight of his own isolation. He walked to the kitchen and picked up his glass of iced tea. It was warm now. The ice had melted. He drank it anyway, the sweetness cloying and artificial on his tongue.

He thought about the lighter. R.T. Roy Tolbert. And now Wade Hollister. The initials didn’t match, but the connection was there, woven into the fabric of the city’s power structure. Don had spent years believing that the law was a shield. Now he realized it was just a piece of paper, thin and fragile, held up against a storm of corruption. And he was standing in the eye of that storm, holding onto a thread that was slipping through his fingers.

He went to the front door and checked the lock again. Then he went to the window. The street was empty. The streetlights flickered. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, fading into the night. Don Redman leaned his forehead against the cool glass and closed his eyes. He tried to sleep, but all he could see was the pale blue eyes of Trent Hollister, watching him from the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike.

The radiator clanked again, louder this time, a metallic scream in the silence. Don opened his eyes. He was alone. But he wasn’t safe. Not anymore. The Hollisters were here. They were in his daughter’s life. And he had no idea how far they were willing to go to protect their secrets.

He pulled out his phone. His thumb hovered over Jimmy’s number. He wanted to call him. He wanted to tell him about Trent, about the feeling in his chest, about the way the air had changed when the Hollister son walked through the door. But he stopped. Jimmy was dealing with his own demons, with his own secrets. Don couldn’t drag him into this yet. Not until he knew more. Not until he had proof.

So he put the phone away. He stood in the dark, listening to the hum of the city, the distant roar of traffic, the beat of his own heart. He was a detective. He was a father. And he was out of his depth. But he would dive. He would go deeper. Because if the Hollisters thought they could touch his daughter, touch his family, they were wrong. They had made a mistake. A fatal mistake.

He turned off the light, letting the darkness rush in to fill the space where the lamp had been, and listened to the radiator clank its steady, rhythmic warning through the thin walls of his apartment.

He turned off the light and walked back to the window. The night was young. The city was awake. And the hunt had just begun.

Chapter 3

The dredging boat was called the Margaret Ann, though Jimmy would've told you it was called whatever the Coast Guard logbook said it was called that morning. He'd learned early not to argue with paperwork. Paperwork lied less often than people, even if the lies were sometimes cleaner.

It was just past dawn when he pulled the patrol cruiser up along the Ship Channel. The smell hit him first—rust and diesel, thick enough to coat the back of his throat. The cranes rose up on either side like skeletons picked clean by centuries of salt wind. Jimmy killed the engine, stepped out, and locked the doors out of habit. Habit was all you could count on when you were working a channel nobody cared about anymore.

The Margaret Ann was moored at the third slip, a twenty-eight-foot workboat with a cracked fiberglass hull and a diesel engine that probably predated the Johnson space program. Its owner, some guy named Salgado who Jimmy had met once and immediately forgotten, filed his permits on time and paid his fees and kept his boat painted a shade of white that suggested he cared about appearances more than anything else. Jimmy respected that. Appearances were honest. People weren't.

He climbed aboard.

The deck was slick with something that might've been oil or might've been condensation or might've been both. Jimmy's boots found purchase anyway—he'd walked worse surfaces in Vietnam, and this was Houston, not a war zone. The cabin door was shut. The galley smelled like stale coffee and old cigarettes. Jimmy moved through it slowly, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning. Routine check. That's what Bordelon had said when he assigned it. Just make sure the fleet's running legal, Dixon. I don't need you chasing ghosts.

Ghosts. Jimmy smiled at that, small and private, the way he smiled at everything Bordelon said that sounded like a joke but wasn't. He'd been chasing ghosts since he signed up for the Marines. The difference was, in the Marines the ghosts had names.

The wheelhouse was empty. Jimmy checked the logbook on the desk—entries current, permits displayed, life jackets present and intact. He checked the bilge. Dry. He checked the storage compartment beneath the bench seat.

There was a metal box in there. Small. Painted a faded turquoise. The kind of tackle box fishermen used for hooks and lures. Jimmy lifted it out, set it on the desk, and opened the lid.

Most of the compartments were empty. A few rusted hooks. A handful of sinkers. And in the bottom right corner, resting on a strip of foam that had yellowed with age, a lighter.

It was brass. Heavy. The kind of Zippo that people bought as gifts and then kept for decades because throwing something away felt like admitting it had been wasted. Jimmy picked it up. It was warm, which shouldn't have been possible—it'd been sitting in a box on a boat that hadn't seen sun in weeks—but maybe the metal held heat differently than skin did. Maybe that was just what your brain did when it found something worth noticing.

Don didn’t wait for Jimmy to finish his inspection. He reached across the cramped workspace, his fingers brushing against the cold brass before Jimmy could lift it. “Hold on,” Don muttered, snatching the lighter from the tackle box. He snapped the lid open, checking the flame wheel, then closed it with a sharp click. “This isn’t just junk, Jimmy. Look at the weight.” He slipped the object into his own jacket pocket, patting it once to secure it. “I’m taking this. You stay here and watch the door.”

The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow, cold and sharp in his gut. Bordelon hadn’t just threatened him; he had engineered a crime scene, planting this specific, untraceable item on a junkie who would never see a courtroom, let alone a defense attorney. The malice wasn’t in the shouted words echoing through the hall; it was in this silent, calculated setup designed to bury the truth under layers of bureaucratic indifference. If they logged it now, if they followed the book, the lighter would disappear into an evidence locker and the story would change before the ink dried on the report. Don’s hand tightened around the brass in his pocket, feeling the ridges of the hinge, a tangible proof of a conspiracy that required a conspiracy to expose.

Jimmy blinked, confused by the sudden shift in tone. “Don, we need to log it. Protocol says—”

“Protocol says we follow orders,” Don interrupted, his eyes hardening as he looked toward the office where Bordelon’s voice still echoed. “And right now, my order is to find out who really owns this. You’re stuck with paperwork. I’m going to find the truth.” Before Jimmy could protest further, Don turned and walked out, the heavy thud of the office door sealing him away from the safety of procedure.

R.T. Matches Roy Tolbert.

His hands were steady as he wrote it. They always were. That was one of the things the medics had told him after Fallujah—how his hands didn't shake anymore, even when his heart did. His heart did a lot lately. But his hands were reliable. His hands had never failed him.

He took a picture with the station camera—a bulky Polaroid that spat out a square of developing film he'd have to wait on. The lighter sat on the desk, catching the pale morning light through the wheelhouse window. Brass. Engraved. Out of place.

Jimmy closed the tackle box. He checked the rest of the boat—galley, cabin, exterior—and found nothing else worth noting. No recent footprints on the deck. No signs of forced entry. No evidence that anyone had been aboard since Salgado last docked it, which could've been days or weeks. The Margaret Ann was a ghost ship in a channel nobody watched. And in its tackle box, a dead man's lighter.

Jimmy climbed back into the cruiser. He started the engine. He drove back to the substation with the lighter wrapped in a paper towel in the passenger seat, and he didn't look at it once.

Don was in the bathroom when Jimmy walked into the bullpen. Don had been in the bathroom for twelve minutes, which meant either the toilet was clogged or he was sitting on the closed lid staring at the tile grout and trying to remember why he'd agreed to become a cop in the first place. Jimmy had heard the story about the Rice days—the scholarship, the linebacker position, the promise that football would get him out of Galveston and into something better. He'd also heard the part about the knee that blew out two games into his junior year, and the part about the recruiting offer that evaporated the week after the MRI, and the part about Don standing in front of a mirror in his apartment that night and telling himself he'd find another way to be useful.

Jimmy couldn’t read Don’s mind. He didn’t know what Don believed, or if he believed anything anymore. But he knew Don showed up. He knew Don did the work. And he knew, from experience, that sometimes the best thing you could do for a man who was staring at tile grout was to drop a brass lighter on his desk and say: We need to talk.

Don emerged from the bathroom with water on his face and a towel draped over his shoulders. His gray eyes were still tired. They were always tired. But they focused when they landed on Jimmy.

"You're smiling," Don said. That wasn't a question. It was an observation, delivered in the tone of a man who'd learned to read micro-expressions the hard way.

"I found something," Jimmy said. He unwrapped the lighter from the paper towel and set it on Don's desk.

Don looked at it. He didn't touch it. He just looked, the way he looked at crime scene photos—slowly, methodically, letting the details assemble themselves before he committed to a conclusion.

"What is it?" Don asked.

"Lighter. Brass Zippo. Found it in a tackle box on the Margaret Ann. Salgado's boat. Moored at the third slip on the channel." Don's eyes had narrowed. Jimmy continued. "Engraved on the back. Two initials."

Don reached out. His fingers—long, scarred across the knuckles from a football career that had ended too soon—closed around the lighter. He flipped it open. Closed it. Opened it again. The snick of the hinge was sharp in the quiet room.

"R.T.," Don said. Not a question. A confirmation.

"Roy Tolbert," Jimmy said.

Don set the lighter down gently, respecting its weight despite the metal casing. He walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot. His back was to Jimmy. Jimmy could see the gray threading through Don's black hair at the temples. He could see the slight tilt of his head, the rigid stillness that signaled Don was wrestling with a fact that refused to align.

"Why was it on a dredging boat?" Don asked. His voice was flat. Controlled. The voice he used when he was angry and didn't want you to know it.

"That's what I was hoping you could help me with," Jimmy said.

Don turned around. "Bordelon assigned you to routine fleet checks."

"I know what he assigned me to."

"And you decided to play detective instead."

"I found a dead man's initials on a boat, Don. I'm not playing anything."

Don picked up the lighter again. He ran his thumb over the engraving. The metal caught the fluorescent light. For a moment, Jimmy thought Don was going to say something else. He didn't. He just stood there, holding the lighter, looking at it the way you look at a photograph of someone you loved and lost and aren't sure you ever really knew.

"Call Bordelon," Don said finally. "Tell him we have a lead."

Jimmy nodded. He reached for the phone on Don's desk—the beige rotary-style landline that rang with a mechanical buzz and never, ever worked when you needed it to most. He dialed the extension. It rang twice. Then Bordelon's voice came through, smooth and bored and exactly what Jimmy expected.

"Dixon."

"It’s a match, sir. On the Margaret Ann. A Zippo. Etched with R.T."

A pause. Not long—maybe two seconds—but Jimmy heard it. The slight intake of breath, the micro-hesitation that told him Bordelon knew more than he was letting on.

"R.T.?" Bordelon said. "As in Roy Tolbert?"

"Yes, sir."

Another pause. Longer this time. Jimmy glanced at Don. Don was watching the phone like it might bite him.

"Bring it in," Bordelon said. "I'll take it from here."

The line went dead.

Jimmy lowered the receiver. Don was already moving toward the door.

"He hung up," Jimmy said.

"He's a bureaucrat," Don said. "They hang up when they want control of a conversation. It's their version of a gun."

"Don, we should—"

"Don." Don's voice was soft, but it had that edge in it—the one that meant the conversation was over. "We'll bring it in. We'll see what Bordelon wants to do with it. But I'm coming with you."

Jimmy wanted to argue. He wanted to say that Bordelon had ordered them to stay off the dredging angle, that the lighter was evidence and evidence belonged to the chain of custody, that something about the speed of Bordelon's response felt wrong. But he'd learned, over months of working alongside Don Redman, that arguing with him about instinct was like arguing with gravity. You could fight it, or you could learn to work with it.

"I'll drive," Jimmy said.

Don picked up the lighter one more time and slid it into his pocket. His hand closed over it like a fist.

The substation was exactly what Jimmy had expected when they arrived: fluorescent lights humming overhead, the smell of stale coffee and wet wool clinging to the carpet, a stack of traffic reports on Bordelon's desk that nobody had looked at in weeks. Bordelon was sitting behind that desk, his legs crossed, a manila folder open in front of him that Jimmy assumed contained something important because Bordelon only opened manila folders when he wanted to look busy.

Bordelon looked up when they entered. He was forty-eight, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and wore suits that cost more than Jimmy's car. He had a face that looked like it had been designed by a committee—pleasant but forgettable, the kind of face you'd trust in a bank and then immediately forget at the ATM.

"Dixon. Redman." He didn't stand. "What do we have?"

Jimmy placed the lighter on the desk. Bordelon looked at it the way a man looks at a spider he's decided not to squash yet.

"Found it on the Margaret Ann," Jimmy said. "Salgado's dredging boat. Moored at the third slip."

Bordelon picked it up. He flipped it open. Closed it. His expression didn't change. That was the thing about Bordelon—he was smooth in a way that felt practiced, like a speech he'd rehearsed a hundred times and delivered a thousand.

"R.T.," Bordelon said. "Roy Tolbert."

"Yes, sir."

Bordelon set the lighter down. He opened the manila folder. Inside was a single sheet of paper—a printout, typed, with a name and an address and a criminal record that spanned three pages.

"We've been working a separate angle," Bordelon said. "Tolbert was seen at the Cattlemen's. He was drinking scotch, neat, in a corner booth. A local junkie named Eddie Marsh was seen in the area that night. We have witnesses. We have motive—Tolbert was known to be hostile toward Marsh's dealer. We have opportunity." He tapped the paper. "And now we have this. A lighter. Which, frankly, proves nothing. Lighters are common. Engravings are sentimental. People lose things."

Don hadn't said a word since they walked in. He was standing near the door, arms crossed, listening. Jimmy could see the tension in his jaw—the tight line where his teeth pressed together.

"A dead man's lighter on a dredging boat isn't nothing," Don said quietly.

Bordelon’s gaze slid sideways, assessing. The smile he offered was thin and practiced. "Redman. I appreciate your enthusiasm. Really, I do. But enthusiasm without direction is just noise. We have a lead. We have a suspect. We have a case that's ready to close. All we need to do is connect the dots."

"The dots aren't connected yet," Don said.

"No. But they will be. Dixon, take the lighter into evidence. Log it. File it. And then go back to your traffic duty. Redman, same thing. The dredging angle is off-limits. I've made that clear."

Don's eyes didn't leave Bordelon's face. "You've made a lot of things clear, Lieutenant. Most of them don't hold up under scrutiny."

Bordelon's smile tightened. "Careful, Don. You're walking a line. And lines have consequences."

Don stepped forward. One step. Just one. But it was enough. Jimmy recognized the posture—the slight lean, the stillness, the way his weight shifted to his good leg. It was the stance of a man who'd spent years on a football field learning how to occupy space without saying a word.

"The lighter belongs to Roy Tolbert," Don said. "Roy Tolbert was murdered. His body was found in Buffalo Bayou. The Margaret Ann operates out of that same bayou. The dredging contracts that pay for that boat are awarded by the city. And the man who holds the purse strings on those contracts happens to be—"

"Redman." Bordelon's voice had dropped. The smoothness was gone. What replaced it was colder. "I am telling you, for the last time, that the dredging angle is closed. You pursue it, and you will answer to me. Directly. And I will make sure you spend the rest of your career writing parking tickets on the Gulf Freeway. Do you understand me?"

