Voss did not let the name become an answer.
Not in the great room.
Not in front of Thane on the sofa.
Not with Silas staring at the printed still like the paper had spoken his fear out loud.
ALBRECHT & SONS CUSTOM HOMES
A lead.
That was all.
A truck from a road camera.
A decal on glass.
A direction of travel.
A timestamp.
A name tied to Silas’s old case by anger, pain, court records, and every ugly thing people said when they believed the system had failed them.
A lead was not proof.
Voss picked up the photo before the room could keep feeding on it.
“We’ll work it.”
Gabriel’s voice stayed low.
“Cleanly.”
“Yes.”
Mark stood rigid by the kitchen island, tablet closed under one paw like it hurt him not to open it.
“What do you need from us?”
“Nothing tonight.”
It was the right answer.
It was also cruel.
Mark took it like a blow and did not argue.
Silas sat back down beside the sofa, every movement controlled by force. His claws did not dig into the floor. His mouth did not open around a growl. His eyes stayed on Thane.
Thane looked at Voss.
“Updates.”
“When appropriate.”
His lip curled.
Voss did not blink.
“When appropriate,” she repeated.
Rusk stood beside her with no humor in his face.
“If it helps, I hate this for you.”
Gabriel gave him a flat look.
“It does not.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Whitaker stepped closer.
“You four stay inside. Patrol remains posted. Eli is coordinating security. Hale has already reinforced Silas’s conditions. Nobody leaves without Crowe clearing it.”
Thane opened his mouth.
Whitaker lifted one hand.
“I know you hate it.”
Thane closed his mouth.
She nodded.
“Good. We’re all learning.”
Silas’s voice came quiet.
“Nolan.”
The room turned toward him.
Voss paused.
“Say that again.”
Silas swallowed.
“Nolan Albrecht. Magnus Albrecht’s son. He was in court.”
Voss’s eyes sharpened, but her voice stayed even.
“What do you remember?”
Silas looked at the coffee table where the photo had been.
“He stood behind his father. Younger. Dark hair. Work jacket with that company name on it. He didn’t talk during the hearing, but in the hallway afterward he said…” Silas stopped.
Thane’s eyes narrowed.
Voss waited.
Silas’s jaw tightened.
“He said I should’ve been put down.”
Gabriel went very still.
Mark’s claws clicked once against the counter.
Thane’s growl came low from the sofa.
Voss wrote it down.
Not as outrage.
Not as certainty.
As information.
“Who heard it?”
“Nora, maybe. A deputy. I don’t know. I didn’t turn around.”
“Why not?”
Silas looked at Thane.
“Because Thane had told me not to carry every stone someone threw.”
Thane closed his eyes.
Voss nodded.
“Anything else?”
Silas shook his head.
“No.”
“Good. That helps. It does not decide the case.”
“I know.”
Voss studied him.
“Do you?”
Silas’s eyes lifted to hers.
“Yes.”
The word was not calm.
But it was true enough.
Voss accepted it.
“Then let us work.”
Silas looked like he hated the shape of that sentence.
Then he nodded.
“Yes, Detective.”
Voss turned and left with Rusk.
Crowe followed them out.
The side door closed.
The cabin held the silence they left behind.
Thane stared at the ceiling.
Gabriel leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
Mark finally opened his tablet, looked at the blank screen, then closed it again.
Silas sat beside the sofa.
After a long moment, he said, “I remember his face.”
Thane turned his head.
“Don’t live in it.”
Silas looked down at his paws.
“I won’t.”
Gabriel watched him.
“That wasn’t convincing.”
“No,” Silas said. “It wasn’t.”
Mark said, “Honesty is better than pretending.”
Silas nodded once.
Then he looked at Thane.
“They still chose the trigger.”
Thane’s voice was rough.
“Yes.”
Silas breathed in.
Out.
“Then they can prove it.”
At the station, the name became paper.
That was how Voss preferred it.
Names were dangerous before paper.
Names made people want to skip steps.
Paper made them slow down.
She stood in the conference room with Rusk, Crowe, a deputy district attorney named Mary Finch, and two crime scene summaries spread across the table. The road-camera still lay in the center.
