For a long moment. Long enough that the fire extinguisher foam settles on the cruiser’s wreckage. Long enough that the smoke column begins to thin. Long enough that Hazel’s breathing changes—not waking, not yet, but the rhythm shifting from the deep unconsciousness of impact to the shallower pattern that precedes surfacing.
Director Callahan.
The man who reassigned Hazel to Sweetwater Falls. The man who told her the transfer was protective—a temporary relocation while an internal investigation into her old station played out. The man who, according to Alaric’s assessment, either sent her here to connect dots to something hidden or sent her here as a distraction while the real operation continued in the city.
Either way, he knows more than he’s told any of us.
And either way, he’s the only person with the institutional leverage to provide what we need: a real investigation, with real resources, backed by real authority that can’t be blockedby whatever local or municipal power structure is protecting the people who just tried to blow up my?—
Hazel.
Who just tried to blow up Hazel.
I take a deep breath.
The air tastes like smoke and chemicals, and the eucalyptus-cocoa signature of a woman who is alive because sixty seconds of traffic made the difference.
I press the number.
The line rings.
Once. Twice. The specific, measured interval of a phone that is not set to voicemail because the man who owns it considers missed calls an operational failure.
Click.
“Callahan speaking.”
The voice is exactly as I remember—clipped, authoritative, carrying the specific cadence of a man who answers his phone the same way he enters a room: already in command, already assessing, already three steps ahead of whatever conversation is about to unfold.
“Hey,” I say.
The greeting is insufficient. The word carries none of the urgency, none of the gravity, none of the tactical context that the situation demands. It’s the verbal equivalent of showing up to a war zone in civilian clothes.
But it’s all I’ve got.
Because the next sentence is the one that costs me.
The one that requires Roman Kade to do the thing he has built his entire identity around never doing—admitting that the mission has exceeded his capacity, that the people he’s responsible for are in danger he can’t mitigate alone, that the woman in his arms deserves better protection than a parking lot and a man in the bushes can provide.
I look down at Hazel.
At the dust on her cheeks and the cut on her hairline and the icy blue hair falling across her closed eyes. At the woman who gave me a hug thirty seconds before someone tried to end her life. Who whispered “thank you” against my chest and said “don’t be a douche about it” and pulled away blushing like she’d just done the bravest thing she’d ever done.
Maybe she had.
For someone who learned that touch is a weapon, maybe a voluntary hug is the most courageous thing a body can do.
I take one more breath.
And say the words that I have never said to anyone, in any context, in any operational scenario across nearly fifteen years of command.
“I need your help.”
CHAPTER 16
Six Months
~HAZEL~
