Chapter 13: The USB Speaks
The glow from Sam’s laptop screen painted their faces a sickly blue in the dark living room. The hum of the computer was the only sound for a long moment, louder than their held breaths.
“Marco Verrati,” Jennifer finally said, the name tasting like oil and ash. She leaned back on the worn leather couch, the comforting smell of old books and Sam’s sandalwood soap now doing nothing to cut the chill in the air. “Of course it is. It’s always a guy with a nice suit and a charity wing named after his mother.”
Sam scrolled slowly through the ledger. “The Choir. Cute. His little angelic syndicate. ‘Veridian - Phase 2 - Full Moon.’ That’s tomorrow night.” He tapped the screen next to a geographic coordinate listed under the entry. “That’s a warehouse district off the 110. ‘Collections’ are scheduled for the same window.”
Jennifer stood up, her body aching with a sudden need to move. She paced the length of the rug, the piles of books and medical journals forming miniature cityscapes in the gloom. A vast, cold understanding was settling over her. Father Patrick hadn’t just stumbled onto a random act of corruption. He’d pulled a single thread and found it connected to the whole bloody tapestry of the empire.
“Patrick saw this,” she muttered, more to herself than to Sam. “He decrypted it, he understood it, and he was about to blow the whistle. The ‘Full Moon’ isn’t just a date. It’s a shipment. People, drugs, or both. And we have the where and the when.”
“We have a data dump from a dead priest,” Sam corrected, his tone clinical but not unsympathetic. “We have no chain of custody. We obtained it through a breaking and entering performed by a detective and a priest, which, last I checked, isn’t standard procedure. His lawyers would have this dismissed before the judge finished their morning coffee.”
She stopped pacing and looked at him. “So what’s your professional recommendation, Dr. Weaver? File it and forget it?”
He met her gaze, the screen’s light reflecting in his glasses. “My professional recommendation is to not get dead. Marco doesn’t frame loose ends, Jenny. He disappears them. The fact that this file exists means Patrick was a threat. The fact that we have it means we’re a threat.”
The use of the nickname, so new and still fragile, landed differently in the midst of the threat. It was a anchor, a personal stake in the professional dread.
“I have to bring this to Ruiz,” she said, the words feeling inadequate.
“You think the Captain’s office is clean?” Sam asked, not accusingly, but logically. “A operation this big needs eyes everywhere. You go through channels, this might not just get buried. It might get sent right back to the source.”
He had a point. It was the gnawing suspicion she’d been trying to outpace since she saw the name. She walked to the window, pulling back the blind to stare at the sleeping city. Lights glittered, indifferent. Somewhere out there, a man in a tailored suit was finalizing plans for tomorrow night, unaware that his ledger was currently being scrutinized by a medical examiner and a detective in a messy apartment.
The silence in the apartment stretched, thick with the weight of the USB drive’s contents. Jennifer let the blind fall back, the slats clicking softly.
“So we do nothing?” she asked, turning to face him. Her voice was tight, a wire pulled taut. “We sit on the location of a major trafficking operation because the paperwork’s bad?”
Sam closed the laptop lid with a definitive snap. “I’m saying you can’t kick the front door down with just this. You need a real plan, not a righteous charge. Going in blind gets people killed, and not just you.” He stood, running a hand through his coppery hair. “Think, Jenny. Please. For five minutes, think past the arrest.”
“I am thinking!” The words came out sharper than she intended. She gestured wildly at the hidden laptop. “I’m thinking about what ‘Phase 2 - Full Moon’ means for the people in those ‘collections.’ Every hour we wait, they get moved deeper into a hole we’ll never find.”
“And if you rush this and Marco gets tipped off, they vanish forever,” he countered, his own frustration bleeding through his usual calm. “Or you walk into an ambush. Your corpse ends up on my table, and I have to make jokes about it to stop from screaming. How’s that for a plan?”
The visceral image silenced her. She saw it for a flash: Sam’s practiced, detached expression in the cold morgue light, his hands moving over her own lifeless form. It wasn’t guilt he was weaponizing, but a raw, dreadful possibility.
He saw the shift in her eyes and stepped closer, his voice dropping. “Just… sleep on it. The world won’t end tonight. Stay here. Your brain works better when it’s not running on caffeine and fury.”
