Page 65 of Redeeming Melodies

The pieces started clicking together - ugly puzzle with uglier picture.

"Pull Ramirez's personnel file." My voice didn't sound like mine. "Everything. Background check, references, disciplinary records."

"Already did." Smith handed over another folder - thicker than it should have been. "Found something interesting in his employment history. Two years ago, before he came here? He worked private security for some development company in Manhattan."

The same time Jimmy left New York. The same time he showed up in Oakwood Grove, looking for a quiet place to start over.

No such thing as coincidences. Not in this job.

My phone buzzed - Elliot, probably wondering why I hadn't come home yet. Home. When did my house start feeling like that?

Focus, Thompson.

"Chief?" Smith shifted slightly. "What do you want to do?"

Good question. Protocol said confront him, suspend him pending investigation. But protocol never met Jimmy in a hospital bed, skull pieced back together like broken pottery.

"Set up surveillance." The decision came easy as breathing. "Everything - phone taps, GPS tracker on his car, the works. But quiet. If he's working with someone in New York-"

"We want them all." Smith nodded, already moving. "I'll handle the paperwork myself. Keep it off the main system."

Smart kid. Trust no one until we knew how deep this went.

The station felt colder now, shadows longer. Every memory of Ramirez shifted, took on new meaning. The way he always volunteered for night shifts. How he seemed to know things about people's pasts without being told. All those phone calls he'd step outside to take.

Blind. I'd been fucking blind.

"Smith." He paused at the door. "The ranch's security footage - you see anyone else that night? Besides our mystery visitor?"

"No sir." His expression darkened. "But the cameras on the north fence were disabled. Professionally. Someone knew exactly where to cut the feed."

Someone with police training. Someone who knew ranch security protocols.

Someone I'd trusted to protect this town.

The evidence spread across my desk like an accusation. Statements, photos, medical reports - each one a reminder that I'd let a wolf into my fold. Given him a badge, a gun, authority over the people I'd sworn to protect.

Never again.

The sightof my house punched something loose in my chest. After the sterile hospital lights and station's harsh fluorescents, home should have felt comforting. Instead, it just reminded me how many people I'd failed that day. Jimmy in his hospital bed. Ramirez's betrayal burning in my gut.

But there was light in the backyard - soft, barely there. And a figure sitting in the grass, silhouetted against the stars. Elliot. Something in me steadied just seeing him there, like a compass finding north, like pieces of a broken world clicking back into place.

My boots crunched on the lawn, deliberately loud enough not to startle him. He turned, and fuck if that small smile, tinged with sadness around the edges, didn't make my heart stutter in my chest.

"Can't sleep?" My voice came out rougher than intended as I crossed the lawn, each step bringing me closer to the magnetic pull of his presence.

He turned, and even in the dim light I caught the redness around his eyes, the raw vulnerability there that made my chest ache. "Not tonight."

A wine bottle sat beside him, half empty. Without speaking, he offered it to me. Our fingers brushed during the handoff, sending electricity through my system that I was too exhausted to fight.

"Tommy finally crashed," he said after a while, voice raw and fragile around the edges. "Read him three chapters of his favorite book. Kid kept asking for 'just one more' like he knew- like he sensed-"

He stopped, jaw working against emotions too big for words. The silence stretched between us, heavy with all the things we weren't saying, all the ways this night was about to change everything.

"Bad day?" I asked, though I could see the answer written in every line of his body, in the way his shoulders curved inward like they were trying to protect his heart.

His laugh came out bitter, shattered glass where there should have been warmth. "You could say that. Found out I'm losing my kid for a month."

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