Don held his gaze for three seconds. Then he nodded. Once. Short. Definitive.

"Crystal," Don said.

He turned and walked out. Jimmy followed.

In the parking lot, Don got into the passenger seat of the cruiser and stared straight ahead at the substation's brick wall. Jimmy started the engine. The radio crackled to life with a dispatcher's voice reading out a domestic disturbance on Telephone Lane. Jimmy muted it.

"Don," he said. "We can't just let this go."

"I didn't say we were letting it go," Don said.

"But Bordelon—"

Don's jaw worked. He rubbed his thumb over the R.T. engraving, slow, deliberate. "Eddie Marsh doesn't have the reach to pull a dead wildcatter into a bayou and hide him," he said. "Not without leaving traces. Not without someone paying." He looked at Jimmy. "Bordelon's not buying the junkie story. He's just buying the easier one."

"And you think—"

"I think Roy Tolbert didn't die in a bayou because a junkie wanted his wallet. I think someone who knew him, who owned something that moved through that water, left a piece of himself behind without knowing it. And I think Bordelon knows that too."

Jimmy put the cruiser in gear. "So what do we do?"

Don reached into his pocket and pulled out the lighter. He held it in his palm, turning it slowly, catching the light.

"We do what we always do," Don said. "We follow the evidence. Even when it leads somewhere uncomfortable. Even when it leads somewhere dangerous." He looked at Jimmy. "You're a Marine, Dixon. You know what happens when you follow orders that don't make sense."

Jimmy thought of Fallujah. He thought of the orders that had gotten men killed. He thought of the ones that had saved them. He thought of the difference, sometimes, being nothing more than luck.

"I know," Jimmy said.

Don closed his fist around the lighter. "Good. Because we're going to the Ship Channel again. Tomorrow. I want to talk to Salgado. I want to know why his boat was anywhere near where Tolbert died."

"And Bordelon?"

"Don't worry about Bordelon." Don's mouth twitched—not quite a smile, not quite a grimace. "Bordelon worries about paperwork. We worry about the truth."

The cruiser pulled out of the parking lot. Behind them, the substation's fluorescent lights buzzed on, indifferent to the decisions being made in the dark.

Chapter 4

The lighter sat on the metal desk between them like a loaded gun someone had politely asked to leave on the table.

Bordelon looked at it, then at Don, then back at the lighter. His expression didn't change—didn't tighten, didn't flicker—but Don knew that face. He'd spent six years reading it like a weather report, learning which clouds meant rain and which meant something worse. Right now, Bordelon's face was clear sky. Too clear.

"Where did you get that?" Bordelon asked. His voice was calm. Measured. The kind of calm he used when he was about to reassign someone to graveyard shift parking enforcement for a month.

Jimmy stood by the door, arms crossed, his jaw working like he wanted to say something and was holding himself back. Don could see the calculation in his eyes—the same calculation he'd run in Fallujah when a patrol moved into a building and you weren't sure if the door was locked from the outside or the inside. Jimmy was measuring the exits. Measuring Bordelon. Measuring Don.

"I found it," Don said.

"On whose authority?"

"On the authority of a man who's supposed to be solving a murder instead of processing parking tickets."

Bordelon's mouth did something that might have been a smile if you squinted hard enough. It involved the corners of his lips and nothing else. "Parking tickets keep the department running, Detective. Maybe you should remember that."

Don picked up the lighter. Brass. Engraved. R.T. He turned it over in his palm, feeling the weight of it, the way the metal had been worn smooth along the edges by thumb rubs and pocket friction. This thing had been in Roy Tolbert's pocket when he died. Or close to it. Close enough.

"You know what this is," Don said.

"I know a lot of things, Don." Bordelon leaned back in his chair, the metal legs scraping against the linoleum with a sound like nails on chalkboard. "That's the problem, really. Knowing too much gets you in trouble."

"It's a lighter. Belonged to the victim."

"It belongs to evidence," Bordelon said. "Which means it belongs to the case. Which means it belongs to me. You took it from the scene without logging it. Without telling me. Without telling anyone."

Jimmy shifted by the door. His hand came down from his arm, fingers flexing. Don caught the movement and filed it away. Jimmy was about to make a mistake.

"Bordelon," Jimmy started.

Jimmy stopped. Don's head came up just enough to meet Jimmy's eyes. Sit down, the look said. Not your fight. Jimmy held it for a second, then let his gaze drop. Good partner. Bad strategist.

Bordelon's attention never left Don. "You understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand that you're worried about procedure."

"I understand that you're a good detective when you follow protocol. I understand that I've recommended you for a commendation. I understand that I can take all of that back with a phone call."

The fluorescent light overhead buzzed—a dying sound, like a fly trapped in a jar. Don had noticed it before, in this office, but today it sounded different. Today it sounded like something running out of time.

He set the lighter down. The brass clicked against the metal desk, a small sound that seemed too loud in the space between them.

"This lighter was on the Margaret Ann," Don said. "Salgado's boat. The one that was near Buffalo Bayou the night Tolbert died. Jimmy found it in a storage locker on that boat. It's not just a lighter, Bordelon. It's evidence that someone was on that boat. Someone who knew Tolbert well enough to carry his personal effects."

Bordelon's eyes narrowed, just a fraction. A crack in the clear sky. "Salgado is a cooperating witness. He's helping us clean up the channel. You start poking around his operation, you're not just violating protocol. You're interfering with a federal investigation."

"Don't bull—"

"—with me, Don." Bordelon's voice dropped. Not louder, exactly. Lower. The kind of volume you used when you were about to tell someone something they didn't want to hear but needed to hear anyway. "Wade Hollister's dredging contracts have been in this family for twenty years. The Hollisters pay their taxes. They donate to the right campaigns. They keep things clean. You go after Salgado because of a lighter, you go after Wade Hollister next. And then what? You think a brass trinket is going to hold up in front of a jury that includes half the people in this room?"

Don felt something cold move through his chest. Not fear. Recognition. He'd been circling this moment for days, maybe weeks, and now that it was here, he could see the shape of it clearly. Bordelon wasn't just protecting the case. He was protecting the ecosystem. The dredging contracts, the donations, the favors passed hand to hand through the precinct like contraband cigarettes.

"You knew him," Don said.

Bordelon didn't answer right away. He picked up a pen from his desk—a cheap ballpoint, the kind the department issued in bulk—and began to click it. Click. Click. Click. A metronome counting down to something.

"I know everyone," Bordelon said finally. "Roy Tolbert was a wildcatter. He drank too much, he gambled too much, and he thought the world owed him something for existing. Men like that don't last long in this city. They burn bright and they burn fast. It's not personal."

"You're wrong about that part," Don said. He kept his voice level, the way he'd been taught at the academy. "Tolbert wasn't a wildcatter who burned bright. He was a man who knew things. Things about dredging contracts that didn't match the reports. Things about money moving through accounts that shouldn't have existed. You don't kill a man for burning bright, Lieutenant. You kill him for what he knew."

Bordelon stopped clicking the pen. He set it down carefully, aligning it parallel to the edge of the desk. A small gesture. Precise. Controlled.

"You have forty-eight hours," he said. "Forty-eight hours to wrap up whatever fantasy you're chasing. Then you turn that lighter over to evidence, you go back to traffic duty, and you let the professionals handle it. If you don't—" He paused. His eyes shifted, just for a moment, toward the window. Toward the parking lot. Toward somewhere Don couldn't see. "—I'll make sure you regret it."

The unspoken word hung in the air between them like smoke. Regret. Not suspension. Not termination. Regret. The kind of word a man used when he was talking about something that went beyond paperwork and procedure. Something that went deeper.

Don thought of Cassie. Of her apartment on Yale Boulevard, the one she'd gotten after breaking up with— He stopped the thought before it finished. Before it gave him the answer he didn't want.

"Trent Hollister," Don said.

Bordelon's eyes came back to his. Fully. Directly. "What about him?"

"Cassie's seeing him."

The silence that followed was different from the silence before. Before, the silence had been a tool—something Bordelon wielded to apply pressure. Now it was a vacuum. Something that had opened up and was pulling everything into it.

"That's unfortunate," Bordelon said.

"Don't you 'that's unfortunate' me. You just threatened me, you just told me to drop a case that involves your friend's dredging contracts, and now you're going to stand there and tell me that my daughter dating the son of the man you're protecting is 'unfortunate'?"

Bordelon leaned forward. The desk pressed against his belly, the metal warm from his body heat. Up close, Don could see the fine lines around Bordelon's eyes—the ones that didn't show up from smiling. The ones that showed up from worrying. From calculating. From knowing things he shouldn't and carrying them anyway.

"Listen to me carefully, Don. You are a good detective. You always have been. But you're also a father. And fathers make mistakes. Fathers who lose focus. Fathers who let personal business interfere with professional duty. I've seen it happen a dozen times. It always ends the same way."

"And how does it end?"

"It ends with the people you love getting hurt because you couldn't keep your nose out of things that don't concern you." Bordelon's voice softened. Almost gentle. Almost kind. "Wade Hollister is a powerful man. He has friends in this building. Friends in the DA's office. Friends who sit on the same country club as you and Cassie. You push against him, you push against all of them. And when you push against all of them, you push against the people who are supposed to protect you."

Don stood up. His knee popped—the old injury from Rice, the one he'd never gotten properly treated because he'd refused to miss practice for surgery. He put his weight on the good leg and felt the ache in the bad one like a warning.

"So that's it?" he said. "You're done pretending?"

"I'm done pretending that you haven't heard me." Bordelon picked up the lighter again. Held it between two fingers, examining it like it was a specimen in a jar. "Give me the lighter, Don. Go home. Spend time with your daughter. Forget about a dead man who made enemies he deserved to have."

Don reached out and took the lighter from Bordelon's hand. Their fingers didn't touch. Didn't need to. The transfer was clean. Final.

"You're making a mistake," Bordelon said.

"Yeah," Don said. "I figured that out."

He turned and walked toward the door. Jimmy fell into step beside him without looking at him, matching his pace, falling into the rhythm they'd developed over six years of walking the same halls, taking the same stairs, sharing the same silence.

Outside the office, the substation hummed—the fluorescent lights, the radiator, the distant murmur of phones and voices and the bureaucratic machinery grinding forward. Don kept walking. He didn't look back.

In the parking lot, the Texas sun hit him like a wall. Heat and humidity and the smell of asphalt baking under a July sky. Don got into the cruiser and sat for a moment with the engine off, the lighter sitting on the passenger seat where he'd put it, catching the sunlight and throwing it back in small golden flashes.

Jimmy climbed into the driver's side and shut the door. The sound was solid. Final.

"Bordelon knows," Jimmy said.

"Don't state the obvious."

"I'm not stating it. I'm confirming it. He knows about the lighter. He knows about Salgado. He knows about—" Jimmy stopped. Swallowed. "He knows about the dredging. All of it."

Don looked at the lighter. Then he looked at Jimmy. "Then we've got forty-eight hours."

Jimmy started the engine. The radio crackled to life, a burst of static and a dispatcher's voice giving out a call for a noise complaint on Westheimer. Normal stuff. Mundane. Traffic duty. The kind of call Don used to process without thinking.

"Now it's less than forty-eight," Jimmy said.

"Don't count the hours."

"Then what do we do?"

Don put the car in gear. The transmission engaged with a familiar shudder—this cruiser had more miles than most people's cars, and it showed in its heavy, hydraulic lurch and the vibration that rattled through his palms.

"We do what we're supposed to do," Don said. "We investigate."

He pulled out of the parking lot and merged onto the street. The city unfolded ahead of him—brick buildings and chain-link fences, billboards and power lines, the Ship Channel glinting in the distance like a scar on the horizon. Somewhere out there, Wade Hollister was running his dredging operation. Somewhere out there, Salgado was answering to Bordelon's questions. Somewhere out there, the truth was waiting to be found.

Don drove toward it. Toward the channel. Toward whatever came next.

The radio crackled again. Another call. Another noise complaint. Another day in a city that never stopped making noise.

Don turned it off.

Chapter 5

The Ship Channel smelled like rust and diesel fuel and whatever else the city had decided to pour into it that week. Don parked the cruiser behind a stack of shipping containers near the old grain elevator and killed the engine. The fluorescent buzz of the substation still echoed in his ears—that dying hum, the kind that got under your skin and stayed there. Forty-eight hours. That was the deadline Bordelon had handed him like a gift certificate to nowhere. Two days to play traffic cop while the people who actually mattered cleaned up the evidence.

Don stepped out of the car. His knee throbbed immediately, the old injury flaring up like a warning shot. He ignored it. The water here was black and oily, reflecting the orange glow of the floodlights that dotted the channel banks like diseased eyes. Cranes loomed against the twilight sky, skeletal giants that hadn't moved in hours, maybe days. Everything around him was still except for the slow push of dark water against the concrete pilings.

He walked along the service road, boots crunching on crushed gravel. The Margaret Ann was supposed to be docked somewhere out here—Salgado's boat, the one Jimmy had checked yesterday, the one that had been near where Tolbert died. Don didn't have a warrant. Didn't have permission. Hadn't even told Jimmy where he was going. The lighter sat in his jacket pocket, brass warm from his body heat, the engraving R.T. pressing into his thigh every time he shifted his weight.

A truck rumbled past on the service road ahead. Don flattened himself against a stack of shipping containers, the corrugated steel cold through his shirt. White sedan, tinted windows, rolling slow. He watched it pass, counting. Three hundred yards. Five hundred. It didn't stop. It kept going toward the main channel where the dredging barges lined up in rows like sleeping animals.

Don waited until the taillights disappeared around a bend, then moved again. His limp made noise he wished it wouldn't. Every step sent a hot wire up his leg, but he kept walking. The channel narrowed here, the water squeezed between concrete walls that rose eight feet above the surface. The smell of diesel was thicker, coating his tongue. He could hear machinery in the distance—a low thrumming, the kind that vibrated in your teeth.

He found the Margaret Ann moored at Dock Four. The twenty-eight-foot hull was dark, cabin windows black. Don approached from the water side, keeping his weight low, his hand resting near the holster he wasn't supposed to be carrying tonight. The substation had taken his badge when Bordelon reassigned him. Technically he didn't exist right now. That made him dangerous, or it made him dead. He hadn't decided which yet.

The boat was locked up tight. Don circled it once, checking for cameras, for guards, for anything that suggested someone was still watching this place. Nothing. Just the water slapping against the hull and the distant thrum of machinery. He found a ladder on the stern, rusted but solid, and climbed up onto the deck.

The cabin door was unlocked. Inside, the air was stale—diesel fumes and something older, something that had been sitting in this space too long without ventilation. Don pulled his flashlight from his belt and swept the beam across the interior. Galley to port, navigation station forward, a narrow bunk to starboard. Everything neat, everything organized. Salgado took pride in his boat.