She wanted to resist, to cling to the imperative of immediate action. But the logic was a cold, solid wall. The fatigue from the break-in, the emotional whiplash of the discovery, it all settled on her shoulders at once. “Fine,” she exhaled, the fight draining out of her. “You’re right. God, I hate that.”
A slow, relieved smile broke across his face. “I’ll try not to let it go to my head.” The smile turned crooked, a glint returning to his eye. “So, since you’re staying… any chance I get lucky tonight?”
She swatted his arm, a genuine laugh escaping her. “In your dreams, Weaver. You get to be my teddy bear. Strictly non-felonious cuddling.”
“Worth a shot,” he chuckled, catching her hand and pulling her toward the bedroom.
Morning light, soft and honeyed, filtered through the blinds, striping the rumpled sheets. The smell of frying eggs and coffee replaced the previous night’s tension. Jennifer sat at Sam’s small kitchen table, wrapped in one of his too-big flannels, watching him move with a surprising domestic grace.
He slid a plate of perfect sunny-side-up eggs and toast in front of her. “See? Sustenance. Better than spiraling at 3 a.m.”
The coffee was good, bitter and strong. Jennifer ate slowly, the simplicity of the meal a stark contrast to the digital horror she’d swallowed last night. Each bite felt like a concession to normalcy, a temporary armistice with the chaos waiting outside Sam’s door.
“You’re quiet,” Sam observed, leaning against the counter with his own mug. “Which means you’re planning something stupidly noble.”
“I’m planning to shower,” she said, dodging. “And then go see my captain. My godfather’s godson is involved, Sam. Ruiz has a right to know his family is in the crosshairs.” She stood, taking her plate to the sink. “I’ll be careful. I’ll feel him out. But I have to move.”
He didn’t try to stop her. He just watched, his expression unreadable. As she passed him to head for the bathroom, he caught her wrist, his grip firm but not tight.
“Jenny.” His voice was low, stripped of all its usual irony. “Marco Verrati has people in the ports, in the courthouses, in the unions. Assume he has people in the precinct, too. Assume every word you say to Ruiz is being listened to by someone else.”
She held his gaze, the warmth of his fingers a counterpoint to the chill in his warning. “Then what do I do?”
“You trust your gut. And you call me before you do anything rash.” He released her, the ghost of his touch lingering. “Now go shower. You smell like a crime scene.”
The hot water did little to scrub the unease from her skin. She dressed in fresh clothes from her go-bag in Sam’s closet: dark jeans, a simple black tee, her shoulder holster a familiar weight. She kissed him goodbye at the door, a quick, hard press of lips that felt more like a promise than a farewell.
“Later,” he mumbled against her mouth.
“Later,” she agreed, and stepped into the hall.
The precinct buzzed with its usual chaotic energy, a symphony of ringing phones and frustrated voices. Jennifer moved through it like a ghost, the noise receding behind a wall of her own focus. She nodded at a few uniforms, her smile perfunctory. Her destination was the corner office with its fogged glass door: Captain Ruiz.
She didn’t knock. She entered, closing the door softly behind her. Ruiz looked up from a mountain of paperwork, his eyes tired. The photograph of his family, including a younger Julian in a graduation robe, sat prominently on the desk.
“Wu. You look like hell,” he grunted, setting his pen down. “What’s so important it couldn’t wait for the briefing?”
“It’s about the church case.” She remained standing, her posture deliberately neutral. “And it’s about Julian.”
That got his full attention. He leaned back, the old leather of his chair sighing. “Explain.”
She chose her words with the care of a bomb technician. “The murder wasn’t random. Father Patrick was targeted because of something he found. I have a lead, a strong one, pointing to a trafficking operation scheduled for tonight.” She paused, watching him. “The intel suggests a wide network. High-level. The kind that needs ears in a lot of places.”
Ruiz’s face didn’t flicker. He steepled his fingers. “You’re talking about Marco Verrati.”
The fact that he said the name so freely, without shock, was its own answer. “You know?”
“I know rumors. I know his charities give nice plaques to police foundations. I know he’s a ghost.” His eyes hardened. “What I need is evidence, Detective. Not hearsay from a grieving altar boy.”
The dismissal of Julian stung, but she pressed on. “I have a file. Decrypted from a source Father Patrick left behind. It lists locations, timestamps, code-names. ‘The Choir.’ ‘Veridian - Phase 2.’ It’s happening tonight, Captain. At the Fuller Warehouse complex.”