Rusk had printed three copies.
One for the file.
One for the board.
One because he said printers existed to suffer.
Crowe tapped the image.
“Albrecht & Sons Custom Homes. Who are the sons?”
Rusk opened a folder.
“Magnus Albrecht owns the company. Two sons listed on public filings. Nolan Albrecht, thirty-two. Eric Albrecht, twenty-seven. Eric lives in Tulsa, according to driver’s license and recent utility records. Nolan lives here. Works as project manager and estimator.”
Voss looked at the photo.
“Vehicles?”
Rusk slid another sheet over.
“Company has four pickups registered. Two white, one silver, one dark gray Ford F-250. Dark gray F-250 assigned informally to Nolan, according to prior traffic stop from last year. Rear window decal matches company branding in public photos.”
Finch leaned closer.
“Plate?”
“Not readable from the road camera. Mud did its civic duty badly.”
Voss gave him a look.
He shrugged.
“Sorry. Limited humor leak.”
Crowe asked, “Any criminal history?”
Rusk checked his notes.
“Nolan has a misdemeanor DUI from six years ago, completed deferred. No violent convictions. Two protective-order petitions involving an ex-girlfriend, both dismissed before hearing. One disorderly conduct call after the Silas plea hearing outside the courthouse. No arrest.”
Voss turned.
“Courthouse call?”
Rusk handed her the incident summary.
“Deputy documented Nolan Albrecht yelling at media and calling the plea agreement ‘celebrity justice.’ He was warned for disorderly conduct after telling a reporter the wolves had bought the court. Deputy also noted Nolan said, quote, ‘Somebody should put that thing down.’”
Crowe’s jaw tightened.
Finch lifted one hand.
“Motive language, not probable cause by itself.”
“Agreed,” Voss said.
Rusk nodded.
“Still a charming personality note.”
Voss looked at Crowe.
“Where’s Nolan now?”
“Unknown. Patrol checked the business address from the street. Closed. No dark F-250 visible. Residence has no answer. We haven’t gone beyond knock-and-talk level.”
Finch looked at the road-camera still.
“We need more than a decal before warrants. Tie the truck, tie the time, tie Nolan to driving or possession, then we talk search.”
Voss nodded.
“Cameras first. County road. Gas stations. Traffic cams. Any private cameras along the service path route.”
Crowe looked at Rusk.
“Business contact?”
“We can talk to Magnus Albrecht.”
Voss looked at the name.
Magnus Albrecht.
The homeowner Silas had burglarized.
The father who had sat in court with both hands clenched around a victim-impact statement and hate visible in the bones of his face.
“He may call counsel.”
“Likely,” Finch said.
“Then we do it carefully.”
Crowe’s phone buzzed. She read the message.
“County found the truck on another camera.”
Everyone looked at her.
“Frame from a feed at County Line and East Forty-Six. Same dark pickup, decal visible, mudded plate. Timestamp 07:50. Direction south.”
Rusk stood.
“Closer to town.”
Crowe nodded.
“And farther from the cabin.”
Voss picked up her keys.
“Let’s build the road.”
By 21:15, the truck had traveled across three cameras, none perfect.
07:43.
Service path.
07:50.
County Line.
08:04.
QuickFuel on East Thirty-First.
The QuickFuel camera did what the county camera had not.
It caught the front of the truck as it pulled through the lot without stopping.
Mud covered most of the plate.
Most.
Not all.
Mark would have hated the angle.
Voss loved it because it gave her three characters and half of a fourth.
Oklahoma plate.
Dark gray F-250.
Albrecht decal.
Cracked right taillight cover.
Driver alone.
Face partly obscured by windshield glare and a ball cap.
Build consistent with Nolan Albrecht.
Not enough alone.
Enough with the rest.
Rusk leaned over the monitor in the QuickFuel manager’s office.
“Enhance magically.”
The manager, a young man named Devon, looked nervous.
“I don’t think the system does that.”
Rusk nodded.
“Good. I was testing whether you lied.”
Devon blinked.
Voss looked at Rusk.
“Stop terrifying helpful people.”
