Chapter 14: Evidence Room Breakdown
The interview room was a concrete cube painted a sickly shade of green. Through the one-way glass, I watched her. Aria sat stiffly on the metal chair, her shoulders hunched, fingers picking at a loose thread on her jeans. The blanket the female officer had given her was pooled in her lap like a shed skin. She looked small. Too small for the bright, buzzing overhead light that turned everything to stark shadow and washed-out color.
The cop with her was a meaty guy in his forties, sleeves rolled over thick forearms. He’d introduced himself as Officer Denton. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, playing the relaxed good cop.It was a transparent act. His eyes were flat, dismissive.
“So, run it by me one more time,” Denton said, his voice a bored rumble through the speaker. “You just happened to be following these gentlemen because you think they know something about a missing college girl.”
“Yes,” Aria said. Her voice was thin. The word trembled.
“And you thought the best approach was a confrontation in an abandoned lot at two in the morning.”
“It wasn’t… it wasn’t like that. They saw us.”
My knuckles ached. I realized I was pressing my fists into the observation ledge. The female chief, a sharp-eyed woman named Bryson with grey streaking her black hair, stood silently beside me, watching the same scene. She’d pulled me in here after glancing at the contents of the duffel bag. “Your friend in the other room gave a compelling digital trail,” she’d said. “But I need to hear her story. And you need to let me do my job.”
So I watched. And I burned.
Aria’s hands started to shake. It was a fine tremor at first, just in her fingertips. I knew the signs. The adrenaline dump from the warehouse was receding, leaving the raw, over-exposed wires of her system exposed. She needed chemical equilibrium. She needed the small, orange bottles in her backpack, which was still in the damn Challenger in the impound lot.
“I… I don’t have my meds on me,” she said, her eyes downcast. “They’re in the car. And I really need to take my dose.”
Denton pushed off the wall, a smirk playing on his lips. “Meds, huh? Like what?Pain killers? Narcotics? Opioids?”
The condescension in his voice was a physical thing. It coated the air in the observation room.
Aria flinched. “No…no, not…not drugs like that. Zoloft, lithium and Keppra.” She whispered the last part, as if ashamed of the syllables.
He leaned over the table, his bulk looming. “Huh. What, you mentally insane or something?”
The question hung in the air, cruel and blunt. Aria’s head jerked up. I saw her eyes glistening, her breath catching in short, sharp hitches. The tremor was spreading up her arms. “…No. I have severe anxiety, depression and PTSD. I also have bipolar disorder and epilepsy.” The last word was a frayed thread of sound.
Officer Denton snorted, straightening up. He shook his head, a gesture of profound, ignorant dismissal. “Well, only an insane person would be out at a warehouse in the middle of the night with a gun to her head.”
It was the trigger. The final, stupid, crushing weight.
Aria’s body went rigid. Her eyes lost focus, fixed on a point in the middle distance. The shaking stopped for a terrifying second, replaced by absolute stillness. Then her head tilted back, a slow, unnerving arc. A low, guttural sound escaped her throat.
“She’s about to have a seizure,” I said, my voice strangely calm even as my insides turned to ice.
Chief Bryson was already moving. “I see it.”
She shoved the door open just as Aria’s body convulsed, the metal chair screeching back as she slid from it. Denton stumbled backward, his smugness replaced by shock. “What the hell—”
“Get out!” Bryson barked at him, her authority slicing through the room. “Now! And get an EMT unit here!”
I was past her, on my knees on the cold linoleum as Aria’s body arched, then began to thrash. The grand mal seized her with a terrible, mechanical violence. Her limbs jerked, her heels drumming a frantic, awful rhythm on the floor. The sound was the worst part—the choked gasps, the grinding of her teeth.
I moved quickly, pulling the table away, cushioning her head with my folded jacket. My hands hovered, useless. You don’t hold them down. You just keep them safe.
“Aria,” I said, my voice a low, steady murmur against the chaos of her body. “I’m right here. You’re safe. You just have to let it pass. It’s okay, sweet girl. I’m right here.”
Chief Bryson crouched on her other side, checking her watch, her face a mask of professional concern. She shot a venomous look at Denton, who hovered in the doorway, pale. “I said out! And shut the door!”
The door clicked shut, muffling the world outside. It was just the three of us in the buzzing, green-lit room—the chief timing the seizure, me whispering into the storm.
