CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LETTY
They loaded Wyatt into the back of a Salt & Steel vehicle. Letty climbed in without asking. She touched Wyatt, and Cal watched her from the door with a hard, steady gaze.
“You good?”
“No,” she said honestly. “But I will be.”
Cal nodded once. “That’s the only acceptable answer.” He closed the door with a loud thud. The vehicle jolted forward as Letty pressed fresh gauze to Wyatt’s side, hands shaking only a little now.
Wyatt’s eyes fluttered as he tried to speak.
She leaned close, mouth near his ear. “I’m here. Don’t think about leaving me.”
His fingers tightened weakly around hers. A ghost of his earlier intensity flashed in his eyes. “Stay,” he rasped.
It wasn’t a command. She smiled. He was confirming that he was going to live, and he wanted her there. Letty swallowed hard, blinking back something that burned behind her eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. Not Dallas, not anywhere, not without you, not until you are ready to go home with me.”
Wyatt’s eyes closed briefly, as if the words allowed him to release a fraction of tension.
Outside, the glow of the burning warehouse lit the night sky. Her stomach rolled watching the sick orange glow cover the view. Letty squeezed Wyatt’s hand. Will had wanted fire to be the ending. But for Letty, it felt like a beginning. She chewed her lip.Love isn’t the soft thing I once thought it was. Love is dragging a bleeding man out of an inferno, keeping him conscious with my hands, my mouth, and my voice…She willed Wyatt to be strong.
Channel 16 crackled faintly from the seat beside her. Rhea’s voice came through, tight with triumph. “Cops just pulled Driscoll off the service road. He’s bleeding. He’ll talk.”
Cal’s reply was calm as stone. “Good.”
Letty pressed her forehead to Wyatt’s temple. “Hold the line,” she whispered.
Wyatt’s lips moved against her hair, barely there, but she felt it, and it felt like a promise.
LETTY
The official report didn’t feel triumphant. Letty fanned the pages and stacked them in her hands against the desk. She sat at the long table in the glassed-in Bridge at Salt & Steel while Deputy Fire Marshal Holloway reviewed the final summary on the big screen behind them.
Rhea stood near the console, arms folded, expression cool and precise.
“Thomas leveraged marina access to facilitate cargo transfers,” Cal said, voice clipped and professional. “The Palmetto Royale fire was designed to eliminate irregular documentation and intimidate anyone who might push for deeper investigation.”
Holloway cleared his throat. “And to collect the money from insurance. He would have been successful…”
Letty didn’t flinch. “He needed the fire to look accidental. If the burn pattern held as a simple mechanical fault, the boat would be cleared faster. No audit. No cross-agency review.”
“And when you didn’t back off…” Cal’s tone resonated in the room. “He escalated.”
Letty’s heart rate spiked. Her mind spun with images: the warehouse, the knife, and smoke. Her stomach flipped as she remembered the smell of copper in the smoke as Wyatt bled on the concrete. She steeled her voice. “He miscalculated how many people would stand between him and what he wanted.”
Cal’s gaze flicked briefly toward Wyatt, who leaned against the railing behind her, stitched and watchful.
The Deputy Fire Marshal nodded. “Driscoll’s cooperating. Will Thomas is being charged with arson, attempted murder, conspiracy, and federal smuggling violations.” He gave Letty a measured look. “Your documentation helped tie the marinastaging to the warehouse accelerant.” He took a breath and blew it out. “I apologize for my earlier behavior about your findings.”
Letty met his eyes. “Patterns matter.”
This time, he didn’t argue.
The case closed the way disasters often did… with signatures and sealed evidence bags.
When Holloway left, silence settled over The Bridge, and Letty tapped her pen. “Did anyone figure out how Councilman Pike knew to send me a text?”