On the navigation table, a logbook lay open. Don flipped through the pages with gloved fingers. Dates, coordinates, cargo manifests. The last entry was dated three days ago—two nights before Tolbert died. The coordinates matched the area where the body had been found. Don photographed the page with his camera phone, the flash blinding in the dark cabin. Three shots. Enough to prove the Margaret Ann had been out there. Not enough to hold up in court without Salgado's testimony.

A sound behind him. Not water. Not wind.

Don turned. The cabin doorway was empty. But the deck outside—the deck wasn't. Two figures stood near the stern ladder, silhouetted against the floodlight glow. They weren't moving. Just standing there, watching him.

"Don Redman," one of them said. The voice was flat, practiced. Like he'd rehearsed it. "You shouldn't be here."

Don didn't reach for his gun. Not yet. "Who sent you?"

The man stepped forward into the light. Middle-aged, balding, wearing a work jacket that had seen better days. Don recognized the face from somewhere—the kind of face you see at gas stations and diners, the kind that blends into crowds until it doesn't. "Wade doesn't like folks poking around his property."

"Wade owns a dredging company, not a government dock."

The man smiled, and it didn't reach his eyes. He tapped the side of his head once, a gesture so casual it might have been nothing. Then he nodded toward the cabin door. "You've seen what you came to see, Detective. Time to go."

Don kept his hand near his holster. "I'm a detective. Asking questions is the job."

"Not tonight you're not." The second man moved, shifting his weight, and Don caught the glint of metal at his waist. A gun. Both of them had guns. "You got forty-eight hours, Detective. That's what your lieutenant said. After that, you're just a guy with a limp and a badge he doesn't have."

Don thought about Bordelon's face. The clear sky. The way he'd looked at the lighter like it was contaminated. If Bordelon knew about these men—if he'd sent them—then this wasn't about Wade Hollister protecting his business. This was about the precinct protecting itself.

"What happens after forty-eight hours?" Don asked.

The first man reached into his jacket. Don's breath caught—but it was only a pack of cigarettes. He flicked one out, put it between his lips, and let the silence stretch until Don looked away first.

Don's knee was screaming now. The adrenaline was fading, leaving pain in its wake. He could feel the weight of the decision settling on him—he could climb back down, walk away, go home, pretend the lighter didn't exist. Or he could pull his gun, hope he was faster than two men who'd been hired to make him disappear, and find out if courage and competence were the same thing.

He chose neither.

Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the lighter. Brass, warm, the engraving catching the flashlight beam. He held it up between thumb and forefinger. "Roy Tolbert's lighter. Found it on the Margaret Ann. You want to tell me how it got there?"

The men exchanged a look. Just for a second. Just long enough.

"That's not your problem anymore," the first man said, and his voice had changed. Softer. Almost sorry. "Put it down, Detective. Walk away. Nobody has to get hurt."

Don looked at the lighter. Then at the men. Then at the hatch leading below deck. He'd seen enough. The logbook, the coordinates, the lighter—all pointing to the same connection. Wade Hollister's dredging operation, Roy Tolbert's death, and Bordelon sitting in his office with a fabricated report and a pension to protect.

"I'll decide what's my problem," Don said.

He dropped the lighter onto the table, turned, and moved toward the cabin door. He didn't run. Running made you a target. He walked fast, controlled, every muscle coiled, listening for footsteps behind him.

The ladder was still there. Don descended, boots finding each rung with practiced precision. His knee protested with every step, but he kept moving. Halfway down, he heard movement above him. Not chasing. Waiting.

His feet hit the concrete. He turned and walked toward the service road, toward the cruiser, toward the forty-eight-hour countdown that was already ticking. The Ship Channel stretched behind him, dark and oily and full of things that had been buried and were waiting to be dug up.

He reached the cruiser and unlocked the door. Inside, the camera phone glowed with three photos. Three photos that proved the Margaret Ann had been at the scene. Three photos that proved someone wanted him to stop looking.

Don started the engine. The radio crackled to life—another call, another noise complaint, another distraction. He turned it off. The dashboard clock read 11:47 p.m. Thirty-six hours and thirteen minutes left.

He put the car in gear and pulled out onto the service road, the headlights cutting through the diesel haze. Behind him, the cranes stood motionless against the night sky, and the Ship Channel kept its secrets, one rusted container at a time.

The cruiser rolled toward the city. Ahead, the lights of downtown blurred through the humidity. Somewhere out there, Wade Hollister was sleeping in his big house, confident in the protection of his dredging contracts and his connections to men who wore badges. Somewhere out there, Bordelon was probably reviewing paperwork, fabricating reports, closing doors.

Don gripped the steering wheel. His knee throbbed. The lighter sat on the navigation table of a boat he wasn't supposed to touch, and he'd left it there on purpose—a message, a trap, a breadcrumb for whoever came looking next.

He drove past the grain elevator, past the shipping containers, past the service road that merged into the highway. The city grew louder. More lights. More noise. More people going home to beds that were too warm or too cold, depending on whether anyone was waiting for them.

Don didn't have anyone waiting. He never had. But he had the truth, and the truth was heavier than loneliness, and it was worth carrying.

The radio crackled one more time before he killed it for good. A dispatch call. Routine. Unimportant. Don turned it off and kept driving, the Ship Channel fading in his rearview mirror, the night swallowing everything behind him.

The fluorescent light buzzed, a dying sound that matched the ache in his knee as he sat in the quiet dark, waiting for the forty-eight hours to run out.

Chapter 6

The coffee in the breakroom pot had been sitting since five that morning, which meant it tasted like burnt pennies and regret. Don poured a cup anyway. The mug was the chipped white ceramic kind that said HPD on the side in peeling blue letters, the kind you could grab without thinking because you'd grabbed it a thousand times before. He stood at the window and watched the substation parking lot fill up with the usual morning parade—cruisers rolling in, officers shaking off the damp Houston chill, the low murmur of radio chatter bleeding through the walls.

Jimmy slid into the chair opposite Don, setting down two paper cups from the diner on Main. He didn’t ask how Don took his coffee; he just placed a mug of black, two sugars directly in front of Don’s hand. It was the only reason Don tolerated working with him. Jimmy leaned back, his knee bouncing with a frantic, rhythmic energy that hadn’t been there yesterday. He was wearing the same navy blazer, but the frayed cuff was pulled tight over his wrist, as if he were trying to hold himself together.

"The board is pushing for the raid on Bordelon’s warehouse tonight," Jimmy said, not looking at Don. His voice was too loud, too sharp. "They think we have enough probable cause. They think we can move in with four cars and six men."

Don stared at the steam rising from his coffee. "We don't have probable cause. We have a threat and a hunch."

"That’s what they’re calling it today," Jimmy snapped. He finally met Don’s eyes, and Don saw the panic lurking behind the anger. "But I’m not going. I’m refusing the assignment."

Don frowned. "You’re not refusing anything. You’re my partner. You don’t make tactical calls."

"I’m making a call," Jimmy said, his hand trembling slightly as he reached for his cup. "My wife is seven months pregnant. Her doctor says stress is a factor. If I go into that warehouse, if something goes wrong, if Bordelon decides to act on that threat... I can’t be the one who risks it. Not now. So you’re going alone, or you’re taking Miller. But I’m staying here to wait for the phone call that tells me she’s safe."

Don felt the cold weight of the decision settle in his chest. It wasn’t just a personal plea; it was a tactical withdrawal that left a gap in their formation. Jimmy wasn’t just scared; he was calculating the odds and finding them unacceptable. And in doing so, he was forcing Don to reconsider the entire operation.

Don turned from the window. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed its familiar dying note, the same one that had been buzzing since the substation was built in '78 and probably would keep buzzing until the building collapsed. He looked at Jimmy—really looked at him—and noticed things he hadn't before. The dark circles under Jimmy's eyes were deeper than usual. His posture was slightly different, less military, more uncertain. Jimmy Dixon didn't do uncertain. Jimmy Dixon had once spent seventy-two hours without sleep tracking a suspect through the bayou and come out of it with both a capture and a blister on his heel that he'd complained about for a week.

"Something's going on," Don said.

Jimmy's jaw tightened. Just a fraction. Don caught it.

"It's nothing."

"You don't say 'nothing' with that face. You say 'nothing' with a shrug. That face says something."

Jimmy set his coffee down on the desk. The cup made a soft click against the metal surface. He rubbed his face with both hands, a gesture so un-Jimmy-like that Don actually felt a pang of concern.

"Don, I need to tell you something. And I need you to promise not to make a big deal out of it."

"I'm listening."

Jimmy took a breath. It was shaky. Jimmy Dixon's breath was shaky.

"My wife's pregnant."

Don stared at him. The words landed in the space between them like a stone dropped into still water, rippling outward into everything. He felt the impact in his chest—a dull thud, like a fist against a door.

"When did you find out?"

"Two weeks ago." Jimmy's voice was flat, controlled, but Don could hear the tremor underneath. "She didn't want me to tell anyone. She wanted to wait until after the first trimester. But I—" Jimmy stopped. He looked down at his hands, at the steady hands that had held a rifle in Fallujah, that had pulled two kids out of a burning car on the East Side, that had never once in thirty-four years been anything but steady. They were trembling now.

Don crossed the room in three steps and put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. Jimmy flinched—just a micro-movement, the kind you don't see unless you're looking for it—and then went still.

"How do you feel?" Don asked.

Jimmy looked up at him. His eyes were brown, always had been, the color of wet earth after rain. "Terrified," he said. "I'm terrified. I'm thirty-four years old and I have a mortgage I can barely afford and a suit that's falling apart at the cuffs and a kid coming into the world and I don't know if I'm ready for any of it."

His voice cracked on the last word. Jimmy Dixon, who had never cracked.

Don let go of his shoulder. He stepped back and reached for his coffee mug, found it empty, and set it down again. The breakroom seemed smaller than it had a minute ago, the fluorescent light brighter, the hum louder. Outside, a siren wailed—distant, fading, belonging to another world.

"You're going to be a good father," Don said.

Jimmy laughed again, that short exhale, but this time it sounded different. Softer. "How do you know that? You've never even met her. She hasn't even met you."

Don reached out and squeezed Jimmy's shoulder, feeling the tension coiled there like a spring. "You'll figure it out," he said. "You always do."

Jimmy looked at him for a long moment. The silence stretched between them, comfortable in a way that only two men who had worked together for six years could sustain without filling it with words.

"She wants to name him Roy," Jimmy said quietly.

Don felt something shift inside him, a small adjustment, like a gear catching. "Roy Tolbert?"

"My grandmother's name was Royetta. She went by Roy. My mother insisted." Jimmy's mouth twitched. "It's a boy, actually. She found out yesterday. Boy or girl, I don't care. I just know I'm scared."

Don nodded slowly. He thought of Cassie. He remembered the hollow look in her eyes when he’d last seen her, searching for a father who was present rather than absent, chasing ghosts and dead men across the city.

"Don," Jimmy said. "You're my best friend. I don't say that to anybody. You know that, right?"

"I know."

"I didn't tell Bordelon. I didn't tell anybody. I just—I needed you to know. Before something happens. Before anything changes."

Something in Jimmy's voice told Don that he was talking about more than a pregnancy. Jimmy was talking about the dredging boat. About the lighter. About the men who had ambushed Don at the Ship Channel. Jimmy knew. Or Jimmy suspected. Or Jimmy was bracing himself for whatever was coming.

"You're not going anywhere," Don said.

Jimmy nodded. He picked up his coffee and finished it in one long swallow. When he set the cup down, his hands were steady again. The steady hands. The steady man.

"Bordelon's going to make trouble for us," Jimmy said.

"He already has."

"Then we keep working. Quietly. Carefully."

Don looked at his partner—at the man who had stood beside him through six years of bad coffee, worse suspects, and more sleepless nights than either of them wanted to count. He thought about the cage Bordelon had built, the one made of pension threats and Cassie's safety, and he realized that the bars weren't as solid as he'd feared. Because Jimmy was still here. Jimmy was still standing beside him. And that made the cage a little smaller, the air a little easier to breathe.

"Quietly," Don agreed.

They stood in the breakroom for another minute, two men in a room that smelled of stale coffee and wet wool, the fluorescent light buzzing its endless dying song above them. Outside, the parking lot filled with more cruisers, more officers, more of the same routine that held the city together by sheer force of repetition.

Don's phone rang. Both of them jumped—Jimmy more than Don, though neither of them would have admitted it. The beige rotary-style landline on the wall next to the door was ringing, its mechanical bell cutting through the hum of the fluorescent light with a sharp, urgent sound.

Jimmy looked at Don. Don looked at Jimmy.

"Probably another noise complaint," Jimmy said.

"Probably."

Don walked to the phone and picked it up. The caller ID showed an unknown number. He looked at the clock on the wall. 9:17 a.m. He brought the receiver to his ear.

"This is Redman."

A pause. Then a voice—female, young, nervous—spoke from the other end.

Detective Redman? This is Amber Salazar. I—I need to talk to you about the Margaret Ann.

Don felt the room tilt slightly. Amber Salazar. The name meant nothing to him, but the tone of her voice told him everything he needed to know. She was afraid. She was reaching out. And she was doing it alone.

"Where are you?" Don asked.

"Outside. In my car," she said, her voice trembling. "Please. Just come."

Don glanced at Jimmy, who was watching him with an expression he couldn't read. He pressed the phone closer to his ear.

"Stay there," Don said. "I'll be right out."

He hung up. The phone clicked back into its cradle with a sound like a door closing.

"What is it?" Jimmy asked.

"Don," Don said. "Get the cruiser."

Jimmy was already moving.

Chapter 7

The rain started just after midnight, the kind that doesn't fall so much as it presses down, heavy and warm and smelling like the bayou itself. Don sat in the patrol cruiser parked behind the old cannery on Ship Channel, engine off, radio off, the dashboard clock reading 12:03 a.m. His knee throbbed—a deep, grinding ache that had nothing to do with the rain and everything to do with the old Rice injury acting up again. He rubbed it through his trousers and kept his eyes on the water.

Jimmy was in the back seat, asleep. Or pretending to be. Don couldn't tell the difference anymore. They'd been at this for fourteen hours straight, ever since Don decided to stop asking permission and start following the dredging money wherever it led. The lighter burned a hole in Don's jacket pocket. R.T. Roy Tolbert. Engraved. Given, not bought. The connection was there, sitting on the metal desk between Bordelon and Don, and Bordelon's face had said everything that needed saying: Stop digging.

But Don had never been good at taking orders he didn't understand.

"Don," Jimmy murmured from the back, not opening his eyes. "We should go."

"We're waiting for a call," Don said.

"The only call we're gonna get is from Bordelon telling us to go back to traffic duty."

"Bordelon isn't the only game in town."