“I’m being friendly.”
“You are being a haunted subpoena.”
Devon looked like he wished he had not heard either phrase.
Voss softened her voice.
“You’re doing fine. We’ll need a copy of the footage from 07:30 to 08:15 and a short written statement about the system clock.”
Devon nodded quickly.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Rusk pointed at the screen.
“Can you back it up two seconds?”
Devon did.
The truck rolled into frame again.
There.
For less than a second, as the truck passed beneath the canopy camera, the driver turned his head.
Not a full face.
Not court-ready.
But a jawline.
A dark beard.
A profile.
Voss had seen Nolan Albrecht in courthouse security footage that afternoon.
Her stomach went cold with recognition.
Recognition was not proof.
But it told her where to dig.
“Export that segment too.”
Devon nodded.
Rusk watched the frozen profile.
“That’s him.”
Voss glanced at him.
“Likely.”
“Very likely.”
“Yes.”
“Painful word.”
“Useful word.”
Rusk straightened.
“I hate useful words.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No. I don’t.”
Magnus Albrecht did not want them in his office.
That was obvious before he opened the door all the way.
Albrecht & Sons Custom Homes operated out of a metal building on the west side of Cross Timber, half office, half shop, with stacks of trim, cabinet samples, concrete forms, and framed photos of finished houses lining the front room.
The logo on the wall matched the decal in the truck window.
Clean white letters.
Strong roofline graphic.
Reliable. Local. Family Built.
Magnus Albrecht stood under that logo with a face carved from exhaustion and resentment. He was in his late fifties, broad through the shoulders, hair mostly gray, work shirt tucked in, hands thick with old cuts.
He looked at Voss.
Then Rusk.
His eyes narrowed.
“This about Silas Creed?”
Voss did not answer the bait.
“We’re investigating the shooting at Detective Thane’s residence.”
Magnus’s face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“So it is about Creed.”
“It’s about someone firing a high-energy round at a police detective from the woods outside his home.”
Magnus folded his arms.
“I heard he lived.”
Rusk’s expression did not move.
Voss said, “He did.”
Magnus looked away first.
For one second, something moved through his face that was not disappointment exactly.
Not relief either.
Something uglier because grief and anger had used the same room too long.
“What do you want from me?”
Voss kept her voice neutral.
“We need to know who had access to your company vehicles this morning.”
Magnus’s eyes sharpened.
“Our vehicles?”
Rusk held up the road-camera still.
Not handing it over.
Just showing enough.
Magnus stared at the decal.
His mouth tightened.
“That could be half the trucks in town.”
“No,” Voss said. “It could be one of yours.”
Magnus looked at her.
“Do you have a plate?”
“We have several cameras, a partial plate, and a vehicle consistent with a dark gray F-250 registered to the company.”
Magnus’s jaw worked.
“Then maybe ask whoever was driving it.”
“We are.”
The office went very quiet.
Magnus looked toward the shop door.
Voss watched the glance.
“Nolan here?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“Job site.”
“Which one?”
Magnus’s answer came half a second too late.
“Pine Hollow remodel.”
Rusk wrote it down.
“What time did he leave?”
“I don’t know. Early.”
“How early?”
Magnus’s eyes hardened.
“You think my son shot one of your wolves.”
Voss said nothing for one second.
Then:
“I think one of your company trucks was near the shooter’s likely route minutes after the shooting. I think your son made threats after the plea hearing. I think he has a connection to the motive Silas Creed himself identified before we showed him the truck image. And I think if your son did not fire that shot, you should want us to prove that quickly.”
Magnus’s face flushed.
“He watched his father get humiliated.”
Rusk’s pen stopped.
Voss did not move.
Magnus continued, voice rougher.
“That animal broke into my house. My house. Stood in my bedroom. Opened my safe. Took things my wife hasn’t gotten back. Then your wolves come in, turn him into some redemption story, and suddenly he’s eating pancakes and climbing trees and living in a mansion while my family gets told to be patient.”
Voss let the anger speak.
Not because it was right.
Because it was evidence of the room Nolan had grown inside.
Magnus’s breathing was hard now.
