Chapter 4: Old Debts
I answered on the second buzz.
"Holloway."
"Caleb Vance." Her voice was the same.
Flat, precise, no warmth wasted on greeting.
"I heard you made a phone call last night."
"Word travels."
"It does when the name Reaper gets used on an unsecured line after seventeen years of silence." A pause.
"Are you in trouble, or are you making trouble?"
"My son is in surgery," I said.
"Both kneecaps.
County sheriff."
The silence that followed was three seconds long.
"Dale Vance," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"You know him."
"We've had a file on Dale Vance for four years," Holloway said.
"Civil rights violations.
Excessive force.
Two prior incidents that never made it to a grand jury because the witnesses recanted." Another pause.
"We've been waiting for something we could actually use."
I stepped outside into the cold morning air.
"I have a witness," I said.
"Sixteen years old.
Video on her phone.
Dale Vance's son was in her hospital room forty minutes ago trying to walk her statement back."
I heard a keyboard.
"Is the video intact?"
"As of an hour ago."
"Where is she?"
"Safe.
For now."
"Caleb." Holloway's voice shifted — not softer, but more direct.
"If that video shows what you're saying it shows, I can move on this.
But I need it through proper channels.
I need the girl willing to cooperate formally.
And I need you to not do whatever it is you were planning to do before you picked up my call."
I looked up at the hospital windows.
"What makes you think I was planning anything?"
"Because I know what Reaper means," she said.
"And because the men you called last night have a combined forty-three years of special operations experience and zero patience for due process."
I almost smiled.
"They're just old friends coming to visit."
"Caleb."
"I hear you, Holloway.
Proper channels.
Formal cooperation." I let a beat pass.
"But if Dale Vance moves on that girl before your channels open up, I'm not going to stand in a hallway and watch."
"Understood," she said.
"I'll have someone there by noon."
She ended the call.
I stood outside for a moment, watching an ambulance pull into the bay.
Two paramedics moving fast, heads down, focused.
People doing their jobs in the dark while the rest of the world slept.
I went back upstairs.
Laura was in the family waiting area outside the surgical suite, sitting with a paper cup of cold coffee in both hands.
She looked up when I came in.
"How is she?" she said.
"Who?"
"The girl.
Marcus told me."
I sat down beside her.
"She's all right.
For now."
Laura set the cup down on the chair beside her.
"Caleb." Her voice was quiet.
"What are you doing?"
"What needs to be done."
"That's not an answer."
I looked at her.
Seventeen years of marriage.
She knew exactly what that sentence meant, and she knew exactly what it didn't say.
"I made some calls," I said.
"I know." She folded her hands in her lap.
"I heard you in the parking lot.
I was watching from the window." She didn't look angry.
She looked like a woman who had been afraid for a long time and was now deciding how much more fear she had left in her.
"Are we safe?"
"Yes."
"Is Ethan safe?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to do something that takes you away from us?"
I took her hand.
"No," I said.
"I'm going to do something that makes sure this never happens to anyone else's son in this county again."
She didn't answer right away.
Then she leaned her head against my shoulder.
"Then do it right," she said.
"Do it so it sticks."
The surgical suite doors opened.
Marcus came through them, still in scrubs, pulling his mask down.
His expression told me Ethan was alive.
It also told me the road ahead was long.
"He's out," Marcus said.
"First surgery went as well as it could.
He's going to need two more." He sat down across from us.
"Caleb.
There's something else."
I waited.
"The bone damage." Marcus leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"It wasn't consistent with a standard service round.
The fragmentation pattern—" He stopped.
"Someone modified those rounds.
Deliberately."
Laura's hand tightened in mine.
"That's not a warning shot," I said.
"That's not even excessive force."
"No," Marcus said.
"It isn't."
The word landed between the three of us and stayed there.
May you like
Whoever Dale Vance was, he hadn't lost his temper that night.
He had come prepared.