For a long moment, he was silent. The only sound was the distant clatter of a printer. He looked past her, out the window, his jaw working. “And my godson? Where does he fit into your file?”
“He’s not in it,” Jennifer said, and that was the truth. “But he was Patrick’s friend. He helped me access the source material. He’s in the periphery, and that might be enough for the wrong people to make a connection. He could be a loose end.”
Ruiz stood up abruptly, turning his back to her to stare at the city skyline. His broad shoulders were rigid. “You want to move on this warehouse. Tonight.”
“I want to surveil it. Confirm the activity. Then move with every black-and-white we can spare.” She took a step forward. “But if there’s a leak…”
“There’s always a leak,” he interrupted, his voice gravelly. He turned around, his decision made. “You run this. You and a skeleton crew you vouch for. No uniforms, no chatter over the radio. You confirm the shipment, you call me directly on my private cell. Then we flood the zone.” He picked up his family photo, looked at it, and set it down again. “You keep Julian out of it. You put him somewhere safe, and you do not tell him why. Am I clear?”
It was more than she’d hoped for. “Clear.”
“Go. And, Jennifer?” She paused at the door. His expression was etched with a deep, paternal fear she’d never seen there before. “If this goes sideways, it never came from this office.”
The implication hung in the air. She simply nodded and left.
Out in the bullpen, the noise felt suddenly aggressive. She needed air, space to think. Pushing through the rear doors into the parking garage, the cool, gasoline-scented darkness was a relief.
She leaned against the concrete wall, pulling out her phone. Her finger hovered over Sam’s contact. She needed to tell him the plan was green-lit, such as it was.
“Detective Wu?”
The voice was soft, uncertain. She turned. Julian stood a few feet away, having just gotten out of his modest sedan. He was in civilian clothes—dark jeans, a grey sweater that made him look even younger. His eyes were shadowed, the grief for his friend still fresh upon him.
“Julian. What are you doing here?”
“Captain Ruiz asked me to come. He said he had some questions about… about the church’s security footage.” He moved closer, his hands in his pockets. “But I think he’s just checking on me. He does that.”
Jennifer’s mind raced. Ruiz had just ordered her to keep him safe, and here he was, walking into the precinct. “You should go home. Really. It’s not a good day here.”
He didn’t leave. He studied her face, his gaze disconcertingly direct. “You found something, didn’t you? From the book. Patrick’s… ledger.”
She couldn’t lie to him, not when he looked like that. “Yeah. We did.”
“And it’s bad.”
“It’s worse than bad.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them, fueled by a need to share the weight with someone who understood the cost. “It’s a schedule. For tonight. And the man behind it, he’s the kind who murders priests in their own sanctuaries.”
Julian didn’t flinch. He absorbed the information, his quiet strength solidifying before her eyes. “Then you’ll stop it.”
“I’m going to try.”
He took another step, closing the distance between them. The garage was empty, silent except for the drip of a distant pipe. “Let me help. Not with the… the action. But with the people. If there are victims, they’ll be terrified. They might need someone who isn’t a cop.”
His sincerity was a physical warmth in the dank garage. It was a terrible idea. It violated Ruiz’s order and every protocol for safety. Yet, looking at him, she saw not a liability, but a potential anchor—a reminder of what they were actually fighting for, buried beneath the ledgers and the lies.
Her phone buzzed violently in her hand, saving her from a reply. An unknown number. She held up a finger to Julian and answered. “Wu.”
The voice on the other end was smooth, cultured, and utterly devoid of warmth. “Detective. I understand you’ve been reading my bookkeeping. Some of the entries are quite private.”
Her blood turned to ice. She locked eyes with Julian, putting a finger to her lips. Marco Verrati.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice impressively steady.
A soft, humorless laugh echoed down the line. “Please. We’re both professionals. Here is my professional courtesy: stop reading. The story doesn’t end well for curious people. Consider the chapter on Father Patrick a… conclusive example.”
The line went dead. Jennifer lowered the phone, her hand trembling now that the connection was severed. He knew. He knew she had the files, he knew she was digging. The threat wasn’t veiled; it was a clinical promise.
Julian was watching her, all the color drained from his face. “That was him, wasn’t it?”
