Page 108 of In the Dark of the Past

I reached across the table. She looked at my hand and then put hers into it.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “For what he said about her. For what they did to her. For all of it.”

“I know,” she said. And then, after a beat, she added, “I’m going to be angry about it for a long time. But right now, I need to be here and remain useful. I’ll be pissed later.”

“You’re allowed to be both.”

“I know,” she said again. “You, too.”

A knock.

I stood, and Atlas pushed the door open, holding out his phone without preamble. “He filed while we were still in the parking lot.”

I took the phone.

Lucas Grant, the mayor of Maple Ridge, had submitted a formal complaint to the state oversight board at 1:17 a.m., roughly eight minutes after we burst out of Stonybrooke’s front entrance. He accused me of unlawful entry into a condemned state facility and added on evidence tampering and endangering an officer in my custody.

He was petitioning for an immediate oversight review of the Maple Ridge Sheriff’s Department. Pending review: suspension of the sitting sheriff.

I handed the phone back to Atlas.

“How long do we have?” I asked.

“The state board convenes at nine. If they expedite—which Grant will push for—you could have a suspension order by noon.”

River had followed us into the hall. She read the situation in our faces without needing the details. “He’s not trying to stop you,” she said. “He’s trying to make everything you’ve found and still have inadmissible. Discredit the source before the evidence gets to anyone who can use it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Which means we have until nine.”

Atlas checked his watch. “A few hours and change.”

“Then let’s talk to Jordyn.”

She was sitting at the interview table with her cuffed hands folded in front of her, staring at a fixed point on the wall. When we came in, she didn’t startle. She’d been waiting.

I sat across from her, River took the chair to my left, and Atlas stood by the door with his arms crossed. It wasn’t an aggressive stance, just taking up room.

“You said you’d help,” I said. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I know.”

“Start from the beginning. Not what you were told, but what you actually saw.”

She exhaled. And then she talked.

She’d been recruited a handful of years ago. Deputy position, good salary, a vague understanding that some assignments would require discretion and that the discretion was rewarded. She’d passed on information, not evidence. Not physical files, just data. Recently, what River was doing, what I was looking at, when evidence was logged and where. She’d thought she was protecting the town’s stability while also protecting her future. She’d told herself that enough times that she’d almost believed it.

“When did things change?” River asked.

Jordyn’s gaze moved to the table. “When I found out that Eleanor Jenkins wasn’t just missing.”

River went very still.

“I didn’t know who was behind it,” Jordyn said quickly. “Not at first, anyway. But I knew the files that I’d been asked to route had Eleanor’s intake number in the metadata. I knew she’d been in that building. And then the evidence and body turned up, and it didn’t match anything they’d told me. I”—she stopped and pressed her lips together—“I kept quiet. Because of my brother. Because Grant had things on Mark that would put him away, and if I stopped cooperating⁠—”

“Your brother killed Eleanor?” I asked.