JESSE: We’ve got a problem. Bring her in. Now.
Dawson moved through the loft with quiet precision, scanning sight lines, checking exits. Habit wasn’t something you outgrew—it just adapted. He returned to the bedroom, and saw that she had awakened and gone into the bath. He began to dress in silence—jeans, T-shirt, Glock. The usual. Every motion was smooth, automatic, shaped by years of training.
Evangeline emerged as he finished buttoning his jeans. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her jaw clenched tight enough to leave a headache in its wake. Still, she held his gaze—fierce, unyielding.
She was ready. Or close enough.
He caught her reflection in the mirror as she fixed him with a look—sharp, smart, unbothered even with the weight of exhaustion pressing on her.
“You always get dressed like the world’s about to end?” Her voice was thick with exhaustion, but a spark of her irrepressible wit glinted through, cutting the heaviness in the air like a blade.
“Only when it is.”
“What now?” she asked, voice rough.
“Jesse just confirmed what we already knew,” he said. “The letter opener—your letter opener—was the only weapon.”
Her breath caught. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” He tossed the burner on the bed. “They didn’t just kill him. They staged it. Used your letter opener and then sent you that picture to make sure you knew what was coming.”
Her jaw hardened. “They want to rattle me. They think I’ll run.”
Dawson shook his head. “Not necessarily. They want to box you in. And if we wait too long, they’ll make damn sure you look guilty from every angle.”
"But I was with you..."
He smiled softly. "Yes, you were, but they don't know that. You have an airtight alibi. The police may try to break it and say I'm covering for you, but the alibi will hold. It's solid."
"It's also true. I say we don’t wait.” Her voice steadied in a way that made him want to shake her. “The cops think I did it.”
“Maybe, but so far they’re not saying that. They're keeping their cards close to their vest.”
She nodded but was moving before he could stop her, dragging on the same tight black jeans and oversized sweater she’d worn last night. No hesitation, no tears. Just sharp movements and clenched teeth. “Let’s go.”
Silver Spur’s headquarters was all controlled chaos—light flickering off too many monitors, the low hum of voices and keyboard clicks. Dawson led Evangeline inside, feeling the change in the air: a mix of adrenaline and fatigue, that sense of circling wagons before a siege. Gavin hunched over threelaptops, cursing at a frozen progress bar. A junior tech—Lia, barely out of college—met Dawson and Evangeline with coffee.
Reed stood by the main ops desk, arms crossed, eyes unreadable. He didn’t move when Dawson approached, just gave him a long, heavy look—the kind that said he already knew everything and wasn’t happy about any of it.
“Letter opener?” Dawson asked.
Reed grunted. “Jesse said the prints were partial. Enough to cause what they were hoping was a slam dunk, but not enough to clear her.”
Dawson felt a cold weight settle in his gut. Partial prints were enough to leak to the press. Enough to seed doubt in the minds of corporate officers, board members, and shareholders. Hell, even her own legal team might start treating her like a liability instead of a client. One misstep, and she'd lose more than her place with Shaw Petrochemical—she'd lose her freedom.
“"They were planted. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing," Reed said, his voice flat and certain.
“And they knew how to get in and out clean,” Jesse added, flicking the toothpick between his teeth. “Somebody inside’s helping them. Or at least looking the other way.”
Evangeline’s expression didn’t shift, but Dawson felt the heat rolling off her—a restless, furious energy that vibrated beneath her calm. He saw the way her hand hovered over her phone, fingers curling so tight her knuckles blanched, like she was holding herself together by sheer force of will. For a heartbeat, he wanted to take it from her, to ease the burden, to shield her from the next blow that was coming. But he knew she’d never forgive him for that kind of kindness. She’d rather break her own heart than be seen as breakable.
“You think it’s someone on my board?” she asked.
“I think someone wants this to trace back to you and is playing a long game to make it stick,” Reed said. “Could besomeone on your board. Could be someone in legal. Could be a janitor with the right key card and the wrong motive.”
Dawson looked between the two men. “We lock down the internal access logs yet?”
“Already on it,” Jesse said. “But someone scrubbed the last forty-eight hours. I’ve got a partial log that might give us something, but it’s a mess.”
