Page 204 of Carrick
The precinct was tooquiet for a Thursday night. Maybe it was just everything that had happened, everything we’d learned in the past twenty-four hours, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on the back of my head—a feeling I was unfortunately getting more accustomed to, these days.
I didn’t bother turning on the overhead lights in Records. Just flicked on the desk lamp and let the soft amber glow fall across the stack of case files I’d been dragging behind me for weeks.
The safe house shootout. Niko’s op from over a month ago, when we had—stupidly—tried to move Maddy to a different safe house. Two dead, multiple weapons recovered, all entered into evidence under my name.
I flipped open the file for the fifth time this week, red ink already bleeding into the corners, margins full of questions. But tonight, I wasn’t reading it for answers. I was reading it for holes.
Something in the post-op paperwork had never sat right. A serial number that disappeared between seizure and storage. Ballistics that never made it to evidence review.
I grabbed the inventory sheet. Cross-referenced it with the scan log.
One line stood out—the AR-15 from the bald man in the SUV. Etching too shallow. Custom trigger mod. I remembered logging it myself.
But according to the system, it had never been checked in. No transfer tag. No confirmation. Just white space where the rest of the chain of custody should have been.
I stood, didn’t even grab my jacket. The hallway to the evidence locker was sterile under blue-white fluorescents, the kind that made even clean floors feel like crime scenes. I keyed in my access code and stepped through.
Row three. Left side.
Gone.
Not just the AR. The compact Glock with the polished slide the bald man had been carrying in a side holster. The Makarov with the missing serial number that the rooftop sniper had been too stupid to pull on me. The fucking .308 that the sniper had used to begin with.
All gone.
I scanned the shelf again, slower this time. My stomach sank as I ran a hand along the empty space where the metal tags should have been—where the sealed evidence boxes used to sit.
Whoever did this didn’t break in. They walked in like they belonged. No flagged entries. No clearance pings. No error codes. The logs were untouched. But the weapons were missing.
This was surgical.
I backed out of the room like it might explode behind me and made it to the parking lot before I let myself breathe. This wasn’t just rot in the department. This was a system working exactly how someone wanted it to.
I got in my car. Didn’t start it. Just stared through the windshield at the empty street and called Niko. He picked up fast.
“Quinn?”
“You alone?”
He paused. “I can be. Hold on.”
Thirty seconds. The rustle of movement. A door shutting. “Talk to me.”
I ran a hand down my face. “We’ve got a problem. The weapons from the safe house op? Gone. All of them.”
“Define gone.”
“Not reassigned. Not transferred. Wiped. Locker shelf is clean—logs show nothing. Chain of custody’s been stripped.”
Niko went silent. Finally, after a heavy sigh, he spoke. “That was a secured room.”
“I know.”
“With two-man verification.”
“I know.”
“They walked it.”