Jimmy shifted. Don heard the soft creak of his cheap suit jacket. Jimmy had worn that jacket for three years minimum. Don had offered to buy him a new one twice. Jimmy had declined both times, saying it still fit. Maybe it did. Maybe Jimmy just didn't care about things like that. Don respected that, in a way. Respect wasn't the same as trust, though. Not anymore.

The cruiser's headlights cut through the rain, painting the black water in narrow yellow strips. Beyond the cannery, the Ship Channel stretched east toward the Gulf, a wide scar of polluted water lined with cranes and warehouses and the occasional dredge boat sitting idle at dock. The Margaret Ann was out there somewhere. Salgado was out there somewhere. And Wade Hollister—

A sound. Not from the water. From the road behind them.

Don went still. His hand moved to his hip, finding the empty holster where his service weapon should have been but wasn't—Bordelon had made sure of that this morning, collecting badges and guns and anything that looked like authority. Don still had his snub-nose in the glove box. He hadn't told Jimmy about that.

Jimmy was alert now. Don saw it in the sharp intake of his partner’s breath—shallow, measured, the telltale rhythm of Marine conditioning taking over. Hands steady after Fallujah, Jimmy’s file had said. Don had read it. He’d believed it.

"Did you hear that?" Jimmy whispered.

"Don't touch anything," Don said.

Another sound. Footsteps. Not walking—running. Fast, heavy boots on wet asphalt, coming fast from the north. Two figures maybe. Three. Don couldn't see them through the rain and the dark and the cruiser's tinted windows. He couldn't see much of anything.

The cruiser doors locked automatically—power locks, the kind that engaged when you turned the key. Don fumbled for the ignition, found it, turned it. The engine caught. The radio crackled to life for half a second before Don killed it again. The headlights flickered, then steadied.

"Go," Jimmy said.

Don slammed the gearshift into drive. The cruiser lurched forward, tires spinning on wet pavement before catching. He threw it into reverse instead, backing hard toward the road, then spun the wheel and accelerated. The cruiser hit the street at thirty miles per hour, rain lashing the windshield, wipers fighting a losing battle against the downpour.

Behind them, headlights appeared. Not a cruiser. A sedan, white, low and fast, cutting through the rain like a knife. White Cadillac. Don knew that shape. He'd seen it parked outside the Cattlemen's. He'd seen it in Wade Hollister's driveway when he'd visited Cassie.

"They're following us," Jimmy said.

"I see them."

"Can you lose them?"

"Don't know."

The cruiser fishtailed on a patch of oil. Don corrected, felt the knee scream, gritted his teeth. The white Cadillac closed the gap, pulling alongside, its headlights blinding through the rain. A window rolled down. A hand extended.

Gunfire.

The first shot shattered the passenger window. Glass sprayed across Jimmy's face. He didn't flinch. He didn't scream. He just reached forward, grabbed the dashboard, and pulled himself toward the front seat, putting his body between Don and the shooter.

The second shot hit Jimmy in the shoulder.

Don heard it—a sharp crack, louder than the rain, louder than the engine—and then Jimmy made a sound Don would hear in his sleep for the rest of his life. Not a yell. Not a cry. Something smaller. Something that meant pain had found him and was settling in.

"Jimmy!"

“Drive,” Jimmy gasped, the word tearing out of a throat suddenly full of blood. The dark stain bloomed rapidly across his cheap suit jacket, soaking into the shoulder with terrifying speed. His face went ash-gray, the pallor having less to do with the buzzing fluorescent lights of the substation than with the visceral knowledge that he was bleeding out, fast.

Don didn't look back. He couldn't. He kept his foot on the gas, felt the cruiser climb speed, felt the white Cadillac hesitate for a fraction of a second—surprise, maybe, or hesitation—and then accelerate again.

"Jimmy, stay with me," Don said. His voice was steady. Steadier than it had any right to be. "Jimmy, look at me."

Jimmy's eyes were open. Brown, always brown, the color of wet earth after rain. "Don't stop," he said. "Please don't stop."

Jimmy shook his head. Blood smeared on Don's sleeve where his hand had been. "Hollister," he said. His breath hitched, wet and ragged. "Not Bordelon. Bigger. All of it. The... Don." His fingers tightened, then loosened. "Cattlemen's. Freezer."

Don opened his mouth. Nothing came.

Jimmy's eyes were closing. Closing.

Houston's streets blurred past—neon signs reflecting in puddles, streetlights casting yellow halos in the rain, the occasional cruiser parked at an intersection with its lights off, indifferent to the man speeding past with blood on his passenger seat. Don took a corner too fast. The cruiser slid, tires squealing, and he corrected, heart hammering against his ribs like it wanted out.

"Jimmy, talk to me," Don said. "Jimmy, don't you dare—"

Jimmy was smiling. Small. Deliberate. "Told you," he whispered. "Told you I was a good shot. Now you know I'm a better one."

"Jimmy—"

"Hospital," Jimmy said. "Take me to Harris-Presbyterian. Not the substation. Not anywhere Bordelon can reach. Go."

Don didn't answer. He couldn't. His throat had closed up, tight and hot, like he'd swallowed something sharp. He turned the wheel, merged onto the Freeway, and pushed the pedal to the floor. The speedometer climbed. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. The rain hammered the roof. The white Cadillac was gone. Or maybe it was just behind him, patient, waiting. Don couldn't tell. He couldn't think about it. He could only focus on the blood soaking through Jimmy's shirt, the ragged rhythm of his partner's breath, and the heavy-lidded stare of eyes that kept drifting shut.

"Hospital," Don said, aloud this time, like saying it made it real. "Harris-Presbyterian."

The sign appeared through the rain: NEXT EXIT — 2 MILES. Two miles. Two miles through Houston traffic and rain and the possibility that Wade Hollister's men were still out there, still hunting. Two miles that felt like two hundred.

Jimmy's hand found Don's arm. His grip was weak, trembling. "You did good, Don. You did good."

"Don't talk. Save your strength."

Jimmy shook his head. "Listen to me. Hollister—he's bigger than we thought. Bigger than Bordelon. The dredging contracts, the— Don, the ledger. There's a ledger."

"What ledger?"

Jimmy's eyes were closing. Closing. "Cattlemen's. Freezer. You'll find it. You'll—"

His hand fell away. His breathing stopped. Stopped.

Don slammed the brakes. The cruiser skidded to the exit ramp, tires screaming, rain spraying. He threw the door open, pulled Jimmy out, felt for a pulse at his neck—there, faint, fluttering like a bird's heartbeat, but there. Alive. Still alive.

"Stay with me," Don said. "Jimmy, you hear me? You stay with me."

He carried Jimmy to the hospital entrance, shoulder under his partner's arm, blood staining Don's own jacket, rain soaking through both of them. The automatic doors opened. A nurse looked up from the desk. Her eyes went wide.

"Call 911," Don said. "Now."

He laid Jimmy on the gurney, pressed his hands against the wound, felt the blood warm and wet and too much, and watched the nurses swarm. Watched them push the gurney through double doors. Watched Don Redman stand alone in the fluorescent glare of the emergency room entrance, rain dripping from his hair, blood on his hands, and try to decide what to do next.

The doors closed. Jimmy was gone. And Don was alone in a city that had decided, overnight, that he was the enemy.

Chapter 8

The hospital waiting room smelled like antiseptic and old magazines. Don sat in a vinyl chair that cracked when he leaned back, his hands wrapped in gauze borrowed from a nurse who hadn't asked questions, and stared at a wall painted the color of weak tea. The clock on the far wall read 3:47 a.m. Sixteen hours. Since the rain. Since the shots. Since Jimmy's hand had fallen away from his arm and his breathing had stopped and then started again, fluttering, uncertain, like a bird deciding whether to fly.

Don hadn't moved. Couldn't move. Not until a doctor had come out, removed his cap, and said, He's stable. Bullet missed the bone. He'll live. The doctor's name tag said K. Nguyen. Young. Too young. Don wondered if he'd slept since residency.

Now Don sat alone in the waiting room with nothing but a cracked vinyl chair and a wall that refused to tell him anything useful. His knee throbbed. His jacket was ruined. His service weapon sat in the glove box of a patrol cruiser parked behind an old cannery, and his badge was in a substation drawer somewhere, probably buried under a stack of traffic reports nobody would ever read.

He should have gone back to the substation. He should have filed a report. He should have done anything except what he was planning to do.

Instead, he stood up, pushed through the double doors marked EXIT, and walked into the rain.

The Cattlemen's was dark when he arrived. The neon sign still flickered—CATTLMEN'S, the T still missing—but the parking lot was empty, the street quiet, the city holding its breath between midnight and morning like a diver waiting to surface. Don killed the engine and sat for a moment, listening to the rain drum against the roof, thinking about Jimmy's blood on his hands and the ledger in a freezer somewhere behind this building and the woman who wouldn't talk.

He opened the door and went inside.

The restaurant was exactly as he'd left it: dim, empty, smelling of old grease and expensive perfume and the faint metallic tang of blood that nobody had managed to scrub out of the carpet in the corner booth. Jazz played softly from a speaker in the ceiling—something instrumental, something slow, something that made the silence feel heavier instead of lighter.

Wanda was behind the bar, smoking. Of course she was. She was a woman who smoked through apocalypses. The cigarette burned between her fingers, ash long and precarious, and she was watching the door with the kind of attention that came from eighteen years of watching every person who walked through it. Her red hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, her green eyes sharp and unblinking, and she looked up when Don entered and didn't bother hiding her surprise.

"You're not supposed to be here," she said.

"Don't care."

She took a drag, exhaled slowly toward the ceiling, and set the cigarette down on the bar beside a stack of napkins. "Jimmy's hurt."

"Don't care."

Wanda studied him. Her gaze moved over his face, his ruined jacket, the gauze wrapped around his hands, the rain dripping from his hair onto the tile floor. She'd seen violence before. She'd seen it in this bar more times than she could count. But she'd never seen a man look like Don did right now—like grief and fury and something worse had all been poured into him and he was holding them together with sheer force of will.

"What do you want, Don?"

"The ledger."

Wanda laughed—a short, brittle sound that didn't reach her eyes. She stubbed out her cigarette with more force than necessary, grinding the ember into the bar top. "You think Bordelon lets me keep a ledger lying around? You think I'm stupid enough to—"

"He told you to burn it. You didn't. You hid it. In the freezer."

Wanda's expression changed. Not fear. Calculation. The moment when a bartender decides whether a customer is worth the trouble. "Who told you that?"

"Jimmy."

She went very still. "Jimmy's bleeding out in a hospital and he's giving you directions to my freezer?"

"He said it's in the Cattlemen's freezer. I'm going to get it."

"You're going to get yourself killed."

"I'm already dead, Wanda. I just haven't fallen down yet."

She stared at him for a long time. The jazz played on. Somewhere outside, a siren wailed and faded, swallowed by the rain. Then she reached under the bar and pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a silver lighter, and took a long drag.

"You're not getting it," she said. "Not tonight. Not ever, if you're smart. Bordelon's got eyes everywhere. Hollister's got men on the channel. And you—you're one man with a bad knee and a death wish. You walk into that freezer, you won't come out."

"Then help me."

She laughed again, shorter this time, sharper. "Help you? Don, I've been helping you since the night you walked into this bar and asked about a man in a corner booth. I gave you everything I had. You didn't want it. You wanted a name. I gave you a warning instead. You didn't listen." She took another drag. "Now you want the ledger. Fine. Here's the truth: the ledger isn't in the freezer."

Don felt something cold move through his chest. "What?"

"It was. Three weeks ago. Hollister moved it. He knew Salgado was talking. He knew Jimmy was sniffing around the Margaret Ann. So he moved the ledger and he put someone else in charge of the bar." She tapped ash into a tray. "Amber Salazar."

The name hit Don like a fist. "Amber Salazar? Salgado's daughter?"

"Widow now. Roy Tolbert's mistress for six months before he died. She took over the bar three weeks ago. She's got Hollister's protection and Salgado's temper and a grudge against anybody who asks questions about the Margaret Ann." Wanda's eyes narrowed. "She was on the boat the night Tolbert died, Don. She was there. She saw everything. And she's been silent ever since because Hollister promised her he'd keep her safe if she kept her mouth shut."

Don felt the room tilt. Six months. A mistress. On the boat. The pieces rearranged themselves in his head like cards dealt by a cheating dealer—Tolbert dead in the bayou, the Margaret Ann at the channel, Salgado cooperating, Hollister protecting Amber, and the ledger moving through it all like a thread connecting every loose end to a single knot.

"Why didn't Wanda tell me?" Don asked.

Wanda's expression hardened. "Because I didn't know. Not until tonight. I just found out myself. Hollister's been tight-lipped about it. But Amber's been running the bar for three weeks, and last night, two of Hollister's men came in and asked me if Don Redman had been in to see her." She leaned forward. "They were looking for you."

Don pushed off the bar. His knee screamed. He ignored it. "Where is she?"

"In the back office. She sleeps here. Bartender's hours are twelve to four, but she stays overnight when things get rough. Which they have, lately." Wanda's voice dropped. "Don, listen to me. Amber's not like me. I've been surviving in this bar for eighteen years by reading people and picking my fights. Amber's got something to prove. She thinks she's tough. She thinks she can handle Hollister. She can't. And if you walk in there and start pushing her, she'll push back. And Hollister will crush her. And you'll lose the ledger and you'll lose Jimmy's sacrifice and you'll lose everything."

"Don't care."

Wanda's eyes flashed. "You care about Jimmy. You care about your daughter. You care about the truth. But caring doesn't mean charging in blind. You need a plan. You need leverage. You need to understand what Amber knows before you threaten her."

"Don't have time for plans."

"Then you don't have time to live."

Don stared at her. The words landed with more weight than she probably intended. He'd heard them before—from his father, from his coaches, from Jimmy in the back seat of the cruiser as they chased shadows through the Ship Channel. You don't have time to live. As if living were optional. As if survival were a luxury he couldn't afford.

He looked at his watch. 4:12 a.m. The deadline Bordelon had given him was still counting down—thirty-two hours, maybe less, depending on when you started measuring. Thirty-two hours to find a ledger that might not exist, in a bar that might not protect him, from a woman who might not talk. Thirty-two hours to do it without Bordelon knowing, without Hollister stopping him, without Jimmy dying for nothing.

"Tell me about Amber," he said.

Wanda sighed. Set down her cigarette. Looked at him the way a mother looks at a son who's decided to walk into a war he doesn't understand. "Amber Salazar is fifty-two years old, married Salgado when she was nineteen, and watched him drown in a bottle and a gambling debt and a life he couldn't escape. She took over the bar because it was the only thing Salgado left her that wasn't mortgaged. She's sharp. Smarter than she looks. She smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish and she hates Wade Hollister more than she hates anybody alive, but she's scared of him in a way that keeps her awake at night. She was on the Margaret Ann the night Tolbert died. She saw Hollister and Salgado arguing on the dock. She heard Hollister say something about 'cleaning the water.' She can't make sense of it. Nobody does. But she knows it matters."

