"Didn't sleep well."
"Tyler."
"Leave it, Kai."
He studied me for a long moment, his eyes too knowing. We'd grown up together, he and I—foster siblings who'd chosen each other when the system had given us nothing else. He knew me better than anyone alive, which meant he could see through my bullshit with uncomfortable accuracy.
"Okay." His voice softened. "But when you're ready to talk, I'm here."
"I know."
Across the room, Tank stood and walked out without looking in my direction. The papers stayed on the table; Hawk gathered them with a frown, exchanging a glance with Axel that I couldn't interpret.
Something was wrong. Something beyond whatever was happening between Tank and me.
I finished my coffee and went to find out what.
The pharmaceutical analysis took most of the morning.
I sat with Hawk and Axel in the chapel, going through the documentation we'd recovered, explaining what the batch numbers meant and how the supply chain worked. The photographs were spread across the table like pieces of a puzzle—bottle labels, shipping manifests, inventory codes that told a story if you knew how to read them. It was familiar territory; I'd spent four years working cases like this with Cross, tracing drugs from seizure to destruction, identifying the gaps where product could disappear.
"Walk me through it." Hawk leaned back, arms crossed. "Assume I don't know anything about how this works."
I picked up one of the photographs—a close-up of a label, the batch number circled in red marker. "When the DEA seizes controlled substances, everything gets logged into a federal database. Batch number, quantity, seizure date, location. The drugs are supposed to be stored in secure facilities until they can be transported to an approved destruction site—usually an incinerator with federal oversight."
"Supposed to be." Axel's voice was dry.
"Right. The system has checkpoints. Every transfer requires signatures, witnesses, documentation. On paper, it's airtight." I tapped the photograph. "But this batch number? I ran it through what I remember of the federal coding system. It was logged as destroyed six months ago. Incinerated, witnessed, signed off. Except here it is, in the back of a Wolves cargo van, very much not destroyed."
Hawk leaned forward. "So someone's falsifying the destruction records."
"Someone with access. You'd need to be in the system—DEA, or someone with credentials to access their databases. And you'd need cooperation at the destruction facility, someone willing to sign off on incineration that never happened." I spread my hands. "It's not one person. It's a network. Multiple points of corruption, all working together."
"How much are we talking about?"
"Based on what we captured last night? If they're running shipments this size every week, we're looking at fifty, sixty million a year. Street value." I pulled another photograph closer—a manifest listing quantities and destinations. "But it's not just about the money. These drugs are going back into circulation without any quality control. They're being cut with whatever the dealers want—fentanyl, tranq, whatever's cheap—and sold to addicts who have no idea what they're really putting in their bodies. People are dying from this. Overdoses that look like user error but are really poisoned supply."
Axel's jaw tightened. "And the Wolves are the distribution network."
"They're part of it. The muscle, the transportation, the ground-level protection. But someone higher up is running the show—someone with federal access, federal protection." I met Hawk's eyes. "Cross isn't the top of this. He's management, maybe. A fixer. But the people above him? They're the ones with the power to make federal seizures disappear, to shut down investigations, to protect an operation this size from exposure."
The chapel fell silent. I could see themprocessing the implications—the scale of what we were facing, the resources arrayed against us. This wasn't a local problem. This was something systemic, something that reached into the institutions that were supposed to protect people.
"What do you need?" Hawk's voice was quiet, serious.
"The rest of the documentation from last night. Everything we photographed, everything we recovered. I can start building a picture of the network, identifying the players, mapping the supply chain." I paused, thinking of the skills I'd honed during my years in the Bureau—the pattern recognition, the data analysis, the ability to see connections that others missed. "But that's just intelligence. If you want to actually stop this..."
"We need to cut off the head."
"Or expose it. Get enough evidence to the right people, the ones who aren't bought." I thought of Sarah—my former handler, the woman who'd helped me escape Cross's orbit, who'd believed me when I said something was wrong. "I might know someone. Someone who's been building a case of her own. But reaching out is risky. If she's compromised, or if the network is monitoring her communications..."
"Everything's risky." Hawk stood, gathering the photographs. "Do what you need to do. Keep me informed."
He left. Axel lingered, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"You should talk to him."
"Who?"
