"I’m here, bug," I whispered into her neck, squeezing her so tightly my forearms shook. "I’m right here. Nobody is ever going to scare you again. I promise."
"The lady with the bandage let me have three marshmallows," she whispered, her voice muffled against my shoulder.
"Three?" I managed a small, ragged smile, pulling back to look at her. "Don't tell Auntie Kendra. She’ll think I’m losing my edge."
"I missed you," she said softly, touching the rough nylon of my vest.
"I missed you more than anything in this world," I said. "Now you sit tight with Deputy Ramos for just a few more minutes. Daddy has to sign some papers, and then we are going home to sleep for two days. Deal?"
"Deal," she said, leaning in to kiss my cheek before scampering back to the couch.
I stood up, swallowed the lump in my throat, and walked through the heavy doors into the provost marshal’s office.
United States Attorney Sarah Lin was already there. She had stripped off her soaked trench coat, revealing a sharp charcoal suit. Her dark hair was pulled back in an austere bun, and her jaw was set so tight the tendons stood out like wire.
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""Chapter 1: The Paper in the Spilled Water
Beside her, Special Agent in Charge Garrison was running the gold flash drive through an air-gapped military terminal, watching lines of encrypted ledger code decrypt across the monitor.
"Your chief of staff was arrested at Kennedy Airport twenty minutes ago, Sarah," Garrison said without looking up from the screen. "He had two million dollars in bearer bonds in a carry-on and a one-way ticket to Zurich."
Lin didn't flinch, but her hands were trembling slightly as she leaned over the table.
"He signed the offshore escrow agreements using my office's administrative delegation stamps," Lin said, her voice shaking with controlled rage. "He used my department to shield Bradley, Concincaid, and Julian Vance. They weren't just running an extortion racket on delivery couriers, Elias. They were laundering forty million dollars a year through port logistics, paying off precinct commanders to ensure that illegal maritime containers bypassed federal inspection entirely."
"And Washington?" I asked, stepping up to the table. "The stand-down order from the Attorney General’s office?"
Lin looked me dead in the eye.
"The Attorney General’s office didn't issue that order," she said. "The call to your field office came from an unlisted line inside the Department of Transportation’s maritime liaison bureau. Julian Vance had a confederate sitting in an inter-agency liaison desk who tried to run a bluff to give the barge enough time to dump the cargo."
She slammed a thick red legal binder onto the table.