She just nodded, the momentum of the morning crystallizing into a single, brutal imperative. The surveillance plan was already compromised. They were out of time.
“Get in your car,” she said to Julian, her voice low and urgent. “Do not go upstairs. Do not go home. Drive to the public library on Grand and wait for my call.”
“Jennifer—”
“Now, Julian!” The command snapped out, leaving no room for argument. He hesitated for only a second, then turned and moved quickly toward his sedan.
She was already running for her own car, pulling out her phone again. This time she called Sam. He answered on the first ring.
“Change of plan,” she breathed, fumbling with her keys. “He called me. Verrati. He knows. We’re not watching anything tonight.”
She heard the sharp intake of breath on the other end. “Where are you going?”
“To the warehouse. Right now. If the shipment is still on, they’ll be prepping. I might catch a glimpse of something we can use before they scatter.” The engine roared to life. “I need you to do something for me. Call Ruiz on his private line. Tell him the op is blown. Tell him his godson is at the Grand Library and needs to be picked up by someone he trusts with his life.”
“Jenny, this is a trap. You know it’s a trap.”
“It’s the only move left,” she said, pulling out of the garage and into the searing LA sun. The city blurred around her. “I’ll be careful. I’m just going to look.”
She ended the call before he could protest further, tossing the phone onto the passenger seat. The coordinates from the file burned in her mind. The Fuller Warehouse complex. ‘Full Moon.’ She pressed the accelerator, the city streets becoming a tunnel leading to a single, dark point. The chapter on Father Patrick was closed.
A new one was beginning, and she was driving straight into its first, inevitable line.
The industrial zone swallowed her car whole. The vibrant chaos of downtown bled away into a grim landscape of chain-link and corrugated steel, everything stained a uniform, sun-bleached gray. Her tires crackled over broken asphalt and discarded fast-food wrappers that skittered in her wake like frantic insects.
She killed the engine two blocks out, the silence afterward absolute and heavy. The air here tasted of oxidized metal and hot concrete, a dry, scraping smell. Number 17, the Fuller complex, sat at the end of a cracked cul-de-sac, a long, low-slung building with boarded-up office windows and a rolling bay door that was shut tight.
No lights. No movement. Nothing.
“Damn it,” she whispered to the stale air inside her car. It looked abandoned, a perfect shell. This could be a waste, or it could be the calm before the storm. She had to get closer.
She slipped out, the door closing with a soft, precise click. The heat rose in visible waves from the asphalt, distorting the warehouse’s outline. She moved slowly, using the skeletal frames of old loading docks and dumpsters as cover, her hand resting on the grip of her service weapon. Her senses strained, filtering out the distant highway hum for any nearer sound: a voice, a footfall, the roll of a door.
Nothing but the low whine of a transformer on a nearby pole.
She reached the side of the building, her back against the warm, gritty concrete. Peering around the corner toward the main bay, she saw it: a single, fresh black scuff mark on the concrete apron, a precise arc that spoke of a recent turn by a heavy vehicle. Someone had been here. Recently.
A sudden, metallic shriek ripped the silence.
It was the high, pained sound of rusted metal grinding against metal. It came from the far side of the building. She ducked back, heart hammering against her ribs, and drew her gun. The sound wasn’t the main door. It was a person.
She edged along the wall, following the noise. At the back corner, she risked a glance.
A man was there, struggling with a rusted emergency exit door, trying to pull it shut. He was skinny, dressed in grease-stained coveralls, his face pinched with nervous effort. Not security. Maintenance, maybe. A lookout.
He finally got the door sealed with a final, complaining groan, wiping his hands on his pants. He turned, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and froze. His eyes locked onto hers from thirty feet away. For a second, they just stared at each other, the cigarette pack hanging limp in his hand.
He bolted.
He sprinted toward the chain-link fence at the property’s edge, his coveralls flapping. Jennifer gave chase, her shoes slapping the asphalt, but he was a skinny ghost slipping through a gap she’d never fit through. He vanished into the labyrinth of alleyways beyond.
She stopped, hands on her knees, breathing hard. The warehouse was a silent, mocking tomb. The scuff mark proved nothing a lawyer couldn’t explain. The fleeing man proved only panic. She had no probable cause, and her direct line from Marco Verrati was just a voice on a phone—untraceable, deniable.
“Goddamn it,” she spat, holstering her weapon.
