Chapter 27: The Son's Silence
The red-eye to JFK was a five-hour cage of recycled air and low-grade anxiety. Jennifer dozed fitfully, her head against the cold window, the city lights below reduced to scattered constellations of human trouble. John stayed awake, scrolling through James Vance’s life on his tablet. Social feeds filled with charity galas and skiing in Gstaad. Annual reports from the boutique investment firm he ran, ‘Vance Capital Partners.’ It all looked painfully clean.
They landed in a damp, pre-dawn New York, the air sharp with jet fuel and exhaustion. By nine a.m., fortified by bitter deli coffee that tasted of cardboard, they were stepping into the marble chill of a Midtown skyscraper.
The 48th-floor offices of Vance Capital were a study in intimidating tranquility. The reception area was all white orchid arrangements, abstract sculptures that probably cost more than her car, and floor-to-ceiling windows offering a heart-stopping view of Central Park. The air smelled of lemon polish and money.
A receptionist with a voice like smoothed glass announced them. Seconds later, a door clicked open.
James Vance was nothing like his father. Where Robert Vance had been a bull of a man, all physical threat and booming voice, James was a blade. Early thirties, tall and lean in a suit that seemed poured onto him, his hair a perfect sweep of dark gold. His eyes were his mother’s—pale blue, intelligent, and just as cool.
“Detectives,” he said, his voice smooth, without accent. He didn’t offer his hand. “This is a surprise. I spoke with the FBI days ago. My mother’s death… it’s a tragedy. But I’m not sure what light I can shed.”
“We’re with LAPD Homicide,” Jennifer said, holding his gaze. “We have a few follow-ups. Can we talk in your office?”
A minute hesitation, then a nod. He led them through a silent, carpeted hallway where young analysts in crisp shirts typed silently at monitors. His corner office was another glass box, the city sprawled beneath them like a model. He took the seat behind a vast, empty desk of fossilized stone. Jennifer and John sat in the low-slung client chairs, deliberately putting themselves at a slight disadvantage.
“My condolences,” John said, his tone respectful but firm. He was playing the good cop, the earnest junior. It was a natural fit that made Jennifer want to smile despite everything.
“Thank you.” James steepled his fingers. “It’s been a difficult time. My father’s… situation, and now this. I’m cooperating fully, of course. But my alibi is documented. I was in a partners’ meeting from eight p.m. until midnight. Twelve people can attest. The timeline doesn’t lie.”
“We’re not here about your alibi,” Jennifer said, leaning forward just enough to break the pristine line of his desk. She kept her voice conversational. “We’re here about your mother’s state of mind. And her business.”
“Her business was philanthropy and the occasional interior design project. She’d retired from my father’s concerns years ago.”
“She was preparing to freeze assets. Substantial ones. She had a list.” Jennifer watched his eyes. The pale blue didn’t waver. “Initials. Accounts. Offshore.”
Jame’s smile was thin, practiced. “My father’s world was complex. I’m sure she had records. For the divorce.”
“M.C.,” John said, reading from his notebook. “A.S. Do those initials mean anything to you?”
The air conditioning hummed. Outside, a helicopter hovered over the park, a tiny, persistent insect.
“Many people worked with my father. Consultants.Associates. Initials are meaningless without context.” James shifted, a micro-movement of his shoulders. “My mother was under a great deal of stress. She may have been… cataloging grievances. It doesn’t mean those people posed a threat.”
“Someone posed a threat,” Jennifer said softly. “Someone walked into her home, Jame. Someone who knew her routine. Who knew she turned off the perimeter alarm at eleven for her walk in the garden. Who had access to the vendor lists and the gate codes.”
She saw it then. A flicker. Not in his eyes, but in the tightness at the corner of his mouth. A tiny muscle twitch, there and gone. Fear, recognition, or something uglier.
“You think I’m involved.” He said it flatly, not a question.
“We think you might know who is,” John corrected. “Your mother was calling for help the night she died. She used a secure line connected to your father’s old operations. She was scared of someone new. Not your father. He was already in a box. This was a fresh problem.”
James stood up and walked to the window, his back to them. He stared out at the city, his reflection a ghost over the skyline. “My father built an empire on sand. When it collapsed, everyone got dirty. My mother wanted to wash it all away, publicly. That kind of cleaning… it stains everyone it touches.”
“Including you?” Jennifer pressed.
