STAY IN YOUR LANE

Daniel listened the way he always had — no interruptions, then three questions that each did the work of an hour.

"The van program's nonprofit filings," he said. "Who's the registered agent?"

I already had it open. "A Wesley Dunham. Runs it out of a rented lot behind the rec center. Coaches middle school soccer. Volunteer of the Year, two towns over, last year." I heard how ordinary it sounded, which is exactly how the worst ones always sound. "Danny, everybody loves this guy. That's the camouflage. He didn't sneak past the town's guard. He *is* the town's guard."

"You have a pattern, a victimology, a plausible offender, and a live clock," Daniel said. "What you don't have is a case, a warrant, or a single person with a badge standing next to you."

"I have you."

A pause. "You have me unofficially, from four states away, at two in the morning. If I bring this to the field office as it stands, they open a file, they do it by the book, and by the book takes days you told me this girl doesn't have." He exhaled. "Naomi. I can be there tomorrow night with a real team. But if you're right about the clock—"

"She doesn't have tomorrow night."

"Then you need your own department to move today," he said. "Which means you need to walk into that station and make them listen to a patrol officer they've already decided is wrong. Can you do that?"

I thought about Powell's small smile. About *stay in your lane.* About fourteen months of the back row.

"No," I said. "They won't hear me. Not in time." I looked at the legal pad, at five girls the system had erased. "So I'm going to build it so airtight that they can't not hear me. And then, if they still won't move—" I stopped.

"Naomi." Daniel's voice was very quiet. "Don't do the thing you're about to say you'll do."

"Get on a plane, Danny," I said. "I'll leave you everything. If this goes sideways, somebody with your credentials needs to be able to pick it up and finish it."

I hung up before he could tell me no. Then I spent what was left of the night turning a legal pad into the cleanest case file I'd built since the Bureau — timelines, radius maps, the filings, the five girls, all of it — and at dawn I put on my uniform, and I drove to work to give Ridgemont PD exactly one chance to be better than I expected.