“A trap that caught a dirty federal agent.” Wyatt met her eyes. “Keller murdered two of your people. Cooper and Marcus Harrington. Your people. He’s been working with the Binding Chain for fifteen years, feeding them information, protecting their operations. We have him on tape admitting all of it.”
“The recording is being analyzed,” she said. “If it confirms what you’re saying?—“
“It will.”
“—then your cooperation will be taken into account.” Drake closed her notebook. “But I need you to understand something, Officer Davis. You compromised evidence. You lied to your colleagues. You aided, however reluctantly, a criminal organization.”
“I know.”
“Those actions have consequences.”
Wyatt nodded slowly. He’d known this was coming. Known it from the moment he’d opened his trunk three weeks ago and seen a dead man staring back at him.
“I’m prepared for that,” he said. “Whatever you decide—suspension, termination, charges—I’ll accept it. I just need you to know that I never stopped being a cop. Even when I was doing things I’m ashamed of, I was trying to protect people. My mother. My team. The witnesses whose lives would have been destroyed if those files got out.”
Drake studied him for a long moment. Whatever she was thinking, she kept it locked behind that professional mask.
“Wait here,” she said, and left the room.
Wyatt sat alone in the silence, staring at his hands.
He’d told the truth. All of it. Whatever happened next was out of his control.
The door opened again, and Sam stepped inside.
“Hey,” Sam said quietly, closing the door behind him. “How are you holding up?”
Wyatt laughed—a hollow, exhausted sound. “I’ve been better.”
Sam pulled out the chair Drake had vacated and sat down across from him. Lucy had followed him in, and she padded around the table to press against Wyatt’s leg. Her warmth was a comfort he didn’t feel like he deserved.
“Drake’s tough,” Sam said. “But she’s fair. She’ll look at the whole picture.”
“And if the whole picture still shows a cop who betrayed his oath?”
“Then we deal with it.” Sam’s voice was steady. “But you didn’t betray anything, Wyatt. You were put in an impossible situation by a monster who happens to share your DNA. Youmade choices—some good, some bad—but you never stopped fighting. That counts for something.”
Wyatt looked down at Lucy, at her calm, trusting eyes. She’d never growled at him. Never pulled away. Even when he was lying to everyone else, she’d stayed by his side.
“I picked up the coin,” he said quietly. “At the mill. Keller offered me a way out, and I picked it up.”
“You were buying time.”
“Was I?” Wyatt met Sam’s eyes. “I’ve been asking myself that all night. If you hadn’t come through that door—if I’d had another ten seconds to think about it—would I have taken the deal?”
Sam was quiet for a moment. The station noise filtered through the walls—voices, footsteps, the hum of a building that never really slept.
“I don’t know,” Sam said finally. “And neither do you. That’s the thing about choices—you don’t really know what you would have done until you have to do it. What I do know is that when it mattered, you held the line. You wore the wire. You walked into that mill knowing you might not walk out. That’s not the action of a man who was ready to turn.”
Wyatt wanted to believe him.
“My father’s still out there,” he said. “He knows where I am now. What I did. He won’t let this go.”
“No,” Sam agreed. “He won’t. But now you’re not facing him alone. Now you’ve got a team that knows the truth and has your back anyway.” He reached across the table and gripped Wyatt’s shoulder. “We protect our own, Wyatt. Whatever comes next, we face it together.”
The door opened again. Drake stood in the threshold, her expression unreadable.
“Officer Davis,” she said. “You’re free to go. For now. We’ll be in touch about the formal investigation, but giventhe circumstances and your cooperation in apprehending Agent Keller, you’re not being held or charged at this time.”