“I didn’t shoot anyone.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“My son didn’t either.”
“Then tell us where he is.”
Magnus looked toward the shop again.
Rusk saw it.
Voss saw it.
The shop door opened before Magnus answered.
A younger man stepped in from the work bay with a clipboard in one hand.
Not Nolan.
Too young.
Too narrow in the face.
He stopped when he saw them.
Magnus turned.
“Eric.”
Eric Albrecht’s eyes moved from Voss to Rusk to the photo in Rusk’s hand.
Then to his father.
“What happened?”
Voss looked at him.
“You’re Eric Albrecht?”
“Yes.”
“When did you get into town?”
“This morning. From Tulsa. Dad called me.” His eyes flicked toward Magnus again. “He said there was trouble.”
Magnus said, “Eric, go back to the shop.”
Eric did not move.
“Is this about Nolan?”
Voss shifted her attention.
“Why would it be?”
Eric’s jaw tightened.
Because he knew.
Because families knew before files did.
“He’s been losing it since court.”
Magnus snapped, “Enough.”
Eric turned on him.
“No. Not enough. He’s been saying crazy stuff for weeks.”
Voss held still.
“What kind of stuff?”
Magnus pointed toward the shop.
“Eric.”
Rusk’s voice came quiet.
“Mr. Albrecht, interfering with a shooting investigation would be a poor family decision.”
Magnus went silent.
Eric swallowed.
“He said the court made a joke of us. He said the wolves bought everybody. He said Creed should’ve been put down and Thane was the reason he wasn’t.” His voice cracked with anger of his own now, but not the same kind. “I told him to shut up. Dad told him to cool off. He didn’t.”
Voss kept her voice level.
“Where is Nolan?”
Eric looked at Magnus.
Magnus did not answer.
Eric did.
“I don’t know. He took the gray truck yesterday evening. Said he had an early estimate.”
“At Pine Hollow?”
Eric shook his head.
“There’s no Pine Hollow job today.”
Magnus closed his eyes.
Voss looked at Rusk.
Rusk was already writing.
The first warrant request was for records.
Not doors.
Not guns.
Records.
Finch liked records.
Judges liked records.
Records did not run, panic, flush, or shoot.
By 22:40, Voss had court authorization for vehicle GPS data from the company fleet tracker, if it existed, and business records related to the gray F-250. Magnus Albrecht, after a private call with an attorney and a public argument with Eric, disclosed that the company used a contractor fleet-management app for mileage, maintenance, and job costing.
He had not checked it.
Voss did.
The gray F-250’s tracker had gone offline at 06:58.
That was suspicious.
The app’s last known location was Albrecht & Sons shop.
That was useful but not enough.
Then Eric produced something better without meaning to.
He found a maintenance note from the previous week.
Gray F-250 — tracker loose under dash again. Nolan says he’ll fix. Brake light cracked. Replace bulb.
Rusk read it and looked at Voss.
“Brake light.”
Voss nodded.
“Same bad light.”
Magnus sat in the office chair with his head in one hand.
“My son is stupid. That doesn’t make him a shooter.”
“No,” Voss said. “It doesn’t.”
Eric looked toward the shop.
“He owns rifles.”
Magnus’s head came up.
“Eric.”
“He does.”
Voss looked at Eric.
“What kind?”
Eric shook his head.
“I don’t know all of them. Big stuff. Long-range. He shoots out at Kessler’s place sometimes. Private land east of town.”
Rusk’s eyes sharpened.
“Kessler?”
“Family friend. Old ranch. Berms. Targets. Nolan helped build a shooting platform out there.”
Voss wrote it down.
“When was the last time he went?”
Eric looked at his father.
Magnus looked away.
Eric said, “This weekend. Maybe Sunday. He was bragging about zeroing something.”
The room stopped around the word.
Voss kept her voice calm.
“Zeroing what?”
“I don’t know. He said something about if you want to stop a monster, you don’t bring a deer rifle.”
Magnus stood.
“That’s enough.”
Voss turned to him.
“Sit down.”
The words were not loud.
They did not need to be.
Magnus stared at her.
Rusk looked up from his notes.
