Page 36 of Hunted in the Silence

“You’ve read it?” she said to Olivia, her voice carefully even.

“Twice,” Olivia said. “Once for the story. Once to study how she structured the investigation narrative. I don’t read much fiction, but I read everything Mercer writes.” She glanced up from her screen with the sharp, unapologetic directness that was her whole manner. “She gets it right. The way the system fails people and the way people survive the system anyway. She gets it right every time.”

Brynn was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “She does.”

Cole watched the side of her face. The thing that was happening there was small and carefully contained, but he’d spent enough time studying her face in the past two weeks to read the nuances of it without her knowing.

He looked back at the board.

Three days left.

There was too much to do between now and then for anything else.

But he thought about a text on his phone that had said Don’t make other plans for that evening, and about the worn paperback with two Post-it flags on the corner of Brynn’s desk, and something settled in him that was patient and pointed and entirely willing to wait.

Chapter 12

The coordination meeting was at seven in the morning in Carson’s office at BPD, which meant Brynn was up at five-thirty and at the advocacy center by six to pull the final version of her victim response plan before driving across town. She printed three copies. Collated them herself, because she’d learned years ago that the people who controlled the paper in a meeting controlled a surprising amount of the meeting.

Carson’s office fit five people without much room to spare. Carson was behind his desk, Finn Steele in the chair to his left, Cole and Dax standing at the whiteboard Carson had cleared for this purpose, Olivia with her laptop on the narrow windowsill because she preferred to stand when she worked and the chair against the wall was too low. Brynn took the remaining chair and put the three copies of her plan on the desk where people could reach them.

She’d met Finn twice before, briefly, when the center had worked some cases with BPD. He was younger than his record suggested—late twenties, the kind of lean and watchful that came from growing up in a neighborhood where awareness meant survival. He shook her hand with the same direct acknowledgment she did.

Cole ran the meeting, holding the room’s attention easily, laying out the plan step by step. The entry timeline. The rear approach. The two-minute window between Dax’s signal on the padlock and the front and side teams moving. He detailed their priorities once inside the building—south room first, which Carson had confirmed matched BPD’s read after Finn had done a third night of surveillance and gotten a clearer look at the building’s exterior ventilation layout.

“The ventilation on the south wall is covered,” Finn said. He had a quiet voice, the kind that made you listen more carefully when he spoke. “Whoever modified that building put additional paneling over the original vent openings on the south side. From the outside it looks like maintenance. From the inside, if you know what you’re looking at, it means they didn’t want sound coming out of the south room.”

Brynn mulled that over, not liking what she’d heard.

“How many people inside?” Carson asked Cole.

“We’re estimating three to four on their side. Two handlers confirmed from Finn’s surveillance, a third probable based on the shift rotation pattern we’ve documented over four nights. A fourth is possible but not confirmed.” Cole looked at the board. “We go in with eight. Entry team of four split between front and side, two supporting the perimeter, Dax on the rear, and—” He paused for a fraction of a second. “Brynn in with the second wave. Two minutes after entry team, once the building is called clear.”

Carson looked at Brynn. She met his eyes steadily. He held her gaze for a beat, and whatever he saw there apparently answered whatever question he’d been forming, and turned back to the board.

“What are the rules of engagement with the girls?” he asked.

“That’s Brynn’s portion,” Cole said.

She set her plans on the desk in front of Carson and walked them through it. No commands, no raised voices in the south room once the space was secured. No physical contact without invitation. No questions about what happened. Her job in those first minutes was to create a point of calm in the center of chaos, to be the voice and the face that said you are safe now and I understand what you’ve been through in a way that coming from a federal agent in tactical gear could not. She’d done this before. She knew what was needed.

The men in the room listened without interruption. Dax, she noticed, was already familiar with the process. She could see it in the way he in the quiet, steady way he listened. He’d worked cases like this before, had a wife who understood the behavioral science behind it. He was well-versed, without a need to broadcast it.

“Questions,” Cole said, when she finished.

There were a few. She answered them all quick and to the point.

By the end of the meeting they had a finalized plan, a timeline, assigned positions, and a communication chain that kept federal and local law enforcement coordinated without anyone stepping on anyone else’s toes. That kind of thing didn’t come easily and wasn’t guaranteed to hold under pressure, but it was the best possible scenario with what they had to work with.

Carson walked her out, while the others stayed to finalize a detail about radio frequencies with Finn. He fell into step beside her in the hallway, his hand pressing lightly at the small of her back.

“You doing all right?” he asked.

“I’m managing,” she said, ignoring the urge to lean deeper into his touch. “It’s close this time. Closer than it’s been.”

“I know.” Carson’s voice was even. “I want you to know that every person in that room is going to be exactly where they need to be on Thursday. Whatever happens, you’re not carrying this one by yourself.”

She looked up at him. Carson Black said what he meant and meant what he said, and he’d been one of the first members of local law enforcement to treat the center as a genuine partner rather than just a resource to be managed at arm’s length. She trusted him the way she trusted people who’d proven themselves in their work—which was more trust than she usually gave anyone.