Page 70 of Hunted in the Silence

“Good.” Cole meant it too. “I want to have that conversation you mentioned.”

“I figured you’d call.” The sound of Carson moving through a space followed, then a door closing, and then the noise of the bullpen disappeared entirely. “Here’s what I have. My department is understaffed and under-resourced, and I have three open cases right now that have federal connections I can’t pursue because I don’t have the access or the authority. I need someone I can call who has both.” He stopped, then said, “Unofficially.”

“I can work with unofficially,” Cole said.

“I thought you could,” Carson’s said, his voice dry but satisfied with the answer. “Dax has been thinking along similar lines. He’s been talking about stepping back from active BPD work for a while. His wife travels for work and he wants something with more flexibility.” He cleared his throat. “The three of us should sit down.”

“Next weekend,” Cole told him. “At your place, if Nora doesn’t mind an extra conversation before dinner.”

“Nora won’t mind,” Carson assured. “She has been suggesting I call you since Wednesday.”

Cole stared at the legal pad. The two lists and the overlap between them. “Tell her thank you.”

“Tell her yourself on Saturday,” Carson said, and hung up.

Cole sat at the kitchen table for another hour, writing and crossing out and writing again, the shape of something coming together on the yellow paper in front of him. Not a business plan—yet. More like the makings of an idea, the heavier elements identified and the spaces between them mapped. He’d built cases for seven years. He understood structure. He understood how pieces fit together and which ones held weight and which ones were finishing work.

This felt like it held weight.

He was still at the table when Olivia called at ten-thirty.

“I’m consulting on the Devlin prosecution,” she said without preamble. “Perkins from the U.S. Attorney’s office called this morning. They want your testimony on the investigation timeline and the evidence chain. I told them you’d be available.” She lowered her voice. “I also told them you were the best investigator I’d ever worked with and that the Bureau losing you was their own failure and they should consider that when building their witness list.”

Cole was quiet for a moment. “Olivia.”

“It’s true,” she said simply. “I say true things.”

He smiled to himself. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Just be available when Perkins calls.” Another pause followed, this time shorter. “You’re going to be fine, Cole. What you’re building is going to be exactly what it needs to be. I’ll send cases your way when I can.”

She hung up before he could respond, which was expected.

He looked at the legal pad. Then he picked up the pen and wrote a name at the top of the page.

Maddox Investigations.

He looked at it. Then he crossed out Investigations and wrote Consulting. Then he crossed that out too and sat looking at the blank space and decided it could wait.

***

The week between the resignation and the Saturday dinner felt like a major transition, in between the old and the new, the days more open than he was accustomed to and less weighted with the urgency of an active case. Cole used the time well. He met with a lawyer about the firm’s structure. He set up a business account. He drove the Blackridge corridor twice with fresh eyes, not as an FBI agent working a case, but as someone who was going to be working cases in this town for the foreseeable future and needed to understand the lay of the land in a different way.

He had dinner with Brynn every night. Sometimes at her apartment, sometimes at the diner on Fifth that she’d been going to for six years and where the woman behind the counter knew her order and had started learning his. He slept in a real bed, not a safe house bed, and woke up next to someone who made the morning feel like something to look forward to rather than something to get through.

He called his parents in Minnesota on Thursday night. His mother answered and he told her he’d left the Bureau. She was quiet for a moment before asking, “Are you happy?” And when he said yes, she said, “Then it’s right,” and that was it, which reminded him of how easy-going she’d always been.

Then his father got on the line and said, “What are you going to do?”

Cole told him, and his father was quiet for a moment before saying it sounded like the kind of work that mattered, which coming from a man who had spent his career teaching history to sixteen-year-olds and believed with his whole heart that work that mattered was the only work worth doing, was the closest thing to a benediction Cole knew how to receive.

He told them about Brynn that night too. Not everything. Not the details of the case and the investigation and the fire escape, but about who she was and what she did and the simple fact of her. His mother was quiet again, and then said she’d like to meet her. His father said, “Bring her to Minnesota,” and Cole promised he would, someday, soon hopefully, and meant it.

He told Brynn about the call the next morning over coffee. She listened closely, and when he finished she said, “Minnesota in the winter sounds cold.”

Cole smiled and said, “It is,”

“Okay then.” Brynn, dipped her head and drank the rest of her coffee, which left Cole feeling pretty good about where they were heading.