He turned, his face a mask of weary condescension. “I built this firm with a ten-million-dollar loan from my father. Yes. It’s a matter of public record. I’ve spent eight years and every ounce of my reputation legitimizing that money. Turning it into this.” He gestured to the office, the view. “My mother’s actions would have triggered audits, forensic accounting, a spotlight so hot it would burn this entire enterprise to the ground. So yes, Detective, her plans were… inconvenient. But wanting her quiet is not the same as wanting her dead.”
The logic was cold, seamless, and utterly convincing. It was the plea of a guilty man—but guilty of greed, not murder. Jennifer felt the certainty of the interview beginning to slip. He was too prepared.
She stood, signaling to John. “We’ll need a full list of your firm’s investors, partners, and any shell entities you’ve used for transfers in the last five years. We’ll have a warrant emailed to you by the end of the day.”
James didn’t blink. “My lawyers will review it. We’re transparent, within the bounds of client confidentiality.”
As John stood, his gaze swept the desk. A sleek silver frame faced Jame’s chair. In it, a photograph of James on a deep-sea fishing boat, shirtless and grinning, holding up a monstrous marlin. Beside him, an older man with a weathered face and a triumphant smile, one arm slung around Jame’s shoulders.
John’s blood went cold.
The weathered face. The posture. He’d seen it before, in the grainy black-and-white footage from the Vance garden camera. The confident walk. The shoulders-back posture of the fake pool guy.
He didn’t freeze. He tapped the frame lightly as he passed the desk. “Nice catch.”
James glanced at it, a genuine, fond smile touching his lips for the first time. “Thanks. That was off Cabo last summer. My uncle Raul. Only person who ever really understood me.”
Uncle Raul.
The name landed in the plush silence of the office like a trigger being cocked. John kept walking, his face neutral, but every instinct screamed. He didn’t look back at Jennifer until the elevator doors slid shut, sealing them in a brass-paneled tomb.
“The photo,” he breathed, the words tight. “The man with him on the boat. That was our pool guy. The walk, the posture. It’s him.”
Jennifer’s mind raced, piecing it together. “His uncle. Not a hired gun. Family.” She stabbed the button for the lobby. “Jame’s alibi is a steel door, but he just gave us the key. He doesn’t need to be in LA to pull the trigger if Uncle Raul is his faithful dog.”
In the taxi back to JFK, weaving through midday traffic, they pulled up everything they could on a phone. “Raul Vance,” John read, squinting at his screen. “Younger brother of Robert. Six arrests in the nineties—assault, robbery. Did a five-year stint for aggravated battery. Went straight after, supposedly. Worked as a ‘security consultant’ for Vance’s construction outfits.”
“A fixer,” Jennifer said, staring out at the blur of brick and steel. “The loyal, violent brother. The one you send when the lawyers and the money aren’t enough. He’d have all the codes, know all the routines. He’d have access.”
She called Captain Ruiz, putting it on speaker. The noise of Queens bled through the windows.
“Captain. Jame’s clean on paper, but we have a new target. His uncle, Raul Vance.” She laid it out fast—the photo, the recognition, the criminal history.
There was a long pause on the line, filled only by the faint crackle of connection and Ruiz’s measured breathing. “Raul,” he finally said, the name heavy with something that sounded like regret. “I know Raul. He was around when the kids were little. A mean son of a bitch even then. Protective of the family, to a fault.”
“Would he kill for Jame?” John asked.
“Without blinking. He saw Jame as the heir, the smart one. The future. He’d burn the world to protect that kid’s place in it.” Ruiz sighed, a weary sound. “If Eleanor was about to burn Jame’s world, Raul would see it as a threat to the family legacy. This fits. It fits damn perfectly.”
“We need everything on him,” Jennifer said. “Current address, known vehicles, financials. And we need to know his connection to the initials M.C. or A.S. He might be the muscle for one of them.”
“I’ll have Vice and Organized Crime pull his sheet. They’ve been wanting a piece of the Vance periphery for years.” Papers shuffled on Ruiz’s end. “You two get back here. Now. If Raul is our ghost, and he knows you were sniffing around James, you’re not safe in New York. He’s got networks.”
The call ended. The taxi merged onto the Van Wyck Expressway, the airport signs looming. Jennifer felt the case coiling tight, becoming personal in a new, dangerous way. It wasn’t a faceless ghost anymore. It was a man with a history, a face, and a violent reason to silence them.
“He made a mistake,” John said, his voice low. “The photo. He kept it right there. He was proud of it.”
“Everyone has a tell,” Jennifer replied. “His sentimentality is ours.”