“Please choose the smart version of grief, Mr. Albrecht.”
Magnus’s face twisted.
For one second, Voss thought he might yell.
Instead, he sat.
“I didn’t know he’d do anything,” Magnus said.
Voss said, “Tell me what you did know.”
Magnus stared at the floor.
“He was angry.”
“That’s not enough.”
“He was drinking more.”
“Keep going.”
“He kept watching videos. That press thing. The dock. Your detective saying Creed was pack. People online calling him brave. Saying he deserved a second chance.” Magnus’s voice turned bitter. “Second chances are easy to like when it wasn’t your house.”
Voss did not argue.
Not because he was right.
Because arguing with pain rarely produced evidence.
Magnus’s hand closed into a fist.
“Nolan said Thane made everyone forget what Creed was. Said if Thane wasn’t there, Creed would’ve gotten what he deserved. I told him to stop talking like that.”
“When?”
“More than once.”
“When last?”
Magnus looked sick.
“Last night.”
Rusk wrote it down.
Voss let the silence sit until Magnus filled it.
“He came by the shop around ten. Took some things from his locker. I asked where he was going. He said out. I asked about the truck. He said he had an early estimate. I said don’t do anything stupid.”
His voice broke on the last word.
Voss said, “Did he answer?”
Magnus nodded.
“What did he say?”
Magnus looked at her.
“He said stupid was letting monsters sleep.”
Eric turned away.
Rusk’s pen stopped moving.
That was not enough by itself.
But the pile was getting heavier.
At the cabin, nobody told Thane that sentence.
Not yet.
Voss called Whitaker at 23:18 and gave a controlled update. Whitaker listened in the kitchen with Crowe beside her and Eli across the island.
Thane watched from the sofa.
He could hear enough to know when someone was trying not to be heard.
That was almost worse than hearing everything.
When Whitaker ended the call, he opened his eyes.
“Albrecht?”
Whitaker put the phone down.
“Lead is developing.”
Gabriel sat up.
“That’s a yes wearing shoes.”
Mark looked at Whitaker.
“What can you tell us?”
“Voss and Rusk spoke with Magnus and Eric Albrecht. Nolan Albrecht is not accounted for. The company’s gray F-250 is strongly consistent with the truck in the road footage. There are statements supporting motive and recent concerning behavior. That is all for now.”
Thane’s jaw tightened.
Silas sat on the floor beside the sofa and stared at nothing.
“Nolan.”
Whitaker looked at him.
“Yes.”
Silas closed his eyes.
“I remember him.”
“We know.”
“I remember thinking he should hate me.”
Gabriel leaned forward.
“Silas.”
“I did.” His voice stayed flat. “He should hate me. I broke into his father’s house.”
Thane growled.
Silas opened his eyes and looked at him.
“I’m not saying he should shoot you.”
“I’m saying I understand where anger started.”
Mark’s voice was quiet.
“Understanding origin is not accepting outcome.”
Silas looked at him.
Mark continued.
“You taught us that, recently.”
Silas blinked.
Then looked down.
“Yes.”
Thane shifted, trying to sit higher. Pain made him stop.
Gabriel put a paw near his chest.
“Don’t.”
Thane snarled.
Gabriel did not move.
“Do not make me fight an injured person. I’ll feel bad after.”
Thane glared.
Silas looked up.
“Please stay down.”
That worked faster than Gabriel’s hand.
Thane sank back.
Gabriel stared.
“Oh, sure. He says it.”
Silas’s mouth barely moved.
“You’re less scary.”
Gabriel blinked.
Mark said, “That is objectively false in some categories.”
For one second, the room found the edge of humor.
Then Silas looked toward the dark windows and it left.
“He’s not accounted for.”
Whitaker nodded.
“No.”
“Could he come back?”
Crowe answered.
“That possibility is why patrol is still outside, county is still assisting, and you’re all still inside.”
Silas’s claws flexed once against his knees.
“I won’t go out.”
Thane looked at him.
Silas met his eyes.
“I won’t.”
The words were for Thane.
For Whitaker.
For Hale.
For himself.
Whitaker nodded.
