Page 15 of Pursuit of Her
Eve had just gathered her notes for the press conference when Detective Mendez appeared in the doorway, her expression tightly controlled.
"Captain Morgan. A moment in private."
The request itself conveyed urgency. Eve followed Mendez to her office, closing the door behind them. "What did you find?"
Mendez placed the tablet on Eve's desk, the screen displaying side-by-side comparisons: the ATM footage from outside Phoenix Ridge Capital beside department photographs of several officers, including one that made Eve's heart stop: Detective Reagan Shaw.
"Facial recognition returned an 87% probability match to Detective Shaw," Mendez said quietly. "I ran it twice to confirm."
Eve stared at the images, the confirmation of her suspicions landing like a physical blow despite her mental preparation. The maintenance worker's partially visible features aligned with Reagan's bone structure, the statistical analysis highlighting matching points despite the decade's passage and deliberate concealment.
"Captain..." Mendez hesitated, the weight of her discovery evident in her voice. "Isn't Detective Shaw presumed dead? Her case was closed years ago."
"Presumed," Eve repeated, the word hollow in her mouth. "Never confirmed."
She studied the comparison again, memories superimposing themselves over the clinical analysis. Reagan's laugh during their academy graduation. The determined set of her jaw when tackling difficult cases. The way she'd looked the last time Eve saw her, passionate and frustrated as they argued about the limits of the justice system.
Eve reached a decision. "Delete the comparison results, Mendez. Completely. This stays between us until I can verify it personally."
Mendez hesitated. "Captain, if Detective Shaw is alive and potentially our suspect?—"
"This goes far beyond a simple vigilante case," Eve cut in. "You've seen the evidence from these crime scenes. If Shaw is alive and targeting these men specifically, we need to understand why before we take official action."
"You think her disappearance ten years ago is connected to what's happening now?"
"I think we need absolute certainty before we make accusations about a decorated officer presumed dead for a decade," Eve replied carefully. "If this gets into the system prematurely, it could compromise the entire investigation."
Mendez nodded and executed the deletion command, wiping the comparison from her tablet. "What's our next step?"
"I'll handle this personally," Eve said. "Your official results will show no matches in the system. Document that the image quality was insufficient for positive identification."
"Yes, Captain." Mendez's loyalty was evident, though concern shadowed her eyes. "And if this leads where you think it will?"
Eve met her gaze directly. "Then we'll handle it according to the evidence and justice, not politics."
Alone in her office, Eve allowed herself five seconds—five heartbeats of unguarded reaction to the confirmation that Reagan Shaw was alive. The woman she had mourned, whose absence had carved a void in her life that nothing had filled in ten years, was hunting powerful men through the streets of Phoenix Ridge.
The same men who had been connected in Reagan's investigation before she disappeared.
Eve's gaze fell on Davenport's appointment book,now photographed and partially decoded. Five names remained unmarked by death: Arthur Pembroke, Sebastian Harrington, Landon Fairchild, Winston Ashford, and—most troublingly—Commissioner Hannah Brooks' husband, Jonathan Brooks.
The pieces aligned with terrible clarity. Reagan had discovered corruption reaching into the highest levels of Phoenix Ridge's power structure. She had tried to investigate through official channels and disappeared as a result. Now she had returned as judge, jury, and executioner, systematically eliminating the men she held responsible while leaving evidence of their crimes for the public record.
And she had reached out to Eve directly, guiding her toward evidence that the others would want suppressed.
The question was no longer whether Reagan Shaw was the vigilante, but what Eve Morgan would do with that knowledge—and whether she could protect the investigation long enough to understand the full scope of the corruption before Commissioner Brooks and her allies realized what Eve had discovered.
Five seconds of private reaction. Then Captain Eve Morgan locked her emotions away once more, picked up her notes, and prepared to face a press conference orchestrated by the very people Reagan was targeting.
The hunter and the hunted, their roles increasingly blurred with each new revelation.
The press conference unfolded exactly as Eve had anticipated, a carefully orchestrated performance designed to project control while revealing nothing substantial.
Commissioner Hannah Brooks stood flanked by Mayor Amelia McAllister and District Attorney Katherine Powell, an imposing wall of power in tailored suits and neutral expressions. Eve remained slightly behind them, her face a professional mask betraying none of the revelations churning beneath.
"The Phoenix Ridge Police Department is pursuing multiple leads in these tragic killings," Brooks announced to the assembled press. "Captain Morgan's team is working tirelessly to bring this dangerous vigilante to justice."
Eve noted the Commissioner's deliberate word choice: "dangerous vigilante" rather than "murderer," a subtle distancing from the victims whose crimes were being exposed. She also caught the careful glance Brooks directed toward her: measuring, assessing, warning.