The flight back to LA was a tense reverse of the morning. They worked in silence, drafting warrant requests for Raul Vance’s phone records, his bank statements, his known associates. The hum of the engines was a backdrop to their focused quiet.
John’s leg rested against hers in the narrow seat, a line of heat through the fabric of their clothes. She didn’t pull away. The contact was a grounding wire in the gathering storm.
“He saw us,” John said suddenly, not looking up from his tablet. “In the garden footage, he walked right past the camera. He knew he was being recorded. He didn’t care. Or he wanted to be seen.”
Jennifer considered this. The confidence. The arrogance. “It’s a message. Like the bad suicide. He’s saying the rules don’t apply to him. That he can walk right in and out, and we can’t touch him.”
“We’ll see about that,” John muttered, his jaw set.
They landed just after sunset, LAX a familiar swamp of exhaust and fatigue. Frank was waiting for them at arrivals, his unmarked idling at the curb. He didn’t bother with hellos.
“Got a location,” he grunted as they slid into the back seat. “Raul Vance. He owns a piece of a martial arts studio in Northridge, lives in a rented house above Van Nuys. Clean on paper for a decade. But his phone’s a different story.”
Frank handed a printout back. Call logs. “He’s got a cluster of calls to a disposable number. Same one that called your phone, Wu. The ‘stop looking’ number. And he received a call from that same burner the night Eleanor died. Lasted twelve minutes.”
“Direction,” Jennifer said, scanning the times. “He was getting his orders. Or confirming the job was done.”
“There’s more,” Frank said, pulling into the traffic. “One of the initials from Eleanor’s ledger. A.S. We ran it through all Vance’s known shell companies. ‘A.S. Holdings’ is a property LLC. Its registered agent is a lawyer named Arthur Simmons.”
John leaned forward. “And?”
“And Arthur Simmons is James Vance’s corporate attorney. He’s also the lawyer who provided Robert Vance’s airtight detention-center alibi to the Feds.” Frank glanced at them in the rearview, his eyes grim. “The circle is real small, kids. And it’s closing.”
They drove straight to the precinct, the night city flashing by. The bullpen was quieter, the night shift settling in. Captain Ruiz was in the conference room, the murder board updated. Raul Vance’s mugshot from 1998 was now pinned next to the grainy pool guy still. The two faces, separated by decades, were undeniably the same.
Ruiz turned as they entered. “Organized Crime has eyes on the house in Van Nuys. He’s there. Two cars in the driveway. Lights on. He’s making no attempt to hide.”
“He doesn’t think he needs to,” Jennifer said, dumping her bag on the table. She felt wired, the adrenaline of the chase burning through the jet lag. “We need to connect him directly to the scene. Something he took, something he left. We need to get inside that house.”
“We have enough for a search warrant?” John asked, looking at the board.
“For his phone records and financials, yes. For his home, based on a facial recognition from grainy footage and a family connection?” Ruiz shook his head. “A judge will laugh us out of chambers. We need something tangible. We need the murder weapon, or the ledger he stole.”
“Then we find a way to make him lead us to it,” Jennifer said. Her mind worked through the options, discarding each one as too slow, too by-the-book. Raul Vance was a specter who walked through security systems. You didn’t catch a ghost with paperwork.
Her own phone buzzed on the table. Another unknown number. Her eyes locked with John’s. She answered, putting it on speaker.
The same digitally altered voice filled the room, flat and chilling. “You visited my nephew.”
They all froze. Frank’s hand went to his sidearm. Ruiz’s face turned to stone.
“You have a nice family, Raul,” Jennifer said, her voice steady, defiant.
A low, staticky sound might have been a laugh. “You’re looking for a book. Stop. It’s not a story for you.”
“Where’s the ledger, Raul? Did James ask you to fetch it for him?”
The line hissed with empty air for a long moment. “The past should stay buried. For everyone’s sake. Even that handsome young partner of yours. His father would be heartbroken if something… historical… resurfaced.”
The threat was explicit, personal, and aimed right at John. Jennifer saw him pale, his hands clenching into fists.
“You touch him, and your whole world burns,” Jennifer snarled, the professional cool vaporizing.
“My world is fireproof, detective.” The call died.
The room was silent, the threat hanging like smoke. The ghost wasn’t just bragging anymore. He was targeting them. He’d done his homework.
Ruiz looked sick. “He’s referencing something. ‘Something historical.’ About me?” He looked at John, a dawning horror in his eyes. “John, you stay here. You’re off this. Now.”