Aria’s eyes were rolled back, whites showing. Flecks of foam appeared at the corner of her mouth. I wiped them away gently with the edge of my sleeve. My heart was a hammer against my ribs, but my voice remained a calm, continuous stream. “You’re doing so well. You’re so strong. Just let it happen. I’ve got you. You’re safe here with me. No one’s going to hurt you.”
I don’t know how long it lasted. Thirty seconds.A lifetime. Her movements began to slow, the violent jerks subsiding into weak twitches, then finally, a profound and terrifying stillness. The postictal phase. Her breathing was ragged, wet. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Aria?” I whispered, my hand cupping her cheek. “Can you hear me?”
A low moan. Her eyes opened, but they saw nothing. They were clouded with confusion and a deep, groggy terror. She tried to speak, but only a slurry sound came out.
“Shhh. Don’t try to talk. You had a seizure. You’re in the police station. Chief Bryson is here. I’m here. You’re safe.”
She blinked, a tear tracking through the sweat on her temple. Her gaze drifted, trying to anchor itself, and found my face. A flicker of recognition. Her hand, limp and cold, twitched toward mine.
I took it, holding it firmly. “There you are.”
The EMTs arrived then, efficient and quiet. They checked her vitals, asked me questions about the duration, her history. I answered in terse, factual bursts. Chief Bryson handled everything else, her voice a firm command that cleared paperwork and waived protocol. “She’s going to the hospital.Now. And you,” she said, turning to a chastened Denton in the hall, “are on desk duty until you complete a sensitivity training module. Christ.”
In the ambulance, under the strobing red and white lights, Aria finally surfaced fully. The confusion was replaced by a weary, deep embarrassment. She was strapped to the gurney, an IV in her arm. She looked at me, seated beside her on a hard jump seat, and her face crumpled.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“Stop,” I said, the word coming out harsher than I intended. I softened my tone. “Don’t you dare apologize for that.”
“I ruined everything. The interrogation… the evidence…”
“You ruined nothing. That cop was an ass. Bryson has the files. She believes us.” I reached over, brushing her tangled hair from her forehead. “The only thing that matters is you.”
At the hospital, it was a blur of fluorescent lights and sterile smells. They wheeled her into a curtained bay in the ER. A tired-looking doctor with kind eyes asked her the same questions. I produced the pill bottles from her backpack, which an officer had finally retrieved from the car. The nurse administered her evening dose along with the IV fluids.
The hum of the hospital, the beeping of monitors, the low murmur of other patients—it was a strange, impersonal peace. The crisis had tipped over into aftermath.
Sometime around dawn, they moved her to a quiet observation room. She was sitting up in the bed, looking pale but lucid, wearing a faded hospital gown. The harsh light made the shadows under her eyes look like bruises.
I pulled a chair up to the bed. We were alone.
“Hey,” she said, offering a weak smile.
“Hey.”
“I think I bit my tongue.”
“You did. It’ll be sore for a day.”
She nodded, looking down at her hands. The post-seizure melancholy was settling over her, a heavy, familiar cloak. “He called me insane.”
“He’s an idiot. His opinion is worthless.”
“It felt… it felt like he was just saying what everyone thinks when they see the pill bottles.” She picked at the tape holding her IV in place. “That I’m broken. Unreliable. A liability.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, forcing her to look at me. “Listen to me. What you are is the strongest person I know. You walked out of a nightmare and learned to use a smartphone. You fight a war inside your own head every single day and you still get up and choose pink Stanley cups and Taylor Swift songs. That man with the gun?” My voice dropped low. “He broke. You didn’t. You never have.”
A tear spilled over and tracked down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. “I was so scared.”
“I know.”
“Not of the gun. I mean, I was. But… when he said that about me not minding dying… I minded so much, Levi. All I could think about was my stupid pink headphones. And your terrible coffee. And how I never got to see if Eren and Armin finally get their shit together. I minded everything.”
A lump formed in my throat. I took her hand, the one without the IV. “Good.”
We sat in silence for a long while. The sky outside the window lightened from black to deep grey.
“Chief Bryson came by while you were getting scanned,” I said finally. “The files from the duffel bag… they’re substantial. Financial records for shell companies. Shipment logs.Photographs. And a handwritten ledger with initials and dates. She’s putting a task force together. Liora’s case is being reopened, with Vance as a primary person of interest.”
Aria absorbed this, her thumb stroking the back of my hand. “So we did it?”
“We started it,” I corrected. “The police will handle it from here. The official way.”
