Chapter 11 - The Partner Who Never Came Home
I followed Dana through the courthouse crowd with Rachel at my shoulder.
"Stop," I called.
Dana turned at the crosswalk and saw the notebook in Rachel's hand.
Whatever explanation she'd prepared vanished from her face.
"Emily, we need to talk somewhere private."
"We can start with why Daniel wrote your name on the last page he mailed his sister."
Cars moved past us while pedestrians pretended not to listen.
Dana asked Rachel whether anyone else had seen the notebook.
That question made me colder than a denial would have.
"You don't get to interview her," I said. "Answer me."
Dana drew a breath.
"I recruited Daniel to document a corruption channel inside the investigation."
"You were our supervisor."
"I knew someone was feeding case information to the Bell network. I didn't know who."
"So you used my partner without telling me."
"Yes."
The word landed like a slap.
Dana told us Daniel had discovered altered shipping manifests that linked a defense contractor to a riverfront business in Dominic's name.
He wanted to go public.
She wanted to preserve the case until witnesses could be protected.
They argued the night before he vanished.
"I told him he was reckless," she admitted. "He told me I was afraid."
Rachel opened the notebook to a second page.
There were three sets of numbers and the initials C.H.
"What does this mean?" she asked.
Dana went still again.
"Cold Harbor," she said. "An old storage facility outside Wilmington."
I searched her expression.
"You knew where he was headed."
"I suspected. I went there. It was empty."
"And you never told his sister?"
Dana couldn't look at Rachel.
That silence told us enough.
Later, in Mara's office, I asked Dana to provide every contemporaneous memo, phone record, and report she possessed.
She agreed, though she warned me some records remained classified or sealed.
I wouldn't accept a convenient partial story just because it came from a woman I once admired.
Trust had to be rebuilt with proof.
While we reviewed the notebook, Matteo received news that several businesses under his control were being audited for suspicious transfers.
Dominic had moved millions through Matteo's holdings using forged authorizations.
"He's making you the fall guy," I said.
Matteo looked furious but not surprised.
"If I go down, he takes everything."
"Then give investigators the records before he destroys them."
He hesitated.
"You understand what that means for me?"
"Yes. You might answer for things you actually did."
He stood very still.
I'd expected him to argue that some crimes were necessary.
Instead, he said, "Then that's what happens."
It was not redemption.
It was a first step toward accountability.
Sofia sat nearby drawing in her notebook.
She had sketched the same four-paned window again.
Below it she'd written COLD HARBOR.
Matteo stared at the words.
"Sofia, how do you know that name?"
She looked at him, frightened by what she remembered.
"I heard Uncle Dominic say it when Grandma was dying. He said the old soldier was still in the basement."
I felt the room fall away.
Old soldier.
My missing partner.
May you like
Daniel Reeves might not have been dead after all.
