He places a document on my desk—a single sheet, crisp, bearing an oversight agency letterhead I don’t immediately recognize. His fingers are deliberate on the paper, the placement precise, positioned so I can read it without reaching.
“But as a survivor of yearly ‘setups,’” he continues, the quotation marks audible in his inflection, “it’s good to give another professional a heads-up in the field. You know.”The smirk deepens, carrying something that looks almost like camaraderie—the specific, scarred-over kinship that exists between people who’ve had their careers used as weapons against them. “As a courtesy.”
We share a look.
Not the kind of look that carries romantic subtext or biological undercurrent—though his scent is still winding through the office like a slow-moving current I can’t fully outswim. This is the look of recognition. Two people who have navigated the same minefield, who bear the same institutional shrapnel, who understand without needing to explain that the system doesn’t break everyone the same way, but it breaks everyone.
I hold his gaze without softening, because softening is concession and I don’t concede.
“What do you need?”
Business. Back to business. The only safe ground in a room that is rapidly accumulating more layers of complication than I have emotional bandwidth to process.
Alaric settles into the visitor’s chair with the ease of a man transitioning between acts. The warmth dims to something more professional, the smirk receding into composed neutrality as his posture aligns with the briefing he’s about to deliver.
“Myself and my team are part of the oversight unit assigned to Sweetwater Falls,” he begins, fingers steepled in a way that mirrors Callahan’s habit so precisely I wonder if they trained under the same mentors. “Our mandate is to conduct an independent investigation of this station and its officers. Performance evaluations, procedural audits, case file reviews—the full spectrum of operational assessment.”
He meets my eyes.
“Obviously, it won’t have much to do with you directly, since you’re just as new here as we are. The focus is the officers whowere operating under the previous chief—their conduct, their case handling, and whether the department’s current state is the result of incompetence or something more intentional.”
Something more intentional.
So I’m not the only one who thinks the complacency in this department was engineered.
The validation lands harder than I expect, settling behind my ribs with a warmth that has nothing to do with his scent and everything to do with being heard. I’ve been building my theory in isolation—alone in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment with a corkboard and a coffee addiction—and hearing someone else arrive at the same conclusions independently makes the conspiracy feel less like paranoia and more like evidence.
“Our goal,” he continues, “is to monitor, observe, and gather evidence regarding this station’s performance. What needs to be improved, what needs to be gutted, and what needs to be investigated beyond the scope of a standard audit.”
I lean back in my chair—the leather creaking, still carrying traces of his body heat—and cross my arms.
“Okay.” I tilt my head, studying him the way I’d study a map with missing roads. “And what happens if they don’t reach satisfactory? Because I can speed that process along and tell you right now—they’re all a bunch of dead weight who couldn’t investigate a missing cat, let alone missing persons.”
The laughter that erupts from Alaric Venezuela is loud enough that I’m certain every officer sitting in the bullpen down the hall hears it through the door I left partially open. It’s full-bodied and unrestrained, the kind of sound that cracks the professional veneer entirely and reveals the man beneath the title—someone who, despite the silver in his hair and the weight of his experience, is capable of genuine, uncalculated amusement.
The scent of his laughter is almost worse than the scent of his stillness. The burnt vanilla warms. The cedarwood deepens. The bourbon takes on a toasted-sugar quality that makes my hindbrain sit up andpurrin a way I haven’t experienced since?—
Since never. Lock it down, Martinez. Immediately.
“Well then.” He recovers with the practiced ease of someone who laughs often but strategically, wiping the corner of one eye with a knuckle before settling his expression back into composed amusement. “If it doesn’t meet standards? Say goodbye to this entire station.”
I frown.
Not because the possibility surprises me—I threatened the same thing twenty minutes ago in the bullpen—but because hearing it from an outside authority transforms the hypothetical into something real. Dissolution. An entire department dismantled, officers reassigned or terminated, the institutional infrastructure of Sweetwater Falls’ law enforcement reduced to whatever whoever rebuilt it decided it should be.
And everything those officers were hiding would be buried under the rubble.
Alaric reads my frown with an accuracy that makes my jaw tighten.
He shrugs—a deliberate, calculated motion that manages to convey both indifference and precision simultaneously.
“I’ll make sure,” he says, and his voice drops half a register, “that if the station doesn’t meet our standards, your investigation back home is hopefully resolved by then. One way or another.”
A pause.
Then the smirk returns—slower this time, edged with something I can’t quite classify. His hands slide into the pockets of the beige coat, the motion pulling the fabric against his framein a way that highlights the lean architecture of his torso and the controlled way he carries his height.
“If not,” he adds, “you can always stay with us and transfer to our station.” The dark eyes hold mine with an intensity that goes beyond professional recruitment. “We need proper Omega officers in command positions. The kind who don’t quiver when a man raises his voice.”