"What did Salgado tell you?"

"Nothing. He's cooperating. Bordelon's been interviewing him. Salgado says he doesn't know about the ledger. He says he doesn't know about Amber being on the boat. He says he didn't know Tolbert was Hollister's mistress." She paused. "I couldn't tell if he was telling the truth. Maybe he was protecting Amber. Either way, he's alive, and that counts for something."

Don nodded. His mind was moving faster than it had in hours, connecting dots he'd been too angry to see. Tolbert and Hollister—mistress and husband. A dredging empire built on political connections and bribes. A missing girl from the cold case, whose name he couldn't place, whose disappearance had been filed and forgotten and buried under paperwork and traffic duty and a lieutenant who cared more about his pension than a dead woman's justice.

"Where's the office?" he asked.

Wanda pointed toward a door behind the bar. Painted a dull green, no sign, handle brass and worn smooth by years of use. "Second door on the left. She's probably sleeping. Or smoking. Or both."

"Don't threaten her."

Wanda's mouth twisted. "Who said I was going to threaten her?"

"Don't need to. I'll figure it out."

She weighed him with a look that lingered too long. Then she slid beneath the counter, fingers brushing dust before emerging with a heavy brass key. It was old, the teeth worn smooth from years of use. "Back door," she said, voice low. "Unlocked. They don’t bother checking this late." She paused, her eyes hardening. "Don, listen to me. If you’re doing this, you do it clean. No shouting. No breaking things. You talk to her. You find out what she knows. That ledger Jimmy mentioned—it’s not just Hollister. It’s the whole machine. Bordelon. The judges. It’s deeper than you realize."

"Don't care."

Wanda's eyes narrowed. "You keep saying that. But one day you'll care. And when you do, it'll be too late."

She turned away, picked up her cigarette, and lit it again, the flame of the silver lighter catching the gold in her hair for a brief, bright moment. Don moved past her, toward the green door, his hand on the brass handle, feeling the metal cold and solid beneath his gauze-wrapped fingers.

He turned it. The door opened without resistance. The hallway beyond was narrow, lit by a single fluorescent bulb that buzzed and flickered like the one in the substation, and at the end of it, a door slightly ajar, a sliver of yellow light spilling onto the linoleum floor.

Don stepped into the hallway. The fluorescent bulb buzzed above him. Somewhere behind him, Wanda exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling and didn't look back.

Chapter 9

The hallway beyond was narrow, choked with the smell of stale coffee and damp wool, lit by a single fluorescent tube that buzzed with a dying hum. At the end of the corridor, a door stood slightly ajar, a sliver of yellow light cutting across the scuffed linoleum. Don stepped into the gloom, his boots quiet on the tile. Above him, the bulb flickered, casting long, trembling shadows against the walls. Behind him, Wanda exhaled a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling, her eyes fixed on the dark, refusing to look back.

He moved slowly. His knee protested with every step, a deep grinding ache that traveled up from the joint and settled in his thigh, but he ignored it. He'd been limping since Rice, and Rice was twelve years old now. Twelve years of a bad leg, twelve years of learning to walk around pain instead of through it.

The door at the end of the hall was the back office. The yellow light came from a desk lamp—amber shade, brass base, the kind of thing you'd find in a lawyer's office or a politician's den. The door was unlatched. Don pushed it open with two fingers and stepped inside.

Amber Salazar was sitting at the desk, a cigarette burning in an ashtray beside a half-empty glass of whiskey. She wasn't sleeping. She wasn't smoking. She was staring at a ledger open in front of her, her hands resting on the pages like she was memorizing the numbers.

She was fifty-two, which showed in the fine lines around her eyes and the gray threading through her black hair, but it also showed in the way she carried herself—shoulders back, chin up, the posture of someone who'd spent decades refusing to be small. She wore a silk robe over a cotton dress, and her feet were bare. She looked like a woman who'd gotten dressed in a hurry and then undressed halfway through the night, caught between running and staying.

When Don entered, she didn't startle. She didn't reach for a phone or a weapon or a bottle. She just looked up from the ledger and exhaled smoke through her nose, slow and deliberate, like a woman assessing a threat she'd expected and was now curious about.

"You're bleeding," she said.

"Don't care."

"That's not an answer." She set down her cigarette, folded her hands on the ledger, and regarded him with eyes that were dark and unblinking. "You're bleeding, you're limping, and you're wearing a jacket that cost more than my first car. You look like a man who's already decided what happens next. So let me save us both some time: whatever you think you're here for, it's not going to work."

Don stepped further into the room. The desk lamp cast long shadows across Amber's face—sharp cheekbones, a nose that had been broken at some point and reset poorly, a mouth that seemed permanently set in a line between skepticism and exhaustion. Behind her, a wall of shelves held bottles of liquor she wasn't supposed to be drinking on the clock, a stack of deposit slips, and a framed photograph of a man Don didn't recognize, standing on a dock, smiling at something off-camera.

"I'm here for the ledger," Don said.

Amber's expression didn't change. "You and everybody else." She tapped the open book in front of her with one finger. "This is the ledger. You can have it."

Don stopped. He'd expected denial. He'd expected deflection. He hadn't expected surrender. "You're giving it to me?"

"No." She smiled, and it was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a woman who'd just revealed a trapdoor and was watching someone step toward it. "I'm showing it to you. There's a difference."

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is that this ledger is the only reason I'm still alive." She leaned back in her chair, the wood creaking beneath her. "Hollister put me here. He told me to take over the bar. He told me to keep Wanda in line. He told me to pretend I didn't know what was coming. And I did. I pretended. For three weeks, I pretended I was just another widow handed a failing business and a death sentence."

Don said nothing. He was listening.

"He moved the real ledger three weeks ago," Amber continued. "This"—she tapped the book again—"is a copy. A fake. A decoy. The real one is in the walk-in freezer, behind the cases of Coors. Wrapped in plastic, sealed in a Ziploc bag, taped to the back wall. Hollister told me to keep it there. He said if anything happened to him—if he got caught, if he disappeared, if somebody started asking questions—the ledger would still be in the freezer, and he'd be able to deny everything." She paused. "He was wrong. Because I took a photo."

Don felt something shift in his chest. Not relief. Not yet. Caution. "A photo?"

"On my mother's Polaroid. The one in the kitchen drawer." She nodded toward a door in the back of the office. "I took a picture of every page. Every entry. Every signature. Every payment from Hollister's dredging company to Bordelon's office. It's not the ledger. But it's close enough to get somebody arrested." She looked at him directly. "Close enough to get him arrested."

Don's jaw tightened. "Bordelon?"

"Of course Bordelon. Who else?" Amber's mouth twisted. "You really don't know, do you? You're out here playing hero with a bad knee and a death wish, and you don't even know who you're fighting."

"I know enough."

"Do you?" She stood up, slower than she'd expected, and walked around the desk. She was shorter than Don by a head, but she didn't shrink in his presence. She never would. "You think this is about Wade Hollister and his dredging contracts? You think this is a local problem? Don, the ledger goes back eight years. Eight years of payments. Eight years of contracts awarded to companies that didn't exist. Eight years of environmental violations buried under cash. And Bordelon—" She stopped herself. Took a breath. "Bordelon signed off on every inspection. Every violation. Every cover-up. He's not just protecting Hollister. He is Hollister's partner. Just in a different uniform."

Don thought of the lighter. R.T. Roy Tolbert. The wildcatter who'd been found floating in the bayou with his Rolex stolen and his neck broken. Tolbert and Hollister—mistress and husband, according to Wanda. But what if it wasn't just an affair? What if Tolbert had been blackmailing Hollister? What if the ledger contained entries that implicated Tolbert too?

"Why did you show me this?" Don asked. "Why not go to the feds? Why not call the newspaper?"

"Because the feds don't care about Houston dredging contracts, and the newspaper doesn't print stories about men who own half the city." She sat back down, picked up her cigarette, and lit it with the same silver lighter Wanda had used. The flame caught the gold in her hair for a brief, bright moment. "I need someone who's already in the fight. Someone who's already been told to drop it. Someone who's already been threatened." She looked at him. "That's you."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I keep the photo and I wait for Hollister to realize I betrayed him and I die in this office with a bullet in my skull and a cigarette in my hand." She took a drag. "So. Are you going to get the ledger or not?"

Don looked at the fake ledger on the desk. He looked at the photo Amber was carrying in her pocket. He looked at the door that led to the kitchen, and beyond that, the walk-in freezer where the real evidence was taped to the back wall. Thirty-two hours. Maybe less. Jimmy was in a hospital bed with a bullet in his shoulder, and Bordelon was probably already telling his people to wrap up the case, and Hollister was probably already planning his next move.

"Show me the freezer," Don said.

Amber nodded. She set down her cigarette, pulled a key from a drawer, and led Don out of the office, through a narrow corridor that smelled of bleach and old grease, and into the kitchen. The kitchen was dark, lit only by the emergency exit sign casting a red glow over stainless steel counters and a commercial stove that had seen better decades. Amber moved through it with the familiarity of someone who'd spent years navigating this space in the dark.

She stopped at a heavy insulated door with a vertical handle and a temperature dial. Walk-in freezer. She turned the key, pulled the handle, and the seal broke with a hiss of cold air.

The smell hit Don first—industrial cold, the kind that gets into your bones and stays there, mixed with the faint sweetness of frozen vegetables and the sharp tang of ice. Amber flipped a switch. A single fluorescent tube flickered on, then stabilized, illuminating rows of stacked cardboard cases. Coors. Budweiser. Miller High Life. The brands of a city that preferred its beer cheap and its problems invisible.

Don stepped inside. The cold bit through his jacket immediately. He could see his breath. His knee stopped hurting altogether, which was a relief he didn't expect. Amber followed him in, pulling the door partially shut behind them, leaving a gap for light and air.

"Back wall," she said, pointing.

Don walked past the cases, his boots crunching on frost that had accumulated on the floor, and reached the back wall. There it was. A Ziploc bag, taped to the corrugated metal with duct tape that had yellowed with age. He peeled it free. The plastic was thick, double-layered, the kind designed to keep moisture out and secrets contained.

Inside was a leather-bound ledger. Same size as the fake one on Amber's desk. He opened it. The pages were crisp, the ink fresh, the entries detailed. Names. Dates. Amounts. Payments from Wade Hollister’s dredging company to various recipients—some of them corporate accounts, some of them individual names that made Don's stomach turn. Bordelon, M. — $5,000. Bordelon, M. — $10,000. Bordelon, M. — $15,000. Entries spanning eight years. Eight years of systematic bribery, documented in a leather book that had been taped to the back wall of a walk-in freezer behind a Houston steakhouse.

Don closed the ledger. Held it against his chest. Felt the weight of it—the physical weight, yes, but also the moral weight, the kind that settles in your shoulders and makes you walk differently.

"That's it?" Amber asked.

"That's it," Don said.

She reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a Polaroid camera. "One more thing." She pointed the camera at Don, at the ledger, at her own face reflected in the stainless steel counter behind him. She pressed the shutter. The flash lit the freezer like a supernova, and for a moment Don couldn't see anything at all.

When his vision cleared, Amber was standing there, the camera in her hand, the photo ejecting slowly from the slot. "That's insurance," she said. "If something happens to me, the photo goes to Wanda. And Wanda knows where to send it."

Don nodded. He didn't ask who she was. He didn't need to. Wanda Freeman had survived eighteen years in this bar by knowing when to trust and when to prepare for the worst. She'd do the same with the photo.

"How long do I have?" Don asked.

Amber looked at her watch—a gold bracelet model, expensive but scratched, the kind of thing you wear to remind yourself that you've earned something even when the world tries to take it away. "Thirty hours, maybe. Bordelon's deadline was forty-eight. He's probably already started wrapping up. You need to move fast."

Don stepped out of the freezer. Amber followed, pulling the door shut behind her. The cold air sealed itself inside, preserving the evidence for however long it took Don to make his move.

He held the ledger against his chest and looked at Amber. "Why are you doing this? You could've stayed silent. You could've let Hollister protect you."

Amber's expression softened, just for a moment. Then she reached into her robe pocket again and pulled out a folded slip of paper—the address of a federal building on Travis Street, a number she'd written in pencil on the back. She laid it on the counter between them, palm flat, like a dealer placing cards. "Wanda's got three copies," she said. "One for me. One for Wanda. One for the clerk at the U.S. Attorney's office who owes my father a favor. I kept this one for myself." She tapped the paper once. "I'm not waiting for anybody to save me."

Don didn't have a response to that. He didn't need one. He turned and walked back through the kitchen, through the corridor, past the office where the fake ledger still sat open on the desk, and into the main restaurant. The jazz had stopped. The silence was absolute. The city outside was still dark, still wet, still holding its breath.

Don pushed through the front doors and stepped into the rain.

The patrol cruiser was parked two blocks away, where he'd left it. He ran, ignoring his knee, ignoring the cold, ignoring the fact that he was carrying stolen evidence through a city that had decided he was the enemy. He reached the cruiser, unlocked the door, and slid the ledger onto the passenger seat. He started the engine. The radio crackled to life—static, then a dispatcher's voice, then silence. He turned it off.

He drove toward the substation. Toward the truth. Toward whatever came next.

Behind him, the Cattlemen's neon sign continued its imperfect blink—CATTLMEN'S, the T still missing, the word still almost right, the meaning still visible through the damage. Don didn't look back.

The ledger felt heavy in his coat pocket, a stiff reminder of the truth he now carried, as he turned away from the bar and stepped out into the damp Houston night.

Chapter 10

The ledger sat on the passenger seat like a loaded gun. Don kept his eyes on the road, his left hand resting on the wheel at ten o'clock, his right hand on the gearshift. The radiator in his apartment building clanked somewhere behind him, a sound he'd learned to ignore over three years of living in that fourth-floor walk-up. This was different. This was a sound he couldn't ignore because it was coming from inside his head.

He pulled into the parking lot at ten minutes to midnight. The building was a squat brick thing on the east side, the kind of place that had been built when housing was cheap and nobody thought about insulation. The streetlight over his space was busted, so the lot was mostly shadow. Don killed the engine and sat in the dark for a moment, listening to the ledger breathe. Which was ridiculous. Ledgers didn't breathe. But the weight of it against his thigh felt alive, like something with a pulse, like something that knew exactly what it was worth and exactly what it could do to a man.

He got out. The air was warm and thick, the kind of Houston night that made your shirt stick to your back before you'd even taken off your jacket. He locked the cruiser, pocketed the keys, and walked toward the stairs. Three flights. He counted them the way he always did—four, eight, twelve, sixteen steps per flight, sixty-four in total—and stopped on the landing between the third and fourth floors to rest his knee. It was throbbing again, a deep dull ache that radiated from the joint up into his quad. He pressed two fingers against the swollen cap and waited thirty seconds. Then he climbed the last flight.