The words hung between them, the idea of an ending feeling more fragile than the quiet of the hospital room.
Aria stared at their joined hands, at the pale tape holding the IV needle in her vein. The hum of the fluorescent light was a constant, irritating buzz. Her mouth felt cottony from the medications. The official way. It sounded so clean, so final. It sounded like being dismissed.
“I just want to go home now.” The whisper was raw, scraped from somewhere deep and bruised inside her. She didn’t look at him. “It doesn’t even have to be Binghamton. We…we could go back to Columbus. You have your business out there and you have to be there anyway for that. I have a lot of money saved up. We could find a bigger apartment or something. Eren and Armin could even stay with us if they wanted.”
Her voice was so small, so utterly drained of the peppy confidence that was her usual armor. This was the stripped-down version, the one that hid behind the pastel pink and the curated playlists.
Levi was silent for a long moment. He watched a muscle twitch in her jaw, saw the exhausted plea in the slump of her shoulders. He thought of the cold warehouse lot, the gun against her skin, the terrible stillness of her body seizing on the green linoleum. He thought of the cramped apartment in Columbus, the scent of oil and metal from his shop clinging to his clothes, the utter normality of it.
A home. Not a safehouse. Not a motel room stinking of decay. A place where her pink things could exist without the context of fear.
“We could just buy a house instead.”
The statement was so flat, so simple. It wasn’t a question. It was a decision, laid out like a tool on a clean workbench.
Aria’s eyes snapped to his, wide and swimming with a fresh wave of tears. “What?”
“You heard me.” He shrugged one shoulder, his thumb tracing circles on the back of her hand. “If we’re going back, we’re not hiding in an apartment. We’ll get a house.With a yard. A garage for the Challenger. A kitchen big enough for you to clutter with every gadget you see on TikTok.”
A watery laugh hiccupped out of her. “You hate the gadgets.”
“I hate the beeping,” he corrected. “But I like watching you use them. You get this… focused look. Like you’re solving a puzzle.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping. “We can paint a room pink. The whole thing. I don’t care.”
She was full-on crying now, silent tears cutting tracks through the residual hospital pallor. “You’re serious.”
“I have never been more serious about anything in my life.” He said it with the same tone he’d use to confirm a torque specification.Absolute certainty. “The business is fine. It runs itself. My manager can handle another month. This is the priority.”
The door to the room creaked open, breaking the spell. Eren stood there, filling the doorway with his tense posture. Armin peeked around from behind him, a laptop bag still slung over his shoulder. They both looked rumpled, wired from a night in separate interrogation rooms.
“They cut us loose,” Eren said, his voice grating. He looked at Aria, his fierce expression softening a fraction. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” Aria croaked, wiping her cheeks with her free hand. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
Armin stepped fully into the room, his analytical eyes scanning the monitors, the IV, Levi’s protective posture. “They confiscated the files as evidence. But not before I made copies.” He tapped his laptop bag. “The digital ones, at least. Chief Bryson was… surprisingly cooperative once she verified Liora’s dental records against a Jane Doe from last year.”
The air left the room. “A Jane Doe?” Aria asked.
“In Cleveland.” Armin’s voice was clinical, a defense against the horror.“Strangulation. No ID, no leads. Until now. The photo in the duffel bag was a match. Bryson thinks Vance was keeping trophies. The ID, the picture… they were souvenirs. The ledger might connect him to the trafficking ring that likely took her.”
Eren’s fist clenched at his side. He stared at a spot on the wall, his jaw working. The helpless rage was a physical heat coming off him.
“So it’s over?” Aria asked. The hope in her voice was a fragile, broken thing.
“For us, maybe,” Levi said, his gaze still on her. “For him, it’s just beginning. Bryson has enough to bring him in for questioning. The financial ties Armin found are messy. He’ll have lawyers. It’ll be slow.”
“But he’ll know it was us,” Eren muttered, finally looking away from the wall. “He’ll know we took his toys and gave them to the cops.”
“Probably.” Levi didn’t sound concerned. He sounded ready. “Which is why we won’t be in Syracuse by tonight.”
He stood up, his joints protesting from hours in the hard chair. He kept hold of Aria’s hand. “We’re going to Columbus. All of us.” He looked at Eren and Armin. “You can follow us down, or ride with us. But we’re leaving this city in the rearview. Today.”
Armin nodded slowly, already processing logistics. “The Challenger is still impounded. It’ll take a few hours to release it.”
