Chapter 3 — The Skull From the Harbor

My scream filled the operations room.

The recovered video shook as Kane’s man moved around the warehouse. On-screen, I lay chained to the floor, blood darkening my hair and shirt.

Kane planted his boot beside my face.

"Give me the names," he ordered. "Your handler. Your contacts. Every undercover cop in my organization."

The woman on the screen lifted her head.

I barely recognized myself.

"I’m not a cop."

Kane drove a steel fishing spear through my thigh.

My father staggered against the conference table.

Adrian did not move. He watched every second, as if looking away would be one more betrayal.

"Names," Kane repeated.

I spat blood onto his shoe.

"Go to hell."

He ordered two men to take me outside.

The camera remained inside the warehouse. There was no image of the pier, only dragging footsteps, a distant burst of laughter, and one terrible splash.

Then silence.

The video ended.

Adrian stared at the black screen.

"Play it again."

"Lieutenant—"

"Play it again."

The detective obeyed.

This time Adrian paused on every frame. He studied the chains, the wounds, the timestamp, Kane’s face. When the spear entered my leg, his hand gripped the table hard enough to whiten his knuckles.

At the splash, he turned and walked out.

Owen stopped the recording before it could restart a third time.

"She never gave him a name," he said.

No one answered.

The operation log was still displayed on the wall beside the frozen image of my face. Twelve photographs had been marked with black bars after the failed raid. Daniel’s photograph made thirteen.

For three years, my name had appeared above them under the words INTERNAL COMPROMISE.

My father crossed the room and tore the label down.

"Reopen every finding connected to Evelyn," he ordered. "Every call record, every witness statement, every access log. Assume we built the case against her on a false premise."

The younger detective hesitated. "Captain, Internal Affairs closed that review two years ago."

"Then they can open it again."

"What about the citywide alert?"

Owen looked at the blank screen.

Hope and horror fought across his face.

"Leave it active until we have physical confirmation. If there is any chance she survived, I want every officer looking. If she didn’t..."

His voice failed.

Adrian finished for him.

"Then we bring her home."

He crossed the building in seconds, stormed into the interrogation room, and dragged Kane from his chair.

"Where is her body?"

Kane smiled through split lips. "Now you believe me?"

Adrian slammed him against the wall.

"Where?"

"The tide took her. Maybe the fish did the rest."

My father pulled Adrian back before he destroyed his career and Kane’s chance at trial.

"We find evidence," Owen said. "We do this properly. For her."

Adrian shoved Kane away.

"There’s still one person who claims she saw Evelyn alive."

He drove to the hospital, only to learn Natalie had discharged herself less than an hour earlier.

The nurse handed him the release form. Natalie had refused observation and insisted she felt safe returning to the Mercer house because police officers lived nearby.

Adrian studied her signature.

"Did anyone visit her?"

"No. She made one call from the room, but I don’t know to whom."

"Was she carrying a phone when she left?"

"She had one in her coat pocket."

Natalie had told him the attacker took her phone.

For the first time, Adrian did not invent an explanation for the contradiction.

He folded the release form and put it in an evidence envelope.

By the time he reached the Mercer house, his phone was ringing.

"Cole."

The medical examiner spoke on the other end.

Two years earlier, a trawler captain had pulled a human skull from a damaged net eight miles east of Port Alder. It had remained unidentified in state storage until the renewed Kane investigation pushed it through the latest DNA database.

Divers had returned to the coordinates after the fisherman reported the find. They recovered part of a rib cage, several finger bones, and a corroded fragment of chain. At the time, there had been no missing-person record that matched the estimated age and injuries.

There should have been.

My name had been removed from the missing-person system the day Adrian signed the fugitive warrant.

The lab had compared it with Owen’s sample.

Parent-child probability: 99.98 percent.

Dentists had also matched two old restorations from my academy medical records.

"I’m sorry," the examiner said. "The remains belong to Detective Evelyn Mercer."

Adrian stopped outside my bedroom door.

Natalie emerged carrying a cardboard box filled with clothes and keepsakes.

She collided with him.

The box fell.

My police identification card skidded across the hardwood floor and stopped against Adrian’s shoe.

A black prepaid phone landed beside it.

Natalie stared down at both objects.

Adrian slowly crouched.

He picked up my identification first. My academy photograph smiled back at him, young and proud and unaware of the ocean waiting at the end of my first life.

Then he lifted the phone.

"Why do you have these?"

"I was organizing Evie’s things."

"This phone isn’t hers."

"I’ve never seen it before. It must have been in the box."

Adrian pressed the power button.

The battery was nearly full.

There were no contacts, photographs, or applications beyond an encrypted messenger. Its history contained one outgoing message from three years earlier.

My name.

My photograph.

My badge number.

EVELYN MERCER IS A COP.

Adrian looked up.

Something in his face made Natalie step backward.

"It was you."

Natalie’s face lost every trace of color.

"I can explain," she said, but her gaze kept returning to the phone instead of my identification.

Adrian noticed.

So did I.

He slid the device into an evidence bag without touching anything else on the screen. Then he used his radio to request a forensic team and two officers at every exit.

Natalie took another step backward.

"Why are you calling them? You know me."

"I thought I did."

His answer was quieter than a shout and far more final.

Behind Adrian, my father reached the top of the stairs.

He saw my identification in Adrian’s hand.

Then he saw the message glowing on the phone that had been hidden beneath my clothes.

For the first time in three years, both men were looking at the real traitor.