Jake had spent the entire night hunched over his desk, surrounded by old police files, encrypted financial logs, and a pot of untouched, cold coffee.
His eyes were bloodshot.
His jaw tight.
His mind spinning.
Every time he blinked, he saw Samantha's face from last night—haunted, shaken, holding a secret she refused to share.
He couldn't sleep until he found something. Anything.
A clue.
A link.
A truth.
At 3:17 a.m., his cursor stopped over a sealed PDF buried in archived police documentation.
Classified Supplemental Note – Case 4897: Vehicular Assault
Access: Restricted
Jake's breath stalled.
He hacked through three layers of encryption—not Elevate systems, but police systems, buried deep and deliberately.
The file opened.
A single paragraph.
Two sentences.
But it detonated everything.
"Driver's family was compensated post-incident.
Payment was wired from an offshore account linked to Carter Group's subsidiary, Medbridge International."
Jake froze.
