Chapter 19: Lawful Enemy

“You’ve told me everything I need to know, Doctor,” I said, standing up. I shook his hand, the man’s skin feeling cold despite the heat of the day. “Thank you for your time.”

I walked out of his office, through the quiet, desperate hallways, and back into the oppressive desert sun. The stolen pages in my jacket felt like a bomb, but a bomb I controlled. I finally had proof. I had a name. I had a direct link between the hospital and the machine in the mine. For the first time, I was ahead of the game. Now I just had to decide what to do with it.

The desert sun was a hammer blow, but I barely felt it. I walked away from St. Jude’s with a fire in my veins that had nothing to do with the heat. Tucked inside my jacket, the stolen patient file felt like a lead weight and a golden ticket all at once. The name on the file matched a John Doe file from the morgue, a man whose death had been ruled an accidental overdose. But the notes inside spoke of advanced neurological testing, of cognitive benchmarks and processing speeds. It was cold, corporate language, not medical jargon. The morgue file stated that the body was released to the crematorium, but I know exactly where that body is. It was never in the morgue because it lay in the bowels of the mine.

Is this whole town working with the Mongols or the Chrion Group or both? Or worse yet, am I missing a huge part of this convoluted puzzle? My mind was already racing, planning the confrontation with Maddie, laying out the proof. Maybe it would force her to be fucking honest with me. My life isn’t a fucking pixel in a damn video game. There’s no cheat code for infinite lives! If she refuses to acknowledge the truth, then I will have to get the Feds involved. I roll my eyes. They are the last people I want involved because they have been known to aid the mafia.

That’s when Sheriff Brody’s cruiser pulled up, not with a siren’s wail, but with a quiet crunch of tires on gravel. It didn’t stop beside me; it angled in front, blocking my path to my car. The move was deliberate, precise. It was wrong.

Brody stepped out, and the man who emerged wasn’t the one I knew. The usual sun-baked laziness was gone. He didn’t slouch; he stood tall, his hand resting casually on his duty belt. The gut was still there, but the man wearing the uniform seemed leaner, harder. Colder.

“Having a nice walk, Draven?” he asked. His voice was flat, stripped of its usual folksy drawl.

“Just enjoying the local scenery, Sheriff,” I said, my hand instinctively moving closer to the file in my jacket. My internal alarms were screaming. “Didn’t realize you were on patrol out this way.”

“I go where I’m needed,” Brody said, his eyes fixed on me. They weren’t the weary, disinterested eyes of a man counting down to retirement. They were sharp. Assessing. “And right now, I’m needed here. You’ve been asking a lot of questions. Stirring things up.”

“It’s my job.”

“Your job is to find a missing person,” he corrected, taking a slow step closer. “It is not your job to be stealing files from a hospital. That’s evidence. And evidence in an official investigation belongs to the law.”

The blood in my veins turned to ice. “What investigation? You told me this was ghost stories and bad luck.”

A thin, mirthless smile touched his lips. “Things change.” He stopped a few feet away from me and held out his hand. It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. “The file, Draven.”

I didn’t move. My mind was catching up to the terrifying reality of the situation. He wasn’t Maddie’s pawn. He wasn’t a bumbling fool. He was something else entirely. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Brody’s sigh was one of genuine disappointment. “Look around, son. We’re a long way from anywhere. A lot of things can happen in the desert. People get lost. Cars break down. Sometimes, they just… disappear.” He let the words hang in the hot, still air. “Now, for the last time. Give. Me. The file.”

There was no choice. He wasn’t threatening to arrest me. He was promising to bury me. With a slow, deliberate movement, I reached into my jacket, pulled out the file, and placed it in his outstretched hand.

He took it without even glancing at it. He already knew what it was. He tucked it under his arm and looked me square in the eye.

“You’re a smart guy, Draven. Too smart for your own good. Here’s some free advice: go home. Whatever you think you’re untangling here, you’re just pulling the pin on a grenade. And your hand is the only thing on it.”

He turned and walked back to his cruiser, the movements economical and sure. He got in, started the engine, and drove away, leaving me standing alone in a cloud of dust and the suffocating realization that I was completely, utterly trapped. The law in Calico wasn’t just broken. It was the enemy.