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Chapter 17: What the Machines Don't Say
publish date:
2026-08-06 16:16:53
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Fight like a mother Chapter 23: The Groundskeeper's Slip
Curtis Boyle had worked the palace grounds for almost six years, mostly keeping to the hedges and flower beds along the eastern wall, the kind of job that let a man stay invisible if he wanted to, and Curtis had always preferred it that way.Peter found him kneeling in the dirt near the rose garden, gloves caked with soil, a small radio playing static-heavy music beside him that he switched off the moment he noticed someone approaching."Mr. Boyle." Peter kept his tone light, unhurried, the way he'd learned worked best when you didn't want someone bolting before you'd gotten anything useful out of them. "Got a minute?""Depends what for." Curtis didn't look up right away, brushing dirt from a trowel with more attention than the task really required."Just following up on some vehicle registrations. Routine stuff." Peter crouched down near the edge of the flower bed, keeping himself at eye level rather than looming. "You drive a blue sedan, right? Older model."Curtis's hands stilled f
Fight like a mother Chapter 22: What He Doesn't Tell Her
The machines beeped their same steady rhythm they'd kept for days, and Daggy had almost stopped hearing them anymore, the sound fading into background noise the way anything did when you sat with it long enough.She was there on one of her supervised visits, watching her mother's chest rise and fall, when Mitchell's fingers twitched against the blanket, small but unmistakable."Mama?" Daggy sat up straighter, leaning closer, her heart suddenly hammering. "Mom, can you hear me?"Mitchell's eyelids fluttered, slow and heavy, fighting against whatever sedation was still working through her system. It took nearly a full minute before her eyes finally opened, unfocused at first, drifting around the room like she wasn't entirely sure where she was."Daggy?" Her voice was hoarse, barely more than a rasp, but it was her voice, and Daggy nearly sobbed at the sound of it."I'm here, Mama. I'm right here." Daggy took her hand carefully, mindful of the IV taped there. "You're in the hospital. You
Fight like a mother Chapter 21: Thin Ground
Peter had the vehicle registry pulled up across two monitors, cross-referencing Beth Morris's description against every car registered to palace staff and their known associates, a process that felt less like investigation and more like searching for one specific grain of sand on a very long beach.Dark blue, older model, dented rear bumper. It wasn't much to go on, but it was more than he'd had a week ago, and Peter had learned to be grateful for scraps when scraps were all that were available.He narrowed the search by color first, then by age of vehicle, cutting the list down from several hundred to just under forty. Still too many, but manageable, something he could actually work with instead of drowning in.It was tedious work, cross-checking registration photos against Beth's description, most of them clearly wrong the moment he pulled up the image. Wrong shade of blue, no dent, wrong body style entirely.He was on car number twenty-six when something made him pause. A sedan reg
Fight like a mother Chapter 20: Almost
Foster's office wasn't what Beth expected. She'd pictured something colder, more intimidating, but instead found herself sitting across from a tired-looking older man in a room that felt more like an accountant's office than anything belonging to pack law enforcement."Take your time," Foster said, his recorder already running on the desk between them, though his tone suggested patience wasn't necessarily his strongest quality. "Start from the beginning. What did you see, and when."Beth's hands were folded so tightly in her lap her knuckles had gone pale. "It was the same afternoon everyone's been talking about. I was walking my dog, just past the edge of my yard, and I saw a man carrying a little girl toward a car.""Can you describe the man?""Medium height. Dark jacket. I didn't get a great look at his face, it was getting dark." Beth swallowed hard. "But the car. I remember the car. Dark blue, older model, and there was a dent on the back bumper, like it had been in an accident a
Fight like a mother Chapter 19: Threads and Guilt
The shell company was called Meridian Holdings, a name so deliberately forgettable that Peter almost admired whoever had chosen it, the kind of name designed to slide right past anyone not looking closely enough.He'd spent two days tracing the payment Harvey Grant had pocketed back through a maze of accounts, favors, and a records clerk who owed him money from a card game months ago and was more than willing to look the other way while Peter dug through files he technically shouldn't have had access to.Meridian Holdings had made three payments to Harvey over the past two months, small enough not to draw attention individually but adding up to something that made Peter's jaw tighten every time he looked at the total.And Meridian Holdings, buried under two more shell companies and a property management firm that existed mostly on paper, traced back to an account that had originally been opened by Mary Charles Hemstrong four years ago, before she'd even married Dynan.Peter sat with t
Fight like a mother Chapter 18: Small Cracks, Quiet Doubts
Nina Wallace had known Mary Charles Hemstrong since they were both new wives navigating pack politics together, back when Mary still laughed easily and hadn't yet learned to calculate every word before she said it.They met for lunch at the same café they'd been going to for years, a quiet place tucked away from the main square where nobody important tended to eavesdrop, though lately Nina found herself wondering if that privacy had always worked in Mary's favor rather than hers."You've barely touched your food," Mary observed, swirling the ice in her water glass with a straw she wasn't using. "Something on your mind?""Just tired," Nina said, pushing a piece of lettuce around her plate without much interest. "The whole palace feels tense lately. You must feel it more than anyone."Mary's expression flickered, something quick and controlled passing behind her eyes before the pleasant mask settled back into place. "It's been a difficult few weeks, yes. But things will calm down once t
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