Back in the car, the air conditioning blasted stale, hot air. She called Ruiz on his private cell, the one he’d given her for this. It rang four times before he picked up, his voice a low grumble. “Report.”
“He was here. A lookout, maybe maintenance. He saw me and rabbit. The place is empty now, or looks it. But Captain, the op is completely blown. Verrati called me. Personally. He referenced the ledger.” She squeezed the steering wheel, the vinyl creaking. “He knows my name. He knows what we have.”
The silence on the line was dense. She could picture him in his office, staring at that family photo, calculating the radius of the blast. “Understood. You are to stand down. Return to the precinct. We’ll regroup.”
“Regroup to do what? He’s scrubbing the site as we speak. The ‘Full Moon’ is going to happen somewhere else now, and we’ve lost it.”
“We follow the evidence we can actually use, Wu. Not chase shadows on a burned lead.” His tone left no room. “Come in.”
The call ended. She stared at the dead phone screen, frustration a hot, metallic taste in her mouth. She’d rushed in, just as Sam had warned, and all she had to show for it was a startled janitor and a bigger target on her back.
Her phone buzzed again, startling her. Not Ruiz. Not Sam. Julian Campbell.
She answered, her voice tight. “Julian? Are you safe? Did Ruiz’s people pick you up?”
“I’m at the library. No one’s come.” His voice was calm, but threaded with a new urgency. “I need to see you. There’s something else. Something Patrick left with me, for safekeeping.”
A warning claxon sounded in her mind. Meeting a material witness, the boss’s godson, alone after a direct threat? It was protocol suicide. “Julian, that’s not a good idea. Tell me where it is, I’ll send a uniform to collect it.”
“He said to give it only to the person who wouldn’t look away. That’s you, Detective.” A pause, a soft inhalation. “Please. Meet me at the church. St. Ignatius. Where it started. It feels… right.”
Every instinct screamed bad idea, trap, walk away. But beneath the fear was that other pull, the one she’d felt in the garage—the gravity of his sincerity, the weight of Patrick’s trust. She was already moving, the car in drive. “Twenty minutes. You wait inside. You see anything, anyone, you call me and you hide.”
St. Ignatius in the afternoon was a different creature. Sunlight streamed through the high windows, painting the pews in bars of gold and shadow. The lingering scent of incense and old wood was a stark contrast to the industrial stink of the warehouse. It felt like stepping into a different, quieter world, one where the violence on the altar was ancient and symbolic.
Jennifer found him not in a pew, but in the last confessional booth on the left, the door slightly ajar. He was following instructions to the letter—out of sight. She slipped into the opposite side, the familiar, enclosed space closing around her. The lattice screen between them was a dark web, fragmenting his profile.
“This is dramatic,” she whispered, the hush of the church demanding it.
Through the screen, she saw him smile, a brief, sad curve of his lips. “It felt appropriate. For a confession.” He slid a plain, letter-sized envelope through the low opening beneath the lattice. It was cream-colored, sealed with red wax impressed with a simple cross.
“Patrick gave this to me a month ago. He was… agitated. He said if he died unexpectedly, I was to open it, and then give it to someone who could do something.” Julian’s voice was a soft murmur, blending with the sacred silence. “I opened it after the funeral. I’ve read it a dozen times. Now you should.”
Jennifer broke the wax seal. Inside was a single sheet of good stationery, covered in a precise, clerical hand. The ink was a deep blue. She began to read.
‘If you are reading this, my dear Julian, then my fears were justified. I have stumbled onto a great evil hiding in plain sight. They call it ‘The Choir,’ a name that mocks the divine. It is not a charity, nor a social club. It is a modern-day slave trade.’
Her breath caught. The words were not the cold data of the USB file; they were a testament, a ringing indictment. Patrick detailed the fake employment agencies, the promised visas, the debts that could never be worked off. He named offshore accounts, described the terror in the eyes of a young woman he’d tried to counsel, a woman who vanished two days later.
‘The heart of it is here, in this city. The head of the serpent is a man of respected reputation. I intend to gather final proof and take it to the authorities I still trust. If I fail, the truth must not. Tell it. Shout it. No matter the cost.’
The letter ended not with a signature, but a verse, scrawled as if an afterthought: ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
Jennifer lowered the paper. The quiet of the confessional was now charged, vibrating with the dead man’s courage. She felt the immense, fragile weight of the trust that had been passed—from Patrick to Julian, and now to her. She looked through the lattice at the blurred shape of the young priest.