“No,” John said, the word sharp. “That’s what he wants. To split us up. To scare us off. I’m not going anywhere.”
Jennifer watched the two men, the father’s fear warring with the son’s fury. Raul had just made it infinitely more personal. He’d threatened the captain’s son, hinted at some buried secret. It was a masterful move of psychological warfare.
“He’s scared,” Jennifer said, cutting through the tension. Her voice was calm, analytical, forcing them all to focus. “He’s making threats because we’re close. He has the ledger, or he’s destroyed it. But he knows we can place him at the scene. That’s enough for an arrest if we move fast.”
She turned to Ruiz. “Captain, we need to pull every old case file, every internal investigation, anything that links you to Robert or Raul Vance from the early days. He’s pulling at a thread. We need to know what it’s attached to.”
Ruiz nodded slowly, the captain reasserting himself over the frightened father. “I’ll… I’ll go through the archives. Frank, you’re with me.”
They left the room, leaving Jennifer and John alone with the board, with the face of their ghost staring back at them.
John was breathing hard, his adrenaline spiking. “He threatened my father.”
“He’s trying to destabilize us. It means we’re winning.” She moved closer to him, her voice dropping. “But we don’t play his game. We don’t chase his secrets. We do the police work. We find him, and we put him in a cage.”
She reached out, put a hand on his arm. The muscle was rigid under her touch. “Hey. Look at me.” He did, his eyes dark with anger and fear. “We’ve got this. Together.”
He covered her hand with his own, his grip tight. The physical connection was electric, a current of shared resolve and something else, something warmer and more dangerous that had been building since he walked into the bullpen in that suit. For a second, neither of them moved.
Then he nodded, releasing her hand. “Okay. So what’s the police work?”
“We find his weakness.” She turned back to the board, tapping Raul’s mugshot. “He’s a loyal attack dog. His weakness is the family he protects. We need to pressure James. Legally, financially. Make James so nervous he calls his uncle for help. We intercept that. We flip one against the other.”
“Divide and conquer,” John said.
“Exactly.” She grabbed her jacket. “But first, I want to see his lair. I want to look this guy in the environment he thinks he controls. No lights, no sirens. Just a drive-by.”
“He’ll be watching.”
“Let him watch,” Jennifer said, heading for the door. “Let him see we’re not hiding. Let him see we’re coming.”
The unmarked sedan, a different boring gray one from the motor pool, cut through the San Fernando Valley’s grid of streetlights and shadows. Jennifer drove, her eyes constantly scanning mirrors. John navigated, his phone casting a pale glow on his face as he pulled up satellite images of the address.
“He’s on a cul-de-sac,” John said, zooming in. “Backs up to a wash. Only two ways in or out. Standard Valley tract house, red tile roof. Nothing special.”
“That’s what worries me,” Jennifer murmured, turning off Van Nuys Blvd. into a neighborhood of well-kept stucco homes and manicured lawns. It was aggressively normal. “A guy with his sheet doesn’t live in a place like this without a reason. It’s camouflage.”
They cruised past the mouth of his street once, not slowing. A basketball hoop stood sentinel over a silent driveway. A single porch light glowed. The house was dark.
“Lights were on an hour ago,” John said, a edge in his voice.
“So he’s home, or he wants us to think he is.” Jennifer took a left, then another, circling the block. She parked two streets over, under the sprawling canopy of an old coral tree. The engine ticked as it cooled. “We watch. We see what moves.”
The first hour was stillness punctuated by distant domestic sounds. A dog barked. A garage door rumbled open and shut a few houses away. The scent of night-blooming jasmine drifted through their cracked windows, undercut by the dry, dusty smell of the surrounding hills.
John shifted in his seat, the leather creaking. “You think Ruiz is okay? What Raul said about something ‘historical’...”
Jennifer watched the porch light’s yellow halo through the leaves. "Your dad is a tough nut. He’s spent thirty years in this department and heard every threat imaginable." She kept her voice low, conversational. "He’s fine."
John didn’t look convinced. He tapped his fingers on his knee, a rapid, nervous rhythm. "That guy on the phone didn’t sound like he was bluffing. ‘Something historical.’ What does that even mean?"
"It means he’s digging for leverage. It’s what cornered animals do." She turned to him, the dashboard lights softening the sharp angles of his face. "But it doesn’t change the job. It just means we finish it faster."