“Then we’ll wait.” Levi’s tone brooked no argument. “We’ll get coffee.Terrible hospital coffee. Then we’ll get the car, get our things from that shithole motel, and we’ll drive west.”
Aria let out a long, shuddering breath. The plan was a lifeline. A direction.Home. A house. A yard. It was so impossibly normal it felt like a fantasy. But Levi had said it, and Levi didn’t deal in fantasies. He dealt in concrete and steel and undeniable facts.
She looked from Levi’s resolute face to Eren’s simmering anger to Armin’s calculating calm. They were a broken, patchwork unit, held together by scars and a shared, unspeakable past. But they were hers.
“Okay,” she whispered, squeezing his hand back. The word felt like a first step on solid ground. “Let’s go home.”
The silence after she said it was filled with the hospital’s distant, tinny pages and the shudder of the ancient HVAC system. It was a fragile plan, spoken into a sterile room, and it immediately met the hard surface of reality. The Challenger wasn’t released until four that afternoon, tangled in bureaucratic red tape about evidence procedures. By the time Armin finished signing the last form, the sky was a bruised purple, and a cold, needle-fine rain was needling down, making the streets of Syracuse gleam under the sulfurous orange of the streetlights.
They stood huddled under the awning of the impound lot office, watching Eren inspect the car for new dings. The exhaustion was a third entity among them, heavy and sour. Aria leaned against Levi, her body a faint tremor of spent adrenaline and medicinal crash. The thought of the six-hour drive to Columbus in the dark, through the rain, felt like a physical impossibility. The idea of returning to the mildew and despair of the pink motel was worse.
Levi’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, his expression not changing. He thumbed the screen a few times, his movements precise. “Change of plan,” he said, his voice cutting through the hiss of tires on wet asphalt. “We’re not driving tonight.”
Eren looked up, a challenge in his eyes. “Why? You scared of a little rain?”
“She’s exhausted. You’re twitchy. Armin hasn’t slept in thirty-six hours.” Levi stated it as clinical fact. “We’re forty minutes from the Turning Stone. We’ll stay there.”
Armin blinked. “The casino resort? Levi, that’s…”
“Expensive. I know.” He didn’t elaborate. He simply opened the passenger door of the Challenger and guided Aria inside. “Follow the GPS.”
The drive was a blur of wet darkness and the rhythmic swipe of windshield wipers. Aria dozed fitfully, her head lolling against the cool window, jerked awake by the sudden blaze of light as they exited the highway. The resort rose from the flat, dark landscape like a spaceship—tiers of glowing glass and steel, a monument to sterile, curated escapism. Valets in crisp uniforms swarmed the sleek porte-cochere.
Levi handed the keys to a valet without a word, pulled a black credit card from his wallet, and guided their ragged group through the automatic doors. The lobby was a vast canyon of polished marble, echoing with the muted chimes of slot machines from a distant room. The air smelled of synthetic floral perfume and money.
The clerk at the platinum check-in desk took one look at them—the dried blood on Eren’s knuckles, Aria’s hospital bracelet peeking from her sleeve, Armin’s pale, focused intensity—and her professional smile tightened. Then she saw Levi’s card, and her eyes flicked to her screen. Her demeanor transformed into obsequious warmth. “Of course, Mr. Ackerman. Your two-bedroom tower suite is ready. Top floor. The elevator is just to your right.”
The suite was an assault of quiet luxury. Floor-to-ceiling windows presented a panoramic view of the rainy night. A living area with low, modern furniture in shades of cream and grey separated two large bedrooms. A kitchenette stocked with mineral water and expensive snacks gleamed under recessed lighting. It was the absolute antithesis of the Syracuse safehouse.
Eren stalked to the window, his reflection a tense ghost over the glittering parking lot far below. “How the fuck can you afford this?”
Levi was already placing Aria’s backpack carefully on a chair. “The motorcycle company does well. The custom builds for tech bros in California pay roughly five times what a sane person would spend.” He said it without pride, a simple statement of fact. “I invest. I have assets.” He looked at Eren. “It’s just money. It means nothing here.”
Aria stood in the center of the immense room, seeming smaller than ever. The plush carpet swallowed her footsteps. She was adrift in the silence. The confrontation with the cop, the seizure, the gun—it all churned inside her, a silent storm the medications couldn’t fully quell. She needed to feel something real, something that wasn’t hospital starch or police station green or this impersonal, beautiful room.