His apartment door was at the end of the hall, number four-B, the paint chipped where someone had kicked it years ago and nobody had bothered to touch it up. Don fished his keys from his pocket, found the right one, and inserted it. The lock turned with a click that sounded too loud in the empty hallway.

He pushed the door open and froze.

The apartment was dark. The radiator was silent. But the smell hit him first—cologne, expensive, something French, cutting through the familiar scent of stale coffee and old paper that lived in these walls. Don's hand went to his hip out of habit, then stopped. His badge was at the substation. His service weapon was in the glove box of the cruiser. He had a flashlight in his pocket and the ledger tucked inside his jacket, hidden but present, and absolutely nothing else.

He flicked the light on.

Wade Hollister sat in the armchair by the window, one leg crossed over the other, a cigarette burning between two fingers. The beam caught the silver of his wedding band, the gray of his hair, the brown of his eyes, and then settled on his face. He didn't look surprised. He looked like a man who'd been expecting company and was merely disappointed it had taken so long.

"Don," Wade said. His voice was exactly what Don expected—loud, confident, the voice of a man who'd spent fifty-five years getting his way. "You look tired."

"Don't move," Don said, stepping further into the room, his body positioned to shield the book in his coat.

Wade smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "I'm not going to move. I want to talk to you. About that book."

"You're in my apartment."

"I knocked. Nobody answered. So I came in." He gestured with the cigarette. "Key under the mat. Like everyone else. You really should change that."

Don's jaw tightened. He'd left the spare key under the mat because Cassie sometimes forgot hers. It was a small thing. A stupid thing. He'd known it was stupid the day he'd done it.

"What do you want, Wade?"

Wade set the cigarette in an ashtray that Don recognized—his own ashtray, the chipped ceramic one he'd bought at a flea market on Westheimer three years ago. Wade picked up the ledger from the shoulder where Don had set it, flipped it open with one hand, and scanned a page.

"You found it," Wade said. Not a question. A statement. "Good. That saves us both some time."

"Don't touch that."

Wade closed the book and set it back on the table. "Don, sit down. We're going to have a conversation, and I'd rather it happen with you seated. Your knee doesn't look great."

Don didn't sit. He stayed by the door, his hand still near his hip, his body angled toward the exit. "Get out."

Wade exhaled through his nose. He reached into his jacket pocket and Don tensed—then Wade pulled out a manila envelope and tossed it onto the coffee table. It landed with a soft slap.

"Open it."

"No."

"Open. It." Wade's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. The command was built into the tone the way rebar is built into concrete—structural, invisible, essential.

Don hesitated. Then he crossed the room, picked up the envelope, and tore it open. Inside were photographs. Cash. Stacks of it, banded in the old brown paper wraps that banks used before they switched to plastic straps. Twenty thousand. Maybe thirty. On top of the cash was a folded piece of paper—Don unfolded it. A cashier's check. Fifty thousand. Payable to Cassie Redman. Houston Community College. For tuition.

Don looked at the check. Then at Wade. Then at the cash.

Don stared at the check. His thumb rubbed the edge of it, feeling the raised ink, the embossed letterhead. He could see Cassie's face when he told her—relief, then suspicion, then the question she wouldn't ask out loud: what did Dad do to get this?

"That's not a settlement," Don said. "That's a threat wrapped in a check."

"This is a bribe."

"It's a settlement." Wade leaned forward. The cigarette burned down to the filter. "Roy Tolbert was a smart man. Smart men make enemies. You're a smart man too. You could go down this road, or you could take the money, walk away, and let the city handle what the city needs to handle."

Don's jaw worked. He looked at the check, then at Wade, then at the door. His hand drifted toward his hip—habit, not hope—before he forced it back to his side. "You think this is a negotiation," he said.

"The city needs to keep its dredging contracts flowing. There's a difference." Wade stood. He was taller than Don remembered—six feet, maybe six-one, broad in the shoulders, the kind of build that came from decades of lifting things that weighed more than they should. He took a step toward Don. Don didn't back up. "Listen to me. Bordelon's already handled the official investigation. There's a junkie in Huntsville who's confessed. There's a file. There's a resolution. All you have to do is walk away."

"There's no junkie."

"There is now." Wade's eyes were flat. Dead. "You think you're the first cop who found something he shouldn't have? You think you're special because you read a ledger and got excited? Don, I've been running dredging operations in this city for twenty years. Twenty. I know men who could make your life so miserable you'd wish you'd never been born. I'm offering you a choice."

Don looked at the check again. Fifty thousand. Cassie's tuition. Her books. Her room. Four years of it. He could feel the weight of it pressing against his palm, warm and heavy and wrong.

"My daughter has nothing to do with this."

"She's your daughter. That makes everything to do with this." Wade picked up the envelope and set it back on the table. "Take the money. Take the check. Walk away. Or fight me, and I'll make sure you regret it. Not just you—Cassie. Trent. Everyone you love. You want to play hero? Fine. But heroes don't get to protect the people they care about. That's the whole point."

The radiator clanked. Don didn't turn to look at it. He was still facing Wade, his hands at his sides, his breathing slow and even. He'd spent six years working with Jimmy. Six years on the street. Six years learning how to read a room, how to listen to what people weren't saying, how to spot the lie before it left someone's mouth. Wade Hollister was lying. He was lying about the junkie. He was lying about Bordelon. He was lying about having any power over Don's choices.

But he wasn't lying about one thing: he believed what he was saying. Wade truly believed that money could buy silence. That fear could buy compliance. That a man like Don Redman—limping, alone, stripped of his badge—was powerless against a man like Wade Hollister—wealthy, connected, ruthless.

Don reached into his jacket pocket. Wade flinched—just a fraction, just a tightening of the shoulders—but Don didn't pull a weapon. He pulled his wallet. He opened it, took out his driver's license, and set it on the table beside the envelope. Then he took out his HPD ID card—the backup one, the laminated plastic kind that expired every two years—and set it next to the license.

Then he reached behind him, toward the doorframe, and pressed the small black button on the wall. The motion sensor light in the hallway clicked on, flooding the apartment with harsh white illumination.

Wade's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"

"Don't move," Don said again.

"You can't arrest me. I haven't done anything."

"You're in my apartment without permission. That's trespassing. That's a misdemeanor." Don's voice was quiet. Steady. The voice of a man who'd said these words a thousand times before. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at—"

"Don, stop it." Wade's voice had dropped. The confidence was gone. Something uglier was taking its place. "You think a trespassing charge is going to stick? You think anyone's going to care?"

"I think it's the truth." Don pulled his own phone from his pocket—an older model, beige, corded to the wall jack by a coiled cable he'd plugged in when he moved in six months ago. He dialed 911. It rang once. Twice. He put it to his ear.

"Emergency services, what is your location?"

"Four-B," Don said. "417 East Main. Someone's in my apartment. I need officers. Now."

Wade moved. Fast. He lunged across the coffee table, his hand reaching for Don's throat. Don sidestepped—the knee screaming, the body protesting, the muscle memory from a lifetime of playing linebacker kicking in—and grabbed Wade's wrist. They grappled. Wade was stronger. Don knew that. He'd known it since the first time he'd met him at Cassie's house, five years ago, when Wade had shaken Don's hand with a grip that tested rather than greeted. But Don was younger. Faster. And he was fighting for something Wade couldn't understand.

They crashed into the armchair. Wade drove a fist into Don's ribs. Don absorbed it, rolled, got his knee into Wade's stomach, and drove him backward into the wall. Wade's head cracked against the plaster. He staggered. Don was on him again, pinning his arms behind his back, pressing his forearm against Wade's throat—not hard enough to choke, hard enough to control.

"Stop resisting," Don said. His breath was ragged. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto Wade's collar. "Stop resisting or I'll cuff you."

Wade struggled. Don tightened his grip. He heard the hallway footsteps before he heard the voice—boots on linoleum, fast, urgent, the sound of officers responding to a 911 call. Two of them. Maybe three.

The door burst open. Officer Ramirez and Officer Chen stood in the doorway, flashlights cutting through the dark, hands on their holsters.

"Don?" Ramirez said. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Don said. He kept his weight on Wade. "Call it in. Assault on an officer. Trespassing. Unlawful entry."

Wade stopped struggling. He went limp against Don's arm, his breathing ragged, his eyes wide and wet. "You can't do this," he whispered. "You can't—"

"Don," Chen said, stepping forward with cuffs. "Step away, Mr. Hollister."

Wade didn't move. Don released him. Wade slid to the floor, one hand on the wall, the other clutching his ribs. He looked up at Don with an expression Don would remember for the rest of his life—not anger. Not fear. Something worse. Something that looked like understanding.

"You think this changes anything," Wade said. His voice was barely audible. "You think arresting me stops the cleanup?"

Don cuffed Wade's wrists behind his back. The metal clicked shut with a sound like a door closing. "I think it starts something."

He stood. His knee was on fire. His ribs ached. His nose was bleeding—he could taste the copper in the back of his throat. But he was standing. And Wade Hollister was cuffed. And the ledger was on the table.

Ramirez hauled Wade upright while Chen recited the Miranda warnings, his tone flat and rehearsed. Don limped toward the window, watching the dead streetlight flicker above the empty parking lot. Below, the shadows pooled thick and black. Inside, the ledger lay open on the desk, a stack of cash beside it, and the check that tied them all together—each one a brick in the wall of proof he’d just built.

Behind him, Wade said something Don couldn't hear. Ramirez said something back. Chen finished reading the rights. They led Wade out the door, his footsteps heavy on the linoleum, his breathing uneven, his head high despite the cuffs.

Don stayed at the window until the cruiser pulled away. Until the taillights disappeared around the corner. Until the only sound in the apartment was the radiator, clanking softly, keeping time with a heartbeat that wouldn't stop.

He turned from the window. The apartment was exactly as it had been when he'd walked in—except for the envelope on the coffee table, the cash and the check and the photographs, and the ledger, open to a page that listed payments that stretched back eight years, eight years of signatures and amounts and dates that proved everything.

Don picked up the ledger. He carried it to the kitchen table. He set it down. He took out his phone and dialed Jimmy's number. It rang four times. Jimmy answered on the fifth.

"Don?" Jimmy's voice was sleepy. Worried. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Don said. "I arrested Wade Hollister."

A pause. Then: "What did he do?"

"Trespassing. Assault. Bribery." Don looked at the ledger. At the check. At the cash. "Everything."

Another pause. Longer this time. "I'm coming over."

"Don't. Stay at the hospital. Rest."

"I'm coming over," Jimmy said. "Give me twenty minutes."

Don hung up. He stood in the kitchen, his hands flat on the table, his body trembling—not from fear, not from pain, but from the sheer impossibility of what he'd just done. Wade Hollister was in custody. The ledger was evidence. The bribe was documented. And tomorrow morning, when Bordelon found out, the real fight would begin.

Don looked at the ledger one more time. Then he picked up the phone and called Cassie's number. It went to voicemail. He left a message. Short. Simple. "Hey. It's Dad. Just calling to say I love you. I'll call you tomorrow."

The dial tone cut through the room, a sharp, metallic snap that severed the last thread of the conversation. Don didn’t move to hang up the receiver; he simply let it rest against the hook while the silence rushed back in, heavy and absolute, filling the space where the argument had been. Outside, the first gray light of dawn began to bleed across the floorboards, indifferent to the fact that the real work was only just beginning.

Chapter 11

The ledger was open to page forty-seven when Don walked into the substation at seven-fifteen. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, that same dying hum that had been in the walls for as long as he'd been working there, the kind of sound you stopped hearing after a while and then suddenly heard again when it mattered. His knee was stiff, swollen to the size of a grapefruit, and every step sent a bolt of pain up his thigh. He ignored it. He'd ignored worse.

The bullpen was half-empty. Two uniformed officers sat at their desks, one eating a breakfast sandwich, the other staring at a crossword puzzle. Nobody looked up when Don walked through the door. He was used to that. Without his badge clipped to his belt, he looked like anyone else who'd slept poorly and needed coffee. He grabbed a mug from the breakroom cabinet, filled it with the burnt-penny coffee that had been sitting since five, and carried it to the desk where the ledger lay open, its pages thick with handwriting and numbers and signatures that stretched back eight years.

He sat. He read.

Page forty-seven listed payments from Wade Hollister Dredging Company to various city departments. Sanitation. Public Works. Environmental Compliance. Each entry had a date, an amount, and a signature. Bordelon's signature appeared on seventeen of them. Not as a recipient—never that explicit—but as the approving officer. The man who signed off on inspections that never happened. The man who filed violation reports as clean. The man who buried complaints and redirected investigations. Eight years of it. Eight years of quiet transactions buried in the machinery of a city that pretended to care about clean water and safe dredging.

Don's thumb traced Bordelon's signature on page forty-three. The ink was the same blue-black gel pen he used every day. The loop on the capital B was the same lazy arc Don had watched a thousand times in staff meetings, in briefing rooms, in the moments when Bordelon thought nobody was looking. He'd seen that signature on transfer forms, on commendation recommendations, on the paperwork that had sent a junkie to Huntsville for a crime he didn't commit. He'd seen it on the documents that had reassigned him to traffic duty. He'd seen it everywhere.

The door to Bordelon's office opened.

Mickey Bordelon stepped into the bullpen wearing a charcoal suit, a white shirt, and a tie the color of dried blood. He was forty-eight, which meant he'd been in law enforcement long enough to know which buttons to push and which ones to pretend didn't exist. His blonde hair was combed back with meticulous care. His blue eyes scanned the room, landed on Don, and narrowed by a fraction.

"Redman," Bordelon said. His voice was smooth. Polite. The voice of a man who'd spent his career mastering the art of sounding reasonable while saying things that shouldn't be said. "You look like hell."

"Don," Don said. He didn't stand. He kept his hand on the ledger.

Bordelon walked over. He didn't ask permission. He didn't need to. He pulled out the visitor's chair—the one with the torn vinyl seat that squeaked when you sat down—and sat. He folded his hands on the desk. He looked at the ledger.

"What's that?"

"The Cattlemen's freezer ledger," Don said. "Found it last night."

Bordelon's expression didn't change. He'd trained himself well. But Don had spent six years reading that face, and he caught the micro-tightening around the eyes, the slight pause before Bordelon spoke again. A beat too long. A fraction too careful.

"You found a ledger in a freezer," Bordelon said.

"In the walk-in. Behind the Coors cases." Don kept his voice flat. Even. "It lists payments. Dates. Amounts. Signatures." He tapped page forty-three. "Redman."

Bordelon looked down at the signature. He studied it for three seconds. Four. Five. Then he looked back up at Don.

"That's a forged signature," Bordelon said. His tone was mild. Almost amused. "You know that, right? Forgery is a felony. You bring that into evidence, you're not just contaminating the case—you're potentially committing a crime yourself."