Silence settled between them again, thicker now. The waiting was the worst part, the stale air in the car charged with all the things they weren’t saying. Another twenty minutes crawled by, measured by the slow sweep of a neighbor’s sprinkler.
"So," Jennifer said, needing to break the tension. "This whole dedicated detective thing. Leaves much time for a personal life?" She nudged him with her elbow. "Any girlfriend waiting up, worried you’re in a car with your old babysitter?"
He let out a short, surprised laugh. "Wow. Straight for the throat." He shook his head, a genuine smile touching his lips."No. No girlfriend. Been a little focused on, you know, not being the rookie who screws up his first big case." He glanced at her, his eyes reflecting the distant streetlight.
"I also hear you have quite a reputation," John said, the tease back in his voice, bolder now in the dark. "For mixing work with pleasure. Seems like a risky habit."
Jennifer felt a sudden, hot flush crawl up her neck. "Oh, you hear, do you? From who? The precinct gossip mill?" She swatted his arm, the contact playful but charged. "Maybe worry less about my dating resume and more about getting your own."
"Just saying," he chuckled, rubbing his arm where she’d hit him. "It’s a small department. Stories travel. Especially the good ones."
Their laughter was quiet, private, a brittle shield against the waiting danger. It was a mistake.
The rumble of engines cut through the suburban quiet, low and purposeful. Two black Suburban SUVs, windows tinted to obsidian, turned smoothly onto the cul-de-sac. They moved like liquid shadows, devoid of vanity plates or dealer frames.
"Get down," Jennifer whispered, sliding low in her seat.
The SUVs rolled to a stop directly in front of Raul Vance’s house, idling. The passenger door of the lead vehicle opened. James Vance stepped out, his polished loafers crunching on the gravel driveway. He looked out of place, a figurine from a glass office dropped onto cracked concrete.
The second SUV’s driver-side door opened. The man who unfolded himself from the seat was Raul. Even from this distance, the identification was instant. The same build, the same ramrod posture from the garden footage. He met James in the pool of light between the vehicles.
Jennifer’s phone was already in her hand, camera app open, recording. She zoomed in, holding her breath. The audio was faint but clear in the still night.
"What are you doing here?" Raul’s voice was a gravelly rasp, unaltered by digital distortion. "This isn’t a social call, kid. It’s not safe."
"The detectives were in my office," James said, his voice tight with a strain that hadn’t been there in Manhattan. "They have the ledger initials. They connected A.S. to Simmons. It’s a matter of time before they pull the thread all the way back to the accounts in Grand Cayman."
"You panicking?" Raul stepped closer, his stance intimidating. "I handled the problem. The ledger is ash. The only thread leads to a dead woman who shot herself."
"She had copies, Uncle Raul. Digital. Simmons is saying the forensic accountants can reconstruct everything from her cloud backups if they get a warrant. We need to move the remaining capital. Now."
Raul was silent for a long moment. "How much?"
"Eighteen million. The last of the clean-up fund from the Ventura job." James ran a hand through his perfect hair. "If they trace it, it doesn’t just lead to tax fraud. It leads to the warehouse. To the bodies."
The Ventura job. Jennifer’s mind raced, filing the phrase away. A cold dread seeped through her. This was bigger than Eleanor Vance.
"I’ll make a call," Raul grunted. "We’ll route it through the casino chips in Vegas, then into the bitcoin miners. It’ll take seventy-two hours to scatter. You stay clean. You were in a meeting. You’re heartbroken about your mom. You know nothing."
"I know everything," James whispered, the confession stark and terrified.
"That’s your burden." Raul clapped a heavy hand on Jame’s shoulder, a gesture that was neither friendly nor comforting. It was a brand. "Now get back in your car and go be the grieving son. And don’t come here again."
The recording captured every damning word. Jennifer stopped the video as James retreated to his SUV. The two vehicles pulled away, disappearing back into the city’s arteries. The cul-de-sac was quiet again, just the sprinkler hissing.
"Let’s go," Jennifer said, her voice taut with triumph. "We have what we need."
They drove back to the precinct in a tense, electric silence, both replaying the conversation in their heads. The ‘Ventura job.’ ‘Bodies.’ ‘The warehouse.’ The case had just exploded in scale.
Captain Ruiz was in his office, looking aged under the fluorescent light. Frank was with him. Jennifer played the video on her phone, placing it on the desk between them. The captain’s face hardened into a mask of grim satisfaction as the audio played.
