Chapter 7 - The Midnight Visitor
The kitchen of the ranch house was lit only by the pale amber glow of the stove clock reading 11:42 PM.
Evan was fast asleep upstairs in his room, exhausted by the emotional wreckage of the martial arts gym and the terrifying encounter at the edge of the woods. I sat at the wooden kitchen table, the heavy manila folder spread open before me under the harsh beam of a gooseneck desk lamp.
The documents inside were chillingly thorough. They contained redacted deployment logs from my old unit, aerial photographs of this very house taken from a drone no older than a week, and bank records showing every transaction I’d made since moving to Cedar Falls nine years ago. But what caught my eye—what made the hair on the back of my neck stand up—wasn't the history of my past.
It was a single printed email chain dated two days ago, bearing the letterhead of the Cedar Falls Municipal Council and cc’ing an address I knew all too well: Chief Thomas Miller, Internal Affairs.
Miller. The man I had saved during an ambush in downtown Portland back in my early police reserve days, the man I had personally sponsored for the precinct commander position three years ago.
My phone buzzed violently against the wood, breaking the silence of the room.
I picked it up immediately, swiping the screen. It was an encrypted text from an unlisted burner number.
“Don't trust the station house, El. They know about the folder. Miller just signed off on a search warrant for your property under the guise of an anonymous weapons tip. They’re coming right now.”
The text was unsigned, but the encrypted hash belonged to Thomas—old, reliable, veteran Thomas, who had clearly discovered the betrayal inside his own department before the ink on the warrant had even dried.
I didn't hesitate. I shoved the manila folder into my leather fieldwork satchel, grabbed my tactical chest rig from the hall closet, and pulled my heavy duty Sig Sauer pistol from its wall safe, checking the magazine by touch alone in the dark.
May you like
As I turned toward the stairs to wake Evan, the sharp, blinding flash of twin high-beam headlights suddenly washed across the front living room windows, followed by the heavy, unmistakable crunch of multiple police cruisers rolling up our private gravel driveway.
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