Page 49 of Twisted Empire

Madelyn

“Go through everything again with me,” Slade said, holding up a list of all the compiled evidence we had. We’d organized it as well as we could, with an explanatory letter laying out all the connections and highlighting the important aspects, and gathered it both in a packet of printed materials and a flash drive.

Beckett had even set up a scheduled email—one that would send if we didn’t return and refresh the settings within two days. The message would go directly to the police department, with all the digital files and a note that something must have happened to all of us related to the case.

It was a precaution, just in case we never made it all the way to the cops to begin with.

Dexter leafed through the packet of hard copies. “We’ve got the photocopies and printouts of all the relevant hospital records, our notes on the seafood market and the operating facility where it was sending ‘poisonous fish’ along with key photographs, business records showing what front company owns that business and others, and a statement about the possible drug exchange Madelyn witnessed at the spa. And printouts of my photos of Evan Silver’s relevant notes with related documentation.”

The original notes and some other concrete evidence had been lost in the fire in the Vigil office at the university, but Dexter’s relentless commitment to documentation had filled most of that gap.

I bobbed restlessly on my feet, wanting to think everything was about to fall into place for us but hesitant to get my hopes all the way up. “And all of that is on the flash drive in digital form too?”

Logan nodded. “I double-checked. And it has the video files that we couldn’t fully add to the printed packet too.”

I let out my breath in a rush. “Okay. It seems like that should be everything. All of this stuff has got to be enough, right?”

The five of us studied the thick folder, packed with all our assembled proof. “I can’t say I have a lot of faith in the police,” Beckett said. “But I feel like this much evidence has to be enough to get them started on an investigation of their own, even if they can’t make any arrests right off the bat. And they have more resources than we do to make even more connections.”

Slade tapped his prosthetic foot on the floor. “It’d be better if we had a direct witness. Too bad Dr. Evancho barely wanted to give us as much as he did.”

I hugged myself. “If the police don’t take action, we can always push harder on him, I guess.”

“Or go to the media,” Dexter added. “There’s some provocative material in here—if they print some stories on the situation, it’ll put pressure on the cops to take a look.”

“Right.” I forced a smile. “I just hope they can arrest Doom’s Seed—whatever his real name is—fast. Because he’sreallynot going to be happy with us once he figures out we’ve exposed his businesses to the police.”

Logan gripped my shoulder. “We won’t let anything happen to you. We’ve made it this far okay, haven’t we?”

“I’m not the only one I’m worried about,” I reminded him. “You’ve all become targets too—and everyone working under Beckett.”

“Once the cops are on the case, we’ll have some protection from Doom’s Seed and his people,” Slade said. “He’ll know how closely the police will scrutinize the situation if we’re even hurt. It might piss him off, but exposing him protects us too.”

He had a point. I tried to focus on that rather than my lingering anxiety. “Okay. So we’re ready to go?”

“Hold on.” Logan dropped onto the sofa and opened his laptop. “I want to reconfirm one last thing about the source records. Then we’re good to go.”

As he tapped at the keys to regain access to the hospital networks he’d been patched into, I gave the other guys a crooked smile. “It’s going to be weird when this is over. The investigation has been scary, but it’s also what brought us all together.”

Slade smirked. “I’d like to think we’d have found each other even without the case, Piccolina. Once we crossed paths on campus, you wouldn’t have been able to stay away from me.”

As the corners of my lips twitched higher at his teasing, Beckett shook his head. “We met before I even knew there was an investigation. Although I’m awfully glad I ended up being here to help you navigate my part of the world.”

Logan let out a grunt that had us all glancing toward him. His forehead had furrowed. “That’s weird,” he muttered.

My pulse hiccupped. “What?”

“I can’t get the right files to load. Give me a second.”

As Logan’s fingers flew across the keyboard, the rest of us gathered behind the sofa to watch. The sense of unease that’d been prickling through my chest grew claws, sinking deeper in.

Logan’s keystrokes grew more forceful with each iteration. Then his hands clenched into fists.

“It doesn’t make sense. I just looked at the originals in the hospital systems last night. This record was here then, and now it’s like it never existed.”

“Check a file at one of the other hospitals,” Beckett suggested, but the tightening of his face told me he didn’t feel any better about this development than I did.

My heart sank as Logan repeated the process on a different server. And then another, and another, and another. His head drooped farther with each failure.

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