Page 25 of Wild Card
She doesn’t deny it.
Dave folds his arms, stone-faced now. “That’s obstruction.”
Miranda’s face goes ice-cold when she hears me speak up. For a second she looks like a statue about to crack. Then she smiles—too bright, too practiced.
“You’re wrong, Presley,” she says, slow and clinical. “Check the login credentials. We walked in on Aria deleting footage. She fled the room when we confronted her. Her credentials are still active in the session logs because she left them open. It’s obvious.”
The room tilts for a second. I stare at the screen because I want—need—to see the lines change under her words. But I already know what she’s trying to do: pin everything on Aria and make a neat, prosecutable narrative. Blame the woman who doesn’t have powerful friends to fight back.
Miranda leans in, voice low and hard. “We also know about your relationship, Presley. You two have been sleeping together. It looks like a conspiracy. You helped her. The jewels were taken, the footage was deleted, and then she confessed under pressure—probably to protect you. I want this handled properly. Dave, I want him detained now. And find Aria. Put out every resource you have. I want a manhunt. I want those thieves in prison for the rest of their lives.”
For a terrible second the meeting room goes very, very quiet. Her words land like a gavel.
Dave doesn’t move immediately. He tilts his head, watching Miranda with a look that’s not reverent. He’s not the wide-eyed college kid I remember anymore; he’s got the gravity of someone who learned how to separate friendship from oath.
“You’ve got a lot of accusations,” he says finally, slow enough that everyone in the room can hear. “And a lot of finger-pointing.” He looks at me then, then at Aria’s empty chair, then back at Miranda. “We don’t act on allegations. We act on evidence.”
Miranda’s smile tightens. “The evidence is right there—Aria’s login, the deleted files. You can pull the session history. You can see she fled.”
“Login credential?” Dave interrupts. The word hangs. He shakes his head. “We only act on verifiable evidence, and we only arrest with probable cause. You asked for arrests and a manhunt. That’s a serious ask, Miranda.” He says it plainly, the way you tell someone they’re asking to set a fire in a room filled with people.
A small, almost involuntary laugh slips out of him—sharp, incredulous. “You want a manhunt when the thieves are right in front of me? Cute.”
Miranda flushes. She opens her mouth to reply and then falters—because the laughter is not dismissive for her sake; it’s a verdict on how she’s been conducting business. Dave turns to the terminal, taps a few keys, and brings up logs. He scrolls past, and for the first time the room is as silent as the echo of the screen.
“You tried to make this a tidy narrative,” he says without taking his eyes off the display. “You tried to force a closure. You tried to pin it on the easiest target. That’s not how this works.”
Miranda’s composure cracks just a hair. “You don’t understand—” she starts.
“I understand exactly what I’m looking at,” Dave replies. He swivels on his heel and faces her. “There’s a deletion trail, yes. But those deletions were initiated from Aria’s account, and the timestamps show remote access from an IP that maps back to a management console, not Aria’s terminal session. Whoever tried to make it look like Aria is the one who left themselves enough breadcrumbs for you to spin this.” He lets the sentence sit like a weight.
Her color drains. She looks from Dave to Vincent, but Vincent doesn’t move to defend her—his jaw is a tight line. For once he’s not the man with the answers; he’s just a man in a room watching his plan unspool.
Dave turns fully away from the monitors and fixes Miranda with a look that means business. “You asked me to arrest someone. I’m not going to do that on headlines and PR choreography. But I am going to follow the evidence. And if the evidence shows we need to detain someone for questioning, we’ll do it by the book.”
Miranda’s shoulders slump; she’s been the one to set the story, and now it’s sliding out of her hands.
“Now,” Dave says, voice steady, “you’re coming with me to clear this up. We’ll take statements. We’ll pull every log, every access point, every camera feed from the last seventy-two hours and cross-check it. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ll be fine.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it. For a beat she looks like someone deciding whether to beg or bluff. She chooses neither. Instead, she straightens, composes herself, and allows Dave to escort her from the room. He doesn’t dramatize it—no raised voice, no theatrics—just a measured, procedural exit.
Dave comes back to my side, the corner of his mouth tight. He nods once. “We got them. You did good, Dane.”
I immediately drive back to the police station. I head to the lock up where Aria has been caged. The metal door buzzes as Dave unlocks it. My heart pounds louder than the clank of the bolt sliding open.
We step into the hallway, fluorescent lights casting everything in a harsh, sterile glow. I spot her instantly—curled up on the thin cot, arms crossed, back stiff, but eyes wide open. Aria.
Dave opens the cell. “You’re free to go.”
She doesn’t move at first. Then her eyes snap to mine, full of fury.
“Get out,” she hisses. “I don’t want to see your face.”
“Aria—”
“No.” She bolts upright, stepping out of the cell with all the fury of someone wrongfully caged. “I don’t care what you haveto say. I want yougone.” Her voice is trembling, but her spine is steel.
Dave raises his hands. “Before you go nuclear on the guy, you might want to know that Presley just saved your ass.”
