Wells hangs up his phone and turns to me. "Palmer PD is processing the garage. They've recovered shell casings, all nine millimeter. Suppressor based on the sound signature witnesses reported. No cameras in that section of the parking structure, but they're checking nearby businesses for traffic cameras that might have caught the shooter leaving."
"Will they find anything?"
"Probably not. Whoever sent him knows how to avoid surveillance." He pulls out a notepad. "I need you to walk me through everything. Start with when you found the USB drive."
I take another drink of water and start talking.
The words come easier than I expected—a clinical recitation of facts, timeline, observations. I tell him about getting assigned Emma's locker earlier today, finding the drive taped under the shelf liner, examining the metadata on my break, making the call to the FBI tip line.
Wells takes notes, his pen moving across paper with quick, efficient strokes. He doesn't interrupt, doesn't ask clarifying questions yet. Just lets me talk.
Lets me process by speaking it aloud.
"The woman on the tip line told me to keep the evidence secure," I say. "Not to discuss it with anyone. She said an agent would contact me to arrange retrieval." I pause, remembering the exact phrasing. "She said for my own safety I shouldn't share the information with anyone outside official channels."
Wells's pen stills. "For your own safety."
"That's what she said."
"What time did you make that call?"
"Around two this afternoon. During my break."
"And the shooting happened after that."
"At the end of my shift."
Only hours between a call to the FBI and someone showing up to execute me in a hospital parking garage. The timeline is impossible to ignore, the connection too clear to be coincidence.
Wells sets down his pen and meets my eyes directly. "Do you still have the USB drive?"
My hand moves to my pocket instinctively. Fingers brush against the small ziplock bag through the fabric of my scrubs. Proof that this afternoon happened. Proof that I'm not paranoid or overreacting or imagining threats that don't exist.
"Yes."
"I need to see it."
I pull out the small ziplock bag, the USB drive still inside where I left it this morning. There's nothing distinctive about it except what it represents. Wells takes the bag, holding it by the edges like evidence in a chain of custody he's already building in his head.
He studies it for a long moment. Turns it over in his hands without opening the ziplock. Looking for what, I don't know. Maybe just processing the weight of what I've handed him.
"I'm going to secure this," he says. "And then we wait for Sheriff Blackwater."
"He's not here?"
"He's on his way. Should be here any minute."
My stomach tightens. Emma's husband—the man who's spent years believing his wife died in a tragic accident, only to find out she was murdered for evidence I just handed to his deputy.
How do you face someone with that kind of truth?
As if summoned, the door opens. A man walks in who carries authority the way some people carry weapons—visible, undeniable, impossible to ignore. He's tall and broad-shouldered with a weathered beard, and his eyes assess everything in the room before focusing on Wells.
Lines bracket his mouth, deep enough I can see them through his beard. But his gaze is sharp, focused, the look of someone who's learned to function through pain.
"Marc."
"Rhys." Wells stands, holding the evidence bag. "This is Sela Mitchell. The trauma nurse from Palmer Regional."