“Good.”
Voss and Rusk went to Kessler’s ranch at 00:31 with county deputies, a warrant for the shooting platform area, and more caution than impatience.
The ranch sat east of town, where the trees thinned and the land opened into rolling pasture broken by scrub, fence lines, gullies, and old machinery parked in places time had stopped arguing with.
Mr. Kessler was seventy-eight, angry at being woken, and angrier when he understood why.
“Nolan shoots out here sometimes,” he said from his porch, robe over jeans, shotgun nowhere visible but probably emotionally present. “Targets. Long range. He’s safe with it.”
Voss said, “When was he here last?”
Kessler looked past her toward the deputies.
“Sunday.”
“Anything since?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
He hesitated.
That was enough.
Rusk saw it.
“Kessler.”
The old man looked at him.
Rusk’s voice stayed mild.
“This is not the part where loyalty helps him.”
Kessler’s jaw worked.
“He came by yesterday evening. Didn’t shoot. Just picked up a case from the shed.”
“What kind of case?”
“Long one.”
Voss’s face did not change.
“Rifle case?”
“Yes.”
“Which rifle?”
Kessler looked down.
“I don’t know.”
But he did.
Or he knew enough.
The platform sat on the back of the property, a raised wooden shooting bench aimed toward a private berm cut into an old clay bank. Steel targets hung at distance. Sandbags lined the bench. Spent brass littered the ground from older range days, most of it weathered.
A county evidence tech photographed before anyone touched.
Rusk stood beside Voss, flashlight angled down.
“Lots of brass.”
“Old,” Voss said.
“Mostly.”
He pointed.
Near the edge of the platform, under the bench, one patch of dust had been disturbed recently. A rectangular clean space marked where something long had rested.
Case, maybe.
Rifle bag.
Gear.
On the bench itself, a small paper target had been folded and tucked under a sandbag.
Voss opened it carefully with gloved hands.
Three holes.
Tight group.
Heavy tears in the paper.
No date.
But the marker across the top read:
400
Rusk exhaled through his nose.
“Four hundred yards.”
Voss thought of the cabin.
The northeast service path.
The probable hide.
The distance estimate.
The hole through Thane’s shoulder.
“Photograph it.”
The tech already was.
They found no rifle.
No ammunition.
No confession.
But in the trash barrel near the shed, under beer cans and sawdust, they found torn packaging from specialty ammunition.
The label was partly burned.
Not enough.
Voss did not say the caliber out loud.
Neither did Rusk.
The tech bagged it.
Rusk looked toward the dark pasture.
“If he used that, he didn’t want a warning.”
“No.”
“He wanted a trophy.”
Voss turned sharply.
Rusk looked back at her.
“What?”
She did not answer immediately.
Then she pulled out her phone.
“Nolan took things from his locker.”
Rusk’s face hardened.
“Maybe not just a rifle.”
Voss called Crowe.
“Have patrol confirm the cabin perimeter again. Check sight lines. Check anyone trying to get media position. And call Whitaker. I want Thane’s public visibility locked down.”
Crowe answered on the second ring.
“What changed?”
Voss looked at the torn ammunition package in the evidence bag.
“We may be dealing with someone who planned for distance and spectacle.”
Crowe went silent for half a beat.
Then:
“Copy.”
Nolan Albrecht’s phone was off.
That was expected.
His credit card was not.
That was luck pretending to be sloppy anger.
At 01:18, Finch got an emergency order for ping and transaction records based on escalating probable cause and the active threat concern. The phone last registered near Kessler’s ranch the night before, then went dark.
The card hit at a gas station north of Cross Timber at 06:12.
Fuel.
Energy drink.
Jerky.
Cashier remembered him because he looked “like he hadn’t slept and wanted the world to know it.”
Rusk liked cashiers.
They noticed misery.
At 01:52, the gas station footage came through.
Nolan Albrecht stood at the counter in a dark jacket and ball cap.
Same build.
Same beard.
Same profile.
No rifle visible.
No panic.
Just a man buying fuel before sunrise.
Voss watched the footage twice.
On the third pass, she noticed his left hand.
Small scratches across the knuckles.
