“Yes.”
“You were selected.”
“Apparently.”
“Think someone knew about the operation?”
Vance looked toward the interview room.
“If they knew, Keller wouldn’t have taken the money.”
“Unless they wanted him caught.”
Vance stopped.
Ruiz continued.
“Maybe somebody fed him your name deliberately.”
“To burn Keller.”
“Or the network.”
Vance considered.
An internal rival.
A frightened participant.
Someone trying to trigger federal attention without exposing themselves.
Mercer emerged.
“You two look unhappy.”
Ruiz explained.
Mercer swore.
“Find the source.”
That took eleven days.
Eleven days of warrants.
Interviews.
Database logs.
Subpoenas.
Server images.
And frightened county employees suddenly remembering details.
The answer came from a dispatcher named Maribel Shaw.
She was thirty-nine.
Worked nights.
Single mother.
No disciplinary record.
She asked to meet Vance specifically.
Mercer refused at first.
Then allowed it with counsel present.
Maribel sat in a federal conference room twisting a tissue between her fingers.
Vance entered.
She looked at him.
“I’m sorry.”
He sat.
“For what?”
“Your hand.”
Vance looked at the faded bruising.
“You didn’t step on it.”
“I sent Keller.”
Silence.
Vance studied her.
“You generated the priority stop.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Her eyes filled.
“Because nobody listened.”
There it was again.
The sentence that had started the entire operation.
Maribel had reported irregular cash-stop communications internally eight months earlier.
Her supervisor dismissed her concerns.
She contacted the state attorney general’s tip line anonymously.
No visible response.
She tried local media.
They asked for documents.
She had none she could legally copy.
Then she learned a former investigator named Vance Holloway had been temporarily commissioned by an interstate integrity task force.
“How?”
“My cousin works records in Topeka.”
Vance frowned.
“She told you?”
“Not directly.”
Maribel looked ashamed.
“I overheard her mentioning your name.”
“And decided to use me.”
“Yes.”
Vance leaned back.
She continued quickly.
“I knew Keller would stop you if Rusk believed you had cash.”
“So you altered the amount.”
“Yes.”
“Added the credential note.”
“Yes.”
“You could’ve gotten me killed.”
She cried.
“I know.”
Vance’s anger arrived late.
But it arrived.
“You didn’t know how I’d react.”
“I thought you’d show the commission immediately.”
“He kicked it into the weeds.”
“I saw.”
Vance stared.
“You watched?”
“Dispatch camera access.”
“Live?”
She nodded.
His anger sharpened.
“And you waited?”
“I triggered the state query.”
That explained the cruiser ping.
Not just automatic protections.
Maribel had forced the system to keep resurfacing his active commission.
She had been the hidden hand Pike could not understand.