Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Brooks took cover behind a shipping container, calling for backup that was already engaged with shooters outside the building. Radio chatter was chaos—officers down, multiple hostiles, unknown number of combatants. Everything was wrong, just as Traci had predicted.
“Brooks!” Traci’s voice cut through the gunfire, and he turned to see his partner twenty feet away, her weapon drawn but her attention focused on something he couldn’t see. “Behind you!”
Brooks spun and saw the muzzle flash from a concealed position above them. He was moving to take cover when Traci hit him from the side, her hundred and twenty pounds of muscle and momentum driving him behind a concrete pillar. She’d thrown herself between Brooks and the gunfire, absorbing three rounds that had been aimed at his center mass.
“Medic!” Brooks shouted into his radio, knowing the response time would be too long. “Officer down! I need a medic now!”
Traci’s hands found his face, her touch weak but insistent. “Listen to me,” she whispered, her voice fading. “Santos was turned. Someone fed us bad intelligence.”
“Save your strength. Help’s coming.”
“Trust your instincts next time.” Blood flecked her lips as she spoke. “Don’t let them make you doubt what you know is right.”
Brooks held pressure on her wounds while she bled out in his arms, her brown eyes growing distant. Backup arrived three minutes later—three minutes too late to save Detective Traci Washington, mother of two, wife of fifteen years, best partner Brooks had ever worked with.
The image burned in his memory: Traci’s blood on his hands, her eyes vacant, the warehouse ambush that had been what she’d predicted.
Brooks jerked back to the present, Traci’s photograph still in his hands. He thought about Austin, about Traci’s intuition that he’d dismissed. She hadn’t been like Vivienne, just an experienced cop with excellent instincts. But he’d ignored her gut feeling because it couldn’t be documented, couldn’t be proven in court.
The result: a dead partner and three years of guilt.
He wouldn’t make that mistake again. Whatever Vivienne’s methods—her visions, historical knowledge, or intuition—the information was solid. That’s what mattered for building a case.
Brooks picked up his phone and returned Captain Rodriguez’s call.
“Harrington.” The captain’s voice was rough with sleep and something else. Relief, maybe. “Was starting to think you’d fallen off the planet.”
“Just working a case. Missing person turned into something bigger.”
“Sounds like you. Making progress?”
“More than I expected. The case broke open, but not the way I thought it would.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had to trust intelligence I couldn’t document. Follow leads based on instincts instead of evidence. Value results over methodology.”
A long pause. “Never thought I’d hear you say that. You were always the evidence-first guy. Documentation over everything.”
“Maybe I learned something from Traci.” Brooks set down Traci’s photograph, his fingers steady despite the emotion in his voice. “She tried to warn me about the warehouse. Had instincts about Santos, about the whole operation. I dismissed them because they weren’t based on concrete proof.”
“Traci was good police. Best instincts I ever saw.”
“And I ignored her because I couldn’t put her instincts in a report.” Brooks stood and walked to his window, looking out at the lighthouse beam sweeping across Westerly Cove. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You doing okay up there, Harrington?”
“Better than I was.” Brooks felt the familiar weight of survivor’s guilt, but it was different now. Less crushing, more purposeful. “Tell Traci’s family I’ll visit when this case is over. Tell them their mom saved my life, and I’m trying to honor that by being a better detective.”
“I will. And Harrington? Trust your instincts. Traci would want that.”
After the call ended, Brooks sat in the quiet of his cottage. The case had grown beyond what Westerly Cove’s small police department could handle. Chief Sullivan had already contacted the FBI about the scope of the Aldrich smuggling operation. Agent Porter and his team would arrive by morning.
Brooks spent the next hour reviewing materials for the briefing. Financial records hidden in the lighthouse lamp room revealed the full scope of the Aldrich operation—forty years of shipping manifests, offshore account numbers, correspondence with international buyers. Vivienne had been right about where to look, just as she’d been right about the tunnel entrance, the hidden chamber where Lily had preserved her camera and notebook, and Melissa Clarkson’s likely location somewhere in the network below.
At four-thirty in the morning, he drove to The Mystic Cup and was surprised to find warm light glowing in the shop windows. He could see Vivienne moving around inside, brewing tea from herbs that helped her recover from exhaustion.
She opened the door before he knocked, alert despite the early hour.
“FBI briefing in three hours,” Brooks said. “We’ll need your tunnel expertise from the raid.”
Vivienne nodded, leading him into the shop. “I’ve been preparing maps of the underground system. Between Mathilde’s architectural drawings and what the spirits showed us in the central chamber, I can document every passage, every junction point.”