"That’s him," Ruiz said when it finished, pointing at Raul’s pixelated form. "That’s his voice. And he just confessed to felony murder, conspiracy, and money laundering for the purpose of concealing a capital crime." He leaned back, the weight of it pressing down. "The ‘Ventura job.’ I know that case. A suspected arson at a commercial warehouse. Two unidentified remains. It’s been cold for years."
"We need to pick up Raul now," Frank said. "Before he has a chance to scatter that money or run."
"Agreed. Get a tactical team. No warning." Ruiz stood, authority radiating from him again. He looked at Jennifer and John. "Good work. Damn good police work."
As Frank hurried out to organize the raid, Ruiz gestured to Jennifer. "A word, Detective?"
John glanced at her, then nodded, heading out to the bullpen to update the case file. The office door clicked shut, sealing Jennifer in with the captain.
Ruiz didn’t sit. He walked to the window, looking out at the night. The concern that softened his features was purely paternal now. "John," he said quietly. "How's he doing? I mean really doing. With all this. The threat. The pressure. Is he up to it?"
Jennifer considered the question honestly. She thought of John in the car, his fear for his father, his steady hand recording the evidence, his sharp retort in the dark. "He's doing better than up to it, Captain. He's not just keeping pace. He's seeing angles. He connected the photo in Jame's office. He held his composure during the stakeout." She met his gaze. "He has the potential to be a great detective. A real chip off the old block."
A slow, genuine smile broke through Ruiz’s weary expression. It was a smile of pride, deep and relieved. "Thank you, Jennifer." He said her name, not her rank. "That means something. Now go follow this trail. And bring that bastard in."
The raid happened at 4:17 a.m. Jennifer and John watched from a perimeter command post two blocks away, listening to the crackled radio traffic. Raul Vance was found in his kitchen, drinking coffee, not surprised. He offered no resistance, his cold eyes finding the unmarked surveillance van as he was led away in cuffs. He said nothing.
By the time the sun was painting the sky dusty orange, the adrenaline had burned off, leaving behind a hollow, grinding hunger.
"My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut," Jennifer groaned, leaning against her desk. The bullpen was empty, the graveyard shift clearing out.
"Tacos?" John asked, already grabbing his jacket. "I know a place that’s open for breakfast. It’s not far."
The place was a literal hole-in-the-wall, a fluorescent-lit counter with three stools, smelling fiercely of grilled meat, cilantro, and warm corn tortillas. They ordered carne asada and al pastor, loading them with salsa from sticky glass bottles.
Jennifer took a massive bite, closing her eyes as the flavors hit. "God, that’s good."
"It’s okay," John said, chewing critically. "The marinade is a little sweet. The onions aren’t chopped fine enough."
She laughed. "A connoisseur. Let me guess, they’re not as good as your mom’s?"
"Nothing is as good as my mom’s," he said without a hint of irony. "Not even close. You remember. You used to eat with us when you’d babysit. You’d always steal the extra crispy ones from my plate."
"I did not!" she protested, laughing again. The memory was warm and clear: Sofia Ruiz fussing in the kitchen, the tiny kitchen TV on, a young John pouting over his stolen tacos. "Okay, maybe I did. You were a slow eater. They were going to waste."
"They were my birthright," he said, grinning. It was an easy, open smile she hadn't seen since before the case began.
They ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the exhaustion and the shared victory making a companionable space between them. The weight of the unresolved threads—the "Ventura job," the warehouse, the mysterious "A.S."—still lingered, but for this moment, it was just two people sharing a meal at dawn.
John balled up his paper wrapper, tossing it into the bin. "So, what now? We have Raul on recording, but he’ll lawyer up. He won’t give up James."
"Now," Jennifer said, wiping her hands, "we use what we have to turn the screws on Arthur Simmons. The lawyer. He’s the link between the money and the bodies. He’s the one who can give us James, and whatever ‘historical’ thing Raul was threatening your dad with." She stood up, the resolve settling back over her. "We have the momentum. We don’t let up."
John stood with her, throwing a few bills on the counter. As they walked back to the car, the first real rays of sun cutting through the palm trees, he bumped his shoulder gently against hers. "Thanks. For having my back in there. With my dad."
"Anytime," she said, and meant it.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Frank. She read it, her good mood solidifying into something harder.
Simmons’s law office. 8 a.m. He’s already there. He knows we’re coming.
She showed John the screen. He nodded, his expression mirroring hers—tired, focused, ready.
"Let’s go get the rest of the story," he said.