Page 25 of Hunted in the Silence

The officer picked up the phone unenthusiastically.

Cole waited in the lobby and looked at the community board on the wall. Lost dog flyers. A notice about a neighborhood watch meeting. A business card for a locksmith. And near the bottom, slightly crooked, a card for the Blackridge Victim Advocacy Center with a phone number and the words Available 24 hours printed below it in clean, spare type.

He was looking at it when a voice behind him said, “You’re Maddox.”

Cole turned.

Detective Carson Black was thirty-four, which Cole knew from his file, but he looked like someone who had packed more years than that into the ones he had. Dark hair, jaw that needed a razor, a watchful steadiness in his dark eyes that Cole recognized as the byproduct of doing serious work in a place where everyone knew everyone. He was in plainclothes, dark pants and a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he moved with the unhurried confidence of a man on his own turf.

He extended his hand and clasped onto Cole’s with a tight grip.

“Carson Black,” he said. “Come on back.”

His office was a glass-walled space off the main floor, visible to and from the bullpen, the kind of arrangement that said something about how he ran his shop. Cole noted the organized desk, the whiteboard with current case notations in tight handwriting, the framed photograph turned slightly away from visitors that he could see just enough of to know it was a family.

Carson gestured to the chair across from his desk and took his own. He didn’t open a file or pull up a computer screen. He looked at Cole directly.

“You’ve been in Blackridge three weeks running a federal investigation that involves my town and my people,” Carson said. “I’m not going to pretend I’m not annoyed about that.”

Cole met his gaze head on. “That’s fair.”

“But I understand operational security, and I understand that trafficking networks have a history of leaks that kill cases, and I understand why the Bureau runs these things the way they do.” Carson leaned back in his chair. “So tell me what you have and tell me where I fit.”

Cole laid it out. He took twenty minutes and gave him the full picture, every piece of it, from Mia’s arrival at the advocacy center through the Barton Industrial connection and the Meridian property and Caitlin Marsh and the phone extraction. He watched Carson’s expression while he talked, the way a man with good instincts processed information—not reacting to individual pieces but building the whole picture in real time, his jaw tightening incrementally as he realized the scope of it.

When Cole finished, Carson was quiet for a moment.

“Caitlin Marsh,” he said.

“You know her?”

“I know Ruth Marsh. She’s lived on Carver Street for thirty years.” Carson’s voice was level, like he was keeping something contained. “I coached a youth basketball league three years ago. Ruth used to bring Caitlin to watch the practices because Caitlin wanted to learn and they didn’t have a girls’ team that year.” He paused. “She made me show her how to do a proper layup. Took her about forty minutes to get it right and she refused to leave until she did.”

Cole said nothing. He let Carson sit with it for the beat it needed.

“Who knows the full picture on your end?” Carson asked.

“Olivia Delgado, my partner. And Brynn Holt.”

Carson’s expression shifted slightly, something settling in it. “Brynn’s been working trafficking cases through the center for three years. She brought me a victim two years ago. A girl from the Westside who’d been in it for six months. Brynn had more on the network that girl came from than my whole department could pull together in a month.” He looked at Cole steadily. “How are you using her?”

“As a primary intelligence resource. She has two years of intake documentation that cross-references directly with our investigation. And she has personal knowledge of Devlin’s operational habits that no file can replicate.” Cole held Carson’s gaze. “She understands the risk she’s taking. I’m not managing her. I’m working with her.”

Something in Carson’s expression recalibrated fractionally. Not surprise exactly. More like he was updating his original assessment. “Good,” he said. “Because she doesn’t respond well to being managed. I tried it once, early on, when she brought me that first case. Spent ten minutes explaining what we could and couldn’t do and how she should let us handle the investigative side.” The corner of his mouth moved. “She told me exactly where I could put that suggestion and then gave me the pieces of evidence that cracked the case open. I learned my lesson.”

Cole felt something that wasn’t quite a smile but was close to it pull at the corners of his mouth. “I picked that up quickly.”

“Smart man.” Carson pulled a legal pad from his desk drawer. “What do you need from me?”

“Officially, I need a local liaison who can move in this town without flagging Bureau activity. People talk to Blackridge PD in ways they don’t talk to the FBI. I need eyes on the Meridian corridor without a federal presence that could spook Devlin’s people.” Cole leaned forward. “Unofficially, I need someone who knows this town well enough to tell me what I’m missing. The things that don’t show up in reports.”

Carson wrote something on the pad. “The industrial corridor on Miller Road has been a problem area for years. We’ve run patrol by it. Nothing ever materializes into anything chargeable. In hindsight, given what you’re telling me, that non-activity is its own kind of tell.” He looked up. “I can put Finn Steele on the corridor surveillance. He’s a good detective, solid instincts, and he grew up three blocks from Miller Road. He won’t read as out of place.”

Cole recognized the name from the file on Black’s unit. Former partner background, solid departmental record. “That works. He needs to understand the parameters. Nothing moves, nothing escalates without running through me first.”

“He’ll understand.” Carson set the pen down. “What’s the timeline?”

“Six days to the next rotation, if the Thursday pattern holds. That’s the window to build enough of a case structure around Devlin that we can take Teller in without collapsing the network and losing Caitlin.”