A single folded piece of paper slid beneath the doormat. No envelope, no name. "Drop it. Last warning."
Her hands shook as she carried it inside, and Francis felt something in his chest go cold and still, a feeling he recognized from years of federal work, the moment a case turned dangerous instead of just difficult. Francis Regina's voice cracked. "I think we need to consider moving. I think this has gone too far."
He looked at the note in her trembling hands, at the fear in her eyes that hadn't been there even on the worst morning in the driveway. And for the first time since this began, he didn't have an answer ready. He just stood there, the silence of the kitchen pressing in around them both, wondering if she was right. Francis didn't sleep that night.
He sat at the kitchen table long after Regina had finally drifted off. The folded note still sitting between them on the counter like something radioactive. And he turned the whole mess over in his mind piece by piece until the sky outside started to gray. By the time Regina came down the next morning, he already had his laptop open and a fresh pot of coffee brewing.
"You didn't sleep," she said. Not a question. "No." She sat across from him, wrapping her hands around the mug he poured her, watching him with the same careful look she'd worn since the note appeared.
"I meant what I said last night. I'm scared, Francis. Actually scared." "I know."
He reached across the table and took her hand. And I'm not going to pretend that note doesn't mean something. It does. "It means we're close enough to the truth that somebody wants me to stop looking."
"Or it means we should listen to it." Francis held her gaze, choosing his next words carefully, because he knew how much they would cost. "Either way, if I drop this now, Mason wins. Not just against me, against Wilmer Brown, against Devon Ashper, against whoever comes after us with less ability to fight back than I have.
I have a badge. I have resources most people in this town don't have. If I walk away, what does that tell the next person this happens to?" Regina was quiet a long moment, her thumb tracing slow circles against his knuckles.
"I'm not asking you to be a coward," she said finally. "I'm asking you to be smart. The local department is broken, Francis. You've tried playing by their rules for two weeks, and look where it's gotten us."
That was the piece that had been sitting wrong in his chest since the hearing collapsed. The thing he'd been circling all night without naming directly. She was right. He'd been trying to win a local fight using local tools, treating it like any other community dispute instead of what it actually was.
He sat up straighter. "Then I stop playing by their rules." "What does that mean?" "It means I stop going through the department at all."