"It's not forged."

"Isn't it?" Bordelon leaned forward. His elbows rested on the desk. The fluorescent light caught the silver in his tie clip. "Don, let me be very clear with you. I appreciate what you've done. I do. But you've been operating outside your lane for weeks. You went rogue on the Ship Channel. You bypassed proper channels at the Cattlemen's. You arrested Wade Hollister on a trespassing charge when the proper procedure would have been to coordinate with federal investigators—who, I might add, are already handling this case."

"There are no federal investigators."

"There are now." Bordelon's mouth quirked. "After last night's events, the FBI took an interest. They're reviewing the Hollister arrest. They're reviewing the ledger. They're reviewing everything." He paused. Let it sink in. "And they're not happy."

Don didn't respond. He just kept looking at Bordelon, his hand still resting on the ledger, his body still angled toward the desk. The coffee in his mug had gone cold. He could feel the ache in his knee pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

"You need to turn that over," Bordelon said. He nodded at the ledger. "Hand it to me. I'll make sure it's logged properly. It'll be reviewed by the right people. The federal people. They'll know what to do with it."

"No." "You said it once. I'm not moving."

Bordelon stood. He was shorter than Wade Hollister but wider in the chest, the kind of build that came from decades of sitting behind a desk and eating bad food and pretending to be tough. He placed both hands flat on the desk. His knuckles were white.

"You don't have jurisdiction over this anymore," Bordelon said. "Your badge is at the substation. Your weapon is in your locker. You are a civilian standing in a police station, touching evidence you have no authority to possess. Step away from the desk, Don. Step away now, and nobody gets hurt."

Don looked at his hands. Then at Bordelon. Then at the ledger. He thought about Jimmy in the hospital, breathing through a punctured shoulder, his body healing in a room that Bordelon's men had probably already searched. He thought about Cassie, sitting in Trent Hollister's kitchen, unaware that her father had just arrested her boyfriend's father. He thought about the radiator in his apartment, clanking in the dark, keeping time with a heartbeat that wouldn't stop.

He picked up the ledger.

Bordelon's hand moved toward his own desk drawer. Don saw it—a quick, practiced motion, the kind that came from years of knowing what was in that drawer and how fast he could reach it. Don didn't think. He acted. He slammed the ledger flat against the desk with both hands, pinned it there, and shouted:

"Officer! Call internal affairs! Now!"

The bullpen went quiet. The officer with the breakfast sandwich lowered his half-eaten wrap. The officer with the crossword puzzle looked up, pen hovering over the grid. Bordelon froze, his hand still hovering over the drawer.

"I said call internal affairs," Don repeated. His voice was loud. Clear. Carrying. "Right now. Before this man reaches into his desk."

Bordelon's face went through three expressions in rapid succession—shock, calculation, fury—and settled on something that looked almost like respect. He slowly withdrew his hand from the drawer. He straightened his tie.

"This isn't over," Bordelon said. His voice was quiet. Controlled. The voice of a man who'd already planned three moves ahead. "You think internal affairs is going to save you? You think a ledger is going to bring down an eight-year conspiracy? Don, you're a good cop. You always were. But you're also naive. And naivety gets people killed."

"Don't threaten me, Mickey."

"I'm not threatening you. I'm stating facts." Bordelon turned toward his office. He paused at the doorway. "The ledger stays here. You're relieved of duty. Effective immediately. Go home. Rest. Think about what you've done. Because when this blows up—and it will blow up—you're going to wish you'd listened."

He went into his office and closed the door. The latch clicked. The fluorescent light buzzed. Don stood at the desk, his hands still on the ledger, his body trembling with adrenaline and rage and something he couldn't name.

The officer with the crossword puzzle stood up. "You need me to call someone?" he asked. His voice was hesitant. Young. Maybe two years on the force.

"Yes," Don said. "Call Internal Affairs. And call Jimmy Dixon at Harris-Presbyterian. Tell him I'm coming."

The officer picked up the phone. Don lifted the ledger from the desk. It was heavier than he expected. Thicker. More real. Eight years of corruption bound in leather and ink and signatures, and for the first time in weeks, he felt something that wasn't exhaustion or fear or grief. He felt certainty.

He walked out of the substation. The morning air was warm and humid, the kind of Houston heat that pressed down on you like a hand on the back of your neck. He carried the ledger to the cruiser, unlocked the door, and set it on the passenger seat. It sat there, solid and immovable, like a stone dropped into still water.

Don got in the driver's seat. He turned the key. The engine started. The radio crackled to life with a dispatcher's voice, something about a fender-bender on I-10, and he reached over and turned it off. His knee throbbed. His ribs ached. His hands were steady on the wheel.

He drove toward Harris-Presbyterian. Toward the hospital. Toward Jimmy.

The traffic on Walker Avenue was backed up—construction on the overpass, a detour sign flashing orange in the morning sun, cars crawling at ten miles per hour. Don didn't mind. He had time. He had the ledger. He had the truth. And for the first time in thirty-two hours, the truth belonged to him.

He pulled into the hospital parking lot at eight-twenty. The building rose ahead of him, a blocky concrete structure that smelled like exhaust and disinfectant and old carpet. He killed the engine. He set the ledger on the passenger seat one more time, looked at it, and then got out.

The emergency room was quiet. Too quiet for a weekday morning. Don walked through the double doors, past the triage desk, past the waiting room where a woman sat knitting and a teenager scrolled through his phone on a cracked screen, and down the hallway toward Room 314.

Jimmy was awake when Don entered. He was propped up on pillows, an IV taped to his left arm, his right hand resting on the blanket over his stomach. His face was pale, his eyes darker than usual, but he was smiling when he saw Don.

"You look like shit," Jimmy said.

"So do you." Don pulled up the visitor's chair—the one with the torn vinyl seat that squeaked—and sat. He set the ledger on his lap. "How's the shoulder?"

"Stitched. Stable. The doctor says I missed the bone." Jimmy shifted, winced, then settled back. "You arrested him?"

"Wade Hollister is in custody. Trespassing. Assault. Bribery." Don tapped the ledger. "This is bigger than Wade. It's Bordelon. Eight years of payments. Signatures. Everything."

Jimmy's smile faded. He looked at the ledger, then back at Don. "Are you sure?"

"I read every page. Bordelon's signature is on seventeen entries. He approved inspections that never happened. He buried violations. He filed reports as clean. He's been taking money from Hollister's company since before I even knew Roy Tolbert was dead."

Jimmy was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "He'll deny it."

"He will. But the ledger is real. The payments are real. The signatures are real. Internal Affairs is on their way to the substation right now. Bordelon's desk is logged. The ledger is evidence. He can't burn it. Not this time."

Jimmy nodded slowly. He looked down at his hands. At the IV tape. At the blanket. "And Cassie?"

"Don't worry about Cassie."

"She knows?"

"Not yet. She'll find out. Eventually." Don's jaw tightened. "Trent's father is in jail, Jimmy. That's going to affect her. I know that. But it's not her fault. And it's not yours."

Jimmy looked up. His eyes were wet. "You arrested a man's father, Don. That man is Trent. That girl is Cassie. You're going to break them apart."

"I'm going to do what's right."

Jimmy looked up. His eyes were wet. "Trent's father is in jail, Don." He swallowed. Looked away. "Cassie called me this morning. She didn't say why. But she sounded—" He stopped. Pressed his lips together. "She's your daughter. You know what this does to her."

Don didn't answer. He couldn't. The question hung in the air between them, heavy and unanswerable, like the humidity pressing through the hospital windows.

Jimmy reached out with his good hand and touched Don's arm. His fingers were warm. Steady. The same hands that had held a rifle in Fallujah, the same hands that had taken a bullet meant for Don's chest. "I'm glad you did it," Jimmy said. His voice was barely above a whisper. "I'm just sorry it cost you everything else."

Don looked at his friend. At the man who’d stood beside him in the rain, in the crossfire, in the shadows of a city that refused to stay buried. His mind drifted to the radiator clanking in his cramped east side apartment, the tuition check for Cassie resting on the table, and the ledger heavy in his lap. He thought of Cassie’s laugh, of Trent’s father rotting in a cell, and of Bordelon sitting behind closed doors, already plotting his next move.

He stood. His knee screamed. He ignored it.

"I'm going to sit here for a minute," Don said. He sat back down. The ledger rested on his thighs, solid and real and undeniable. "Just a minute."

Jimmy nodded. He closed his eyes. The monitor beeped steadily beside him—a metronome counting the seconds, the minutes, the hours of a life that was still beating even when everything else had stopped.

Don watched the window. Through the glass, he could see the hospital parking lot, the cars lined up in their rows, the people moving between them with the urgent purpose of people who had somewhere to be and somewhere to return to. The city stretched beyond the parking lot, vast and indifferent and beautiful and broken, and somewhere out there, Bordelon was already planning his defense. Somewhere out there, Cassie was waking up to a world that had changed overnight. Somewhere out there, the truth was still waiting to be told.

Don kept his hand on the ledger. He didn't let go. He just sat there, in the quiet of Room 314, listening to the monitor count the seconds, feeling the weight of eight years of corruption resting on his knees, and wondering if justice was worth the price.

The answer came before he could think about it. It was simple. It was certain. It was the only answer he'd ever known.

Yes.

Chapter 12

The morning light in Houston didn’t break; it bruised. It seeped through the blinds of Don Redman’s apartment in thin, gray strips, illuminating the dust motes that danced in the stagnant air like microscopic ghosts. The radiator clanked once, a sharp metallic cough that signaled the end of the night and the beginning of another day that felt indistinguishable from the last. Don sat on the edge of his bed, his legs hanging over the side, staring at the scuffed toes of his boots. They were caked with dried mud from the Ship Channel, a reminder of the mud he’d waded through, metaphorically and literally, to get where he was.

He had slept for two hours. Or maybe four. Time had become elastic, stretching and compressing according to the demands of the investigation, or perhaps the lack thereof. The ledger was gone, taken by the detectives who had arrived at dawn with warrants and handcuffs and a demeanor that suggested they were doing everyone a favor by cleaning up the mess. Lt. Bordelon was in custody. Wade Hollister was in custody. The machinery of corruption that had ground against Don’s life for months had finally seized up, jammed by the weight of paper and the stubborn refusal of one man to look away.

But victory, Don had learned, was a quiet thing. It didn’t come with fanfare or music swelling in the background. It came with the ringing of phones and the heavy silence of rooms where people realized they had lost.

Don stood up, his knee protesting with a dull throb that reminded him he was still alive, still flesh and bone, still human despite the things he’d seen. He showered quickly, the water hot and harsh, washing away the smell of the cannery and the stale tobacco that seemed to cling to his skin no matter how hard he scrubbed. He dressed in jeans and a plain white t-shirt, avoiding the uniform. Today wasn’t about being a cop. Today was about being a father.

He checked his watch. 10:15 AM. Cassie would be at school, or just getting out. He pulled his keys from the pocket, the metal cold against his palm, and walked out the door. The hallway of his apartment building was dim, smelling of boiled cabbage and old carpet. He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the elevator that groaned in protest when he passed it. He needed the movement. He needed to feel the impact of his feet on the concrete steps, grounding himself in the physical reality of the world before he stepped into the emotional complexity of the next hour.

The drive to Cassie’s school was a blur of familiar landmarks. The heat radiating off the asphalt was intense, a physical weight that pressed down on the roof of his cruiser. He drove slowly, watching the pedestrians on the sidewalks, the cars idling in drop-off zones, the chaotic rhythm of a city that didn’t care about his internal turmoil. He thought about Jimmy. Jimmy was still in the hospital, recovering from a bullet wound that should have killed him. Don had visited him briefly that morning, leaving flowers and a note, but he hadn’t stayed. He couldn’t bear to see Jimmy’s face, pale and fragile, and think about how close he had come to losing his only true ally. Jimmy was the brother Don never had, the partner who had trusted him with his life and his future. The guilt was a stone in Don’s gut, heavy and immovable.

Don parked the cruiser in the visitor lot, finding a spot near the front entrance. The school was a modest brick building, surrounded by chain-link fences and playground equipment that looked small against the backdrop of the sprawling city. Children spilled out of the doors, a tide of noise and energy that washed over the pavement. Don watched them for a moment, his hand resting on the steering wheel. He remembered being that age, believing the world was fair, that rules were rules, that if you did the right thing, the right thing would happen. He had worn that belief like a badge until it wore him down.

Now, he knew better. The world was not fair. Rules were suggestions, often written in ink that faded with the first drop of rain. And the right thing? The right thing was a luxury that people like the Hollisters bought and sold, while people like Don paid the price in blood and sleepless nights.

He got out of the car, adjusting his jacket against the wind that whipped around the corner of the building. He walked toward the entrance, his steps deliberate. He saw her immediately. Cassie was standing near the gate, talking to a friend. She was taller than he remembered, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her posture straight and confident. She wore a backpack that looked too big for her shoulders, a testament to the weight of her own academic pressures. She looked happy. She looked safe.

Don felt a pang of guilt so sharp it nearly doubled him over. He had kept this from her for months. He had shielded her from the shadows, from the threats, from the violence that had become the backdrop of their lives. He had told her he was working on a complex case, that things were difficult, but he had never told her the truth. He had never told her that the man who had tried to kill her father was a powerful man, that the police department was compromised, that the system was rigged against them. He had protected her by lying to her.

As he approached, Cassie turned. Her smile faltered, then returned, softer this time, tinged with concern. She broke away from her friend and walked toward him.

"Dad," she said, her voice bright but edged with uncertainty. "You’re here early. Did something happen?"

Don forced a smile, though it felt brittle on his face. "No, sweetheart. Nothing happened. I just... I wanted to see you."

Cassie tilted her head, studying his face. She was smart, sharper than he gave her credit for. She had inherited her mother’s intuition, that ability to read the subtle shifts in tone and expression that adults tried so hard to hide. She reached out and touched his arm, her fingers cool against his skin.

"You look tired," she said. "Are you okay?"

"I’m fine," Don said, lying. "Just a long week. How’s school? How’s Trent?"

At the mention of the name, Cassie’s expression changed. The brightness dimmed, replaced by a guarded neutrality. Trent Hollister. The son of the man who had just been arrested. The boy who had been Don’s partner in chess games and awkward silences, the boy who had looked at Don with a mixture of respect and fear that Don couldn’t quite decipher.

"Trent is... complicated," Cassie said carefully. "We don’t talk about him. Not really."

"Don," Don said gently. "Why don’t we sit down? There’s a bench over by the trees. It’s quieter."

Cassie hesitated, looking around at the other parents and children milling about. But she nodded, falling into step beside him as they walked toward the bench. The air smelled of cut grass and sunscreen, a scent that belonged to childhood, to innocence. Don wanted to hold onto it, to stay in this moment where the world was still simple. But he couldn’t. The truth was waiting, and it was too heavy to carry alone.

