30. Wyatt

Chapter Thirty

WYATT

My cell phone chirped just as I was shoving through the department’s double doors. I answered without checking the caller ID. “Mason. Talk to me.”

“I’m working on it,” Mason replied, skipping any pretense of pleasantries.

“Work faster,” I snapped. The desk sergeant glanced up at my tone, caught my expression, and immediately glued her eyes to her computer screen. Smart. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. I had one goal, and I was going to tear the head off anyone who got in my way.

Mason’s irritation seeped through the line. “Colt and I are pulling every string we can, but these things take time.”

“Time isn’t a luxury I have right now,” I growled, clutching the phone so hard the plastic case squeaked.

Gage’s blank expression as he was printed and led away was seared into my memory. I watched the whole booking process to make sure they treated him right, and he hadn’t looked at me once. Not even when the steel door slammed shut between us.

It wasn’t going to end like this.

“Tell me how to get him out,” I said, storming past the burnt coffee stench of the break room. “I don’t care what it takes or who we piss off. Get those charges dropped.”

The pause lasted long enough for me to reach Vanderhoff’s office. I braced a hand on the wall, glaring at the brass nameplate on the door until the letters blurred. Mason let out a heavy sigh, the kind that came from years of dealing with everyone else’s crises, and said, “You want my advice? Cool your head. I’ll keep working on it from my end, but Wyatt…don’t do anything stupid.”

I disconnected the call without answering, tucked the phone away, and slammed my hand against the door so hard it unlatched. The door flew open and cracked into the opposite wall, drawing every set of passing eyes, but I didn’t care. I kicked it shut with the heel of my boot and planted my hands on Vanderhoff’s desk.

“Deputy,” he said wryly, peering at me over the wire-rimmed glasses he wore at the computer. “Can’t say I didn’t see this hissy fit coming.”

“Drop the charges, Kent.”

He peeled off his glasses and gave me a look of long-suffering patience. “You know I can’t do that, Brooks.”

“Bullshit,” I hissed, leaning across the desk until I was right in his face. He didn’t so much as blink. “You choose not to forward charges to the DA all the time. This isn’t about the law, it’s about your personal feelings.”

“My feelings?” Vanderhoff rocked back in his chair, chuckling like I’d told a dumb joke. “Take a good look in the mirror, son. You’ve spent most of your career jumping through hoops to keep those delinquents Boone adopted out of trouble. How many times have you turned a blind eye for them?”

“They were kids,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. “They’d already been through hell. Coming down on them like a ton of bricks for a few bad choices would’ve ruined their lives before they even got started. You just hate everything Boone Beaufort ever touched.”

His grin faded, and his eyes turned wintery. “Don’t kid yourself, son. If I’m biased, what the hell does that make you? While you’re running around playing hero, tracking down small fries like Paulie Tibbs, Dominic Beaufort’s tightening his fist on this city. But you pretend not to notice that.”

“You’re deflecting,” I shot back, but the jab hit harder than I wanted to admit. Vanderhoff wasn’t wrong. I was too emotional, running so hot I’d lost all objectivity. Hell, I’d never had it—not when it came to Gage.

“Am I?” Vanderhoff rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers, drawing out his words in an obnoxious taunt. “Fact is, you’re no better than me. We’re just betting on different horses. That operation at Saxa Fracta has put more bodies in the morgue than a thug like Tibbs ever could, but you sleep easy because he’s targeting other criminals. Me? I’ll take a dozen knuckleheads like Tibbs over a family of stone-cold predators.”

The worst part was that in their own twisted way, his words were true. The city was rotting. Drugs, gangs, and corruption ran so deep in Devil’s Garden they may as well have been written into the parish’s founding charter. My job was to protect the sheep from the wolves. As long as Dominic was eating his own, it wasn’t my fight.

Vanderhoff didn’t see it that way. To him, the law wasn’t a principle, it was a weapon to crush everyone he considered beneath him. Nobody fit that bill better than the Beaufort brothers. For years, we’d been pulling at opposite ends of the same rope, and for what? Nothing had changed.

Vanderhoff was the law.

But I was justice.

“What do you want?” I asked hoarsely.

Victory flickered across his face before he could mask it. His smirk deepened as he relaxed in his chair, fingers drumming lazily on the desk. "What do I want?" he repeated, savoring the moment by dragging it out. "I want results, and I’m not going to get them with cops like you clogging the system. See, Brooks, you’ve got loyalty. But it’s loyalty to all the wrong people. The Beauforts are a cancer on this parish, Brooks, and I’ll do whatever it takes to cut them out.”

“Whatever it takes, huh?” I asked, locking eyes with him. “Like tampering with evidence?”

He stiffened. “I don’t know a thing about that.”

“You think the print the AG’s office found on that gun will say something different?”

He ignored me, but his sneer deepened to something ugly. “Here’s the deal, son. I’m tired of fighting uphill. I’m going to take out the trash in this parish, one way or another. That trash can either be Gage Beaufort…or it can be you.”

I’d seen it coming but hearing him admit it still rocked me. Slowly, I unpinned the badge from my chest. It felt heavier than it should have. More than a piece of metal. I wasn’t just giving up my career; I was letting go of the part of myself that believed law and justice could be the same thing.

“You want it?” I asked in a voice that shook with anger. I tossed it onto his desk. “Take it. But it won’t save you from the shitstorm that’s coming from the Attorney General. Now drop the charges on Gage—and make sure the attempted kidnapping charges stick for Tibbs.”

Vanderhoff’s eyes dropped to the badge, and for a moment, I caught a flicker of surprise cross his face. Then it vanished. “I’ll make the call,” he said flatly. “Turn in your gear with the desk sergeant.”

I didn’t look back.

Each step felt heavier than the last. The locker room was dead silent except for the fuzzy hum of fluorescent lights. Piece by piece, I folded the uniform I’d worn for more than a decade, tucking it into a duffle bag alongside my duty belt. It was more than fabric and patches. It was my identity slipping away.

“Wyatt… what’s going on?” Teddy stood at his own locker, watching in confusion.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, barely looking at him as I zipped the back shut. I slammed the locker, slung my bag over my shoulder, and gave him a nod. “Watch your back out there.”

“Wyatt—” he called, but I ignored him. His voice was swallowed up by the closing door.

No doubt, he’d be texting later, and maybe after a few beers, I’d manage a response. But right now, Gage was my complete focus. Once he was safe, I’d deal with the fallout.