“This is it,” she said, her own voice husky. “This is the witness statement. This connects the data to the human cost.”
“He believed the truth was a light,” Julian said. “That it was worth dying for. I think… I’m starting to understand that.”
In the dim, intimate space, his quiet conviction was a tangible force. It wasn’t naivete; it was a choice, a kind of strength she rarely encountered. It disarmed her. A sudden, unbidden heat flushed through her, a shocking spark of attraction that had nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the man in the shadows. It was immediate, inconvenient, and utterly confusing.
“Thank you,” she said, folding the letter carefully, tucking it into her inner jacket pocket, right over her heart. “This changes everything. I need to go. You need to stay gone, Julian. Please.”
She pushed out of the confessional, the envelope secure, the letter a burning brand against her chest. She didn’t look back as she walked down the aisle, her footsteps echoing in the vast, hollow space.
Julian waited a full minute before exiting his side. He stood in the aisle, watching her go until the heavy main door sighed shut behind her. His eyes, wide with a mixture of grief and awe, followed the graceful, determined line of her retreat—the confident set of her shoulders, the subtle sway of her hips beneath the fitted jacket.
A sharp, visceral punch of desire hit him low in the gut, so acute it stole his breath. He looked away instantly, shame flooding him, his face burning in the empty church. She is investigating your friend’s murder, you idiot. She is carrying his last words. And you’re… He pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes, trying to scrub the image away. The guilt was a more familiar, more chastising presence than the lust.
Outside, blinking in the harsh sunlight, Jennifer leaned against her car. She pulled out her phone and called Sam.
“Hey,” she said, the word coming out as an exhausted sigh.
“You’re alive. That’s a start.” She could hear the relief in his tone, thinly masked by his usual dryness. “Ruiz is pissed, in a quiet, scary way.”
“I have something new. Physical evidence. A handwritten letter from Patrick to Julian, detailing the whole operation. Names, methods, the ‘slave trade’ angle. It’s a direct corroboration of the ledger.” She took a steadying breath. “I just got it from Julian. No one else knows he had it. Keep that quiet.”
Sam whistled softly. “A dead man’s testimony. That’s heavy. And the kid just handed it over?”
“He did.” She paused, the image of Julian in the confessional vivid in her mind. “He’s braver than he looks.”
“Be careful, Jenny. That kind of trust… it complicates things.”
You have no idea, she thought. “I’m being careful. I’ll see you tonight.” She ended the call.
Driving away, the letter seemed to radiate warmth through the layers of fabric. The day spun in her head: Sam’s eggs and his warnings, the empty warehouse, Verrati’s chilling call, the sacred hush of the church, the weight of the paper, the shocking, quiet pull in the darkness of the confessional. It was a tangled knot of professional duty, mortal danger, and a confusing, unwelcome flutter in her chest that felt dangerously like the beginning of something.
She had a boyfriend. A good, smart, stable one. And she had a priest’s godson, with his tragic eyes and unsettling courage, taking up space in her head. The truth might set you free, Patrick had written. But first, it seemed, it could utterly mess up your life.
The thought was a small, bitter laugh trapped in her throat as she merged onto the 110. The city slid past her window, a blur of stucco and glass and lives being lived in blissful ignorance of the rot festering beneath the surface. She had a dead priest's testimony burning a hole in her pocket, a crime lord who knew her name, and the beginnings of a crush on a man in a Roman collar.
Her phone buzzed again, a familiar rhythm. Sam.
"I've been thinking," he said, without preamble. "About your plan. Or lack thereof."
"I have a plan. It's called don't get killed and build a case."
"That's not a plan, that's a hope.
And hope is not a strategy." Sam's voice was steady, but it wrapped around her like a tourniquet - tight, necessary. "You need to get that letter processed, get it into evidence. You need to talk to Ruiz, lay out exactly what you have, no more, no less. You do not chase ghosts in a warehouse district at dusk. You do not meet witnesses alone. You do not engage in amateur hour stake-outs. That’s not how you stay alive, and it’s certainly not how you win cases."
Jennifer exhaled sharply against the steering wheel, her knuckles white. The I-5 interchange blurred past in a smear of taillights and neon. "I know, Sam.