They sat on the bench, the wood warm from the sun. Don pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, then stopped himself. He put them back. He didn’t want to smoke in front of her. Not today.

"Cassie," he began, his voice low. "There’s something I need to tell you. Something important."

Cassie turned to face him fully, her eyes wide. She sensed the shift in the atmosphere, the gravity of the moment. "What is it?"

Don took a deep breath, the air filling his lungs, steadying his nerves. "Your father... I mean, Mr. Hollister... he was arrested this morning."

Cassie blinked. Once. Twice. The information seemed to land on her shoulders like a physical blow, causing her to stiffen. "Arrested? For what?"

"For corruption," Don said. "For murder. For a lot of things. He was involved in a ring that was... manipulating things. Illegal dredging, bribes, cover-ups. He was dangerous, Cassie. More dangerous than you probably realized."

Cassie stared at him, her face pale. "Trent’s dad? The man who... who was nice to us? Who played chess with you?"

"He was a criminal," Don said firmly, though his heart ached at the contradiction. "He pretended to be something he wasn’t. He used people. He hurt people. Roy Tolbert was one of them. And Jimmy... Jimmy got hurt because of him. Because of the work I was doing."

Cassie looked down at her hands, twisting the strap of her backpack. Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. She was trying to hold it together, trying to be strong for her father. "Is he... is he going to jail?"

"Yes," Don said. "For a long time. Maybe forever."

"And Trent?" Cassie asked, her voice barely a whisper. "What happens to Trent?"

This was the question Don had been dreading. It was the question that marked the end of the easy answers, the end of the black-and-white morality of his youth. He looked at his daughter, seeing the confusion and pain in her eyes, the struggle to reconcile the boy she knew with the reality of his father’s crimes.

"Trent is innocent," Don said. "He didn’t do any of this. He’s a kid, Cassie. He’s just a kid. He’ll have to deal with the consequences, yes. His family will lose everything. His mother will be struggling. But Trent... Trent is not his father. He doesn’t have to carry that burden."

"But he does," Cassie said, her voice trembling. "He has to live with it. Every day. Every time he looks in the mirror. Every time someone looks at him."

Don reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently. "I know. And it’s not fair. None of this is fair. But you can’t punish him for what his father did. You have to see him for who he is."

Cassie pulled her hand away, standing up abruptly. She paced a few steps away from the bench, her back to him. The wind picked up, blowing strands of hair across her face. "It’s not that simple, Dad. It’s not just about punishment. It’s about trust. It’s about knowing who you can rely on. And now... now I don’t know anything anymore."

Don stood up as well, stepping closer to her. "Cassie, please. Listen to me. The world is complicated. People are complicated. Good people can do bad things, and bad people can have good kids. You have to learn to navigate that. You have to learn to judge people by their actions, not their lineage."

"But what if the actions are hidden?" Cassie turned to face him, her eyes blazing with a fierce, painful intensity. "What if the people you trust are lying to you? What if the system you believe in is broken? How do you know who to trust, Dad? How do you know what’s real?"

Don felt the weight of her question settle in his chest. It was the question he had been asking himself for months. It was the question that had driven him to the edge of madness, to the brink of giving up. He looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the child he had raised, the girl who was becoming a woman in the shadow of violence and betrayal.

"I don’t know," he admitted, his voice rough. "I don’t have a perfect answer. But I know that you have to keep looking. You have to keep asking questions. You have to keep fighting for the truth, even when it hurts. Even when it breaks you. Because if you stop, if you give in to the cynicism, then they win. Then the corruption wins."

Cassie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, composing herself. She took a deep breath, looking out at the playground, at the children playing tag, laughing, oblivious to the darkness that lurked just beyond the edges of their world.

"I’m scared," she whispered.

"I know," Don said. "So am I. But we’ll get through it. Together."

She looked at him then, really looked at him, and for the first time, Don saw the reflection of his own weariness in her eyes. The innocence was gone, stripped away by the harsh light of reality. In its place was something harder, something more resilient. It was the beginning of adulthood, the acceptance that the world was flawed and broken, and that they had to find a way to live in it anyway.

"Okay," Cassie said. "Okay, Dad. Let’s go home."

Don nodded, putting his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, just for a moment, seeking comfort in the familiarity of his presence. Then she pulled away, straightening her backpack.

"Can we get ice cream?" she asked, a faint smile touching her lips. "Something sweet? To wash away the taste of all this..."

Don laughed, a short, dry sound that surprised even him. "Ice cream. Yeah. I think we can manage that."

They walked back toward the car, side by side. The sun climbed higher, baking the asphalt until the air shimmered above the pavement, but the heat felt different. Less oppressive. More honest. Don opened the door for Cassie, helping her into the passenger seat. As he closed the door, he looked back at the school, at the building that had sheltered her for so many years. He knew that nothing would ever be the same. The case was closed, but the scars remained. The city was still corrupt, still broken. But he had his daughter. He had his integrity. And for now, that was enough.

He got into the driver’s seat, starting the engine. The radio crackled with static, a distant voice calling in a report. Don turned it off. He didn’t need the noise. He had the silence of the car, the presence of his daughter, and the road ahead. He put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the school behind, driving toward the future, whatever it might bring.

Chapter 13

The phone rang at 4:17 a.m., a shrill, mechanical intrusion that sliced through the heavy, humid silence of Don’s apartment. Don was asleep, or trying to be, curled on the thin mattress with the radiator clanking its rhythmic, metallic warning in the corner. The sound didn’t wake him so much as it vibrated through the floorboards, a persistent tremor that demanded attention. Jimmy Dixon was already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor, staring at the receiver as if it were a live grenade. He picked it up on the second ring, his voice low and rough with sleep.

“Hello?”

There was a pause. Jimmy’s eyes widened, the dullness of the early hour replaced by a sudden, sharp alertness. He listened for a moment, his posture shifting from slouching to rigid. “Okay,” he said, his voice steadying. “Okay, Rita. I’m here. Don’s here. We’re coming.”

He hung up and turned to Don, who was blinking awake, one eye open, the other squinting against the dim light filtering through the blinds. “It’s Rita,” Jimmy said, pulling on his shoes without looking at Don. “She’s going into labor. Contractions started at four-thirty in the morning, but she waited until they were five minutes apart. She’s scared, Don. She wants us.”

Don sat up, the movement sending a jolt of pain through his bad knee, a familiar ache that grounded him in the physical reality of the moment. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, grabbing his jacket from the chair. “Get the car,” he said. “I’ll lock up.”

They moved with the efficiency of men who had done this dance before, though the stakes felt different tonight. The air in the apartment was thick with the smell of stale coffee and the lingering scent of rain from the previous night’s storm. Don locked the door, the key turning with a solid click, and followed Jimmy down the four flights of stairs. The stairwell smelled of damp wool and old paint, the walls peeling in strips that revealed the gray concrete beneath. They reached the street level, the night air cool and moist against their faces. The city was quiet, the usual roar of Houston traffic reduced to a distant hum, the neon signs of the nearby bars flickering in the fog.

Jimmy led the way to the cruiser, unlocking the doors with a practiced motion. Don slid into the passenger seat, watching Jimmy start the engine. The dashboard lights glowed green, illuminating Jimmy’s face in a soft, eerie light. “Ben Taub,” Jimmy said, putting the car in gear. “It’s the closest. And they have the best L&D unit in the county.”

Don nodded, leaning his head back against the seat. He closed his eyes, listening to the engine purr, the tires humming on the asphalt. For a moment, he let himself forget the case, the ledger, the blood on his hands from Jimmy’s wound. He thought about the life that was coming, a new beginning in a city that seemed determined to end things. He thought about Rita, strong and terrified, and Jimmy, steady and sure. He thought about Cassie, sleeping in her own bed, unaware of the world her father was fighting to keep clean.

An hour later, the phone in Don’s apartment rang again. He was back, having dropped Jimmy off at the hospital and returned to the apartment to gather his thoughts, his notebook, his badge. The radiator clanked, a steady counterpoint to the ringing. Don picked up the receiver, expecting a call from the precinct, or perhaps from Cassie.

Instead, it was Wanda Freeman.

Her voice was different than usual, stripped of its usual performative warmth, raw and urgent. “Don,” she said, her breath hitching slightly. “I need to talk to you. Now.”

Don sat on the edge of his bed, the receiver pressed tight to his ear. “Wanda. What’s wrong?”

“The man,” she said. “The man who met Roy Tolbert in the private booth at the Cattlemen’s. The one I couldn’t name before. I can name him now.”

Don’s grip on the phone tightened. “Who is he?”

“His name is Marcus Vane,” she said. “But that’s not his real name. He’s a corporate fixer, Don. He works for Wade Hollister. He’s been using that name for years, moving money, silencing witnesses. I’ve been carrying that name since March, Don. I’ve been afraid. But I heard Amber Salazar’s mother crying on the news last night. I heard her. And I realized that fear is a luxury I can’t afford anymore.”

Don closed his eyes, processing the information. Marcus Vane. A name he hadn’t heard before, but one that fit the pattern. “Why now, Wanda?”

“Because Amber wasn’t just a girl who went missing,” Wanda said, her voice breaking. “She was a witness. She saw something she shouldn’t have. And if I don’t give you this name, she stays missing forever. And Roy stays dead. And I stay silent. I’m tired of being silent, Don.”

Don thanked her, his voice gentle, acknowledging the weight of her decision. He hung up, the silence of the apartment rushing back in. He stood up, walking to the window. The city outside was beginning to stir, the first hints of dawn bleeding through the gray sky. He knew what he had to do. He had to go to the Ship Channel. He had to tie the knot.

Jimmy stood on the pier, the wind whipping his coat around his legs. The Ship Channel was dark, the water black and oily, reflecting the faint glow of the industrial lights on the horizon. The cranes loomed like skeletal giants, their arms raised against the twilight sky. Jimmy held the evidence bag in one hand, the chrome lighter inside glinting in the dim light. It was engraved with the initials R.T. Roy Tolbert.

The Coast Guard cutter had come alongside the Marianne Kay an hour ago, cutting the boat’s motor and securing the deck. The dredging vessel sat idle, its hull slick with condensation, its engines cold. The connection was now on the record: this was the boat that had dumped Tolbert into the bayou, the same boat Wade Hollister used to keep his second books, to launder money, to silence anyone who got too close.

Jimmy watched as the Coast Guard officers moved across the deck, collecting evidence, taking photographs. He saw the ledger, the one Don had retrieved from the freezer, being placed in a separate bag. He saw the manifests, the logs, the records of every trip the Marianne Kay had taken over the past decade.

And then he saw it. A name on the manifest for a night three months earlier. Amber Salazar.

Jimmy’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at the paper, the ink smudged slightly by the humidity. Amber Salazar had been on the boat. She had seen the wrong ledger. She had asked the wrong questions. And now she was gone. The missing-girl case just became a homicide. The realization settled in his chest, heavy and cold, a stone that would never dissolve.

He looked away, scanning the documents spread out on the pier table. There, among the security permits, was a signature he recognized. Bordelon. Lieutenant Mickey Bordelon had signed the permits for the Marianne Kay every year for a decade. He had authorized the boat’s movements, covered its tracks, protected Hollister’s operation. Internal Affairs would be at his door by morning. The thought brought Jimmy no satisfaction. He felt only a profound exhaustion, a weariness that went deeper than bone.

He turned back to the water, watching the ripples distort the reflection of the lights. The city was waking up, the day beginning, the machinery of corruption grinding on. He wondered if it would ever stop. He wondered if anything ever really changed.

Don’s pager beeped, a sharp, electronic chirp that cut through the quiet of the apartment. He looked down at the device clipped to his belt. Ben Taub Hospital. He pressed the button to call back, his heart pounding in his chest.

“Redman,” he said when the line connected.

“Mr. Redman,” a nurse’s voice said, calm and professional. “This is the maternity ward at Ben Taub. Mrs. Dixon has given birth. It’s a boy. Seven pounds, six ounces. Mother and baby are stable.”

Don let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. “Thank you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Thank you.”

He hung up, standing in the center of the room, the silence of the apartment pressing in on him. He had done it. He had survived the night. He had broken the case. And now, a new life was entering the world.

He grabbed his keys and his jacket, heading out the door. The streets were still quiet, the dawn light painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. He got into his car, starting the engine. The radio crackled to life, an AM station playing a replay of the Astros game from the night before. The ninth inning. A nobody watched game. The announcer’s voice was loud and enthusiastic, describing a play that had happened hours ago, to a crowd that was now gone.

Don turned up the volume, letting the noise fill the car. He drove toward the Ship Channel, the city unfolding around him. The buildings rose up, stark and imposing, their windows reflecting the growing light. The bridges spanned the gaps, connecting one side of the city to the other. He crossed the bridge, the wind rushing past his car, the river below dark and deep.

As he approached the pier, he saw Jimmy. He was walking toward him across the wet concrete, the evidence bag in one hand. Jimmy’s face was pale, his eyes tired, but there was a steadiness to his stride that Don recognized. It was the steadiness of a man who had faced the darkness and survived.

Don parked the car, getting out quickly. He walked toward Jimmy, the gravel crunching under his feet. They met in the middle of the pier, the water lapping against the pilings, the cranes looming overhead.

“Hey,” Don said, nodding at the evidence bag.

“Hey,” Jimmy replied, holding out the bag. “It’s all here. The lighter. The ledger. The manifests. Bordelon’s signature. It’s all there, Don.”

Don took the bag, feeling its weight. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

They stood there for a moment, the two of them, watching the sun rise over the channel. The light was bright now, burning off the fog, revealing the city in all its gritty glory. The case was closed. The truth was out. But the city remained unchanged, indifferent to their victory, indifferent to their pain.

“I have to go to the hospital,” Don said, breaking the silence. “To meet Jimmy’s son.”

Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

Don looked at his friend, seeing the pride and the fear in his eyes. He knew he had to tell Cassie about Trent’s father. He knew he had to face the consequences of his actions, the irrevocable loss that came with doing the right thing. But for now, he had this moment. This quiet, fragile moment, where the night ended and the day began.

“I’ll drive you,” Don said.

Jimmy shook his head. “No. You go. I’ll take the subway. I need some time to think.”

Don nodded, understanding. He turned back to his car, the evidence bag tucked safely under his arm. He got in, starting the engine. The radio was still playing the Astros game, the announcer’s voice fading into static. Don turned it off, preferring the silence.

He pulled out of the parking lot, heading toward the hospital. The city stretched out before him, vast and complex, a maze of streets and stories. He knew he couldn’t save everyone. He knew he couldn’t fix everything. But he could protect the ones he loved. He could do his job. And for now, that was enough.

He drove between two worlds: the pier where the case just closed, and the hospital where his partner’s family just started. The sun rose higher, burning away the last of the night, casting long shadows across the road. Don kept his eyes on the road, his hands steady on the wheel, moving forward into the light.