A strip of black tape stuck to the heel of his palm.
On the counter beside the energy drink, he set down a truck key with a distinctive yellow tag.
The same yellow tag hung from the gray F-250’s spare key in a photo Eric had shown them from the company key board.
Rusk looked at the still.
“There’s our driver.”
Voss nodded.
“Our probable driver.”
“You are making me hate accuracy.”
“Good.”
Finch, on speaker, said, “With the road-camera footage, company truck assignment, courthouse threat, family statements, Kessler ranch evidence, ammunition packaging, and gas station footage tying Nolan to the truck before the shooting, I can ask for search and arrest warrants.”
Voss looked at the board they had built at the station.
Nolan’s name sat in the center now.
Not because they wanted it there.
Because paper had carried it there.
“Do it.”
At 02:30, Voss returned to the cabin.
Not because she had to.
Because the wall worked better when people could see it was not empty.
She came through the side entrance with Crowe and Whitaker. Rusk stayed at the station with Finch and the warrant packet.
Thane was awake.
Of course he was awake.
Gabriel sat beside him, eyes tired and sharp.
Mark stood with his tablet closed.
Silas was near the sofa, shoulders low.
Voss stopped in the great room.
“We have enough to pursue Nolan Albrecht as a suspect.”
The room tightened.
She lifted a hand before anyone spoke.
“Suspect. Not conviction. Not confession. But enough for warrants.”
Thane’s eyes narrowed.
“What did you find?”
Voss looked at Whitaker.
Whitaker nodded.
Voss gave them the version they were allowed to have.
“Additional camera footage ties the gray Albrecht company truck to the service path route and to Nolan shortly before the shooting. Family statements establish recent threats and escalating anger. We found evidence at a private shooting area consistent with recent long-range practice and ammunition relevant to the attack. His phone is off. His whereabouts are unknown.”
Gabriel’s voice came quiet.
“Unknown.”
“Yes.”
Mark’s jaw tightened.
“Warrants?”
“Being prepared now.”
Silas did not move.
Not at first.
Then he said, “Is he coming here?”
Crowe answered.
“We don’t know. That’s why security remains. You are protected here.”
Silas looked at the taped front door.
“Protected where he already shot Thane.”
Gabriel flinched.
Crowe did not.
“Yes. Protected here. With officers, perimeter, cover, command, and a suspect who no longer has surprise.”
Silas breathed.
Thane watched him.
“Silas.”
Silas turned.
“Sit.”
Silas sat.
No argument.
Voss looked at that and understood why the lawful wall had to keep holding.
She stepped closer.
“Nolan may have done this because he decided Silas getting a lawful deal was an insult. He may have chosen Thane because he saw Thane as responsible for that mercy. But those are his choices. His logic. His crime.”
Silas stared at the floor.
Voss continued.
“Silas, look at me.”
He did.
“You do not help this case by suffering louder than the evidence.”
Thane’s mouth twitched despite everything.
Gabriel looked at Voss.
“That was harsh.”
“Yes,” she said.
Silas held her eyes.
Then nodded.
“No suffering louder than evidence.”
Mark said quietly, “That is a useful rule.”
Rusk would have liked that.
Voss did not say it.
Thane did.
“Rusk would steal it.”
Voss’s face almost changed.
“Probably.”
For one second, the room breathed again.
Then Voss’s phone buzzed.
She looked down.
The breath stopped.
Crowe saw her face.
“What?”
Voss read the message once.
Then again.
“Finch has the warrants.”
Gabriel sat forward.
“That’s good.”
Voss did not answer.
Whitaker’s eyes narrowed.
“Mara.”
Voss looked up.
“County just got a hit from a license-plate reader on a partial plate match and vehicle description. Dark gray F-250. Mud on plate. Rear decal. It passed the east bypass camera twelve minutes ago.”
Crowe’s voice sharpened.
“Direction?”
Voss looked at Thane.
Then Silas.
Then back to Crowe.
“Southwest.”
Mark went still.
Gabriel stood.
Silas rose with him.
Thane tried to sit up and failed with a snarl that shook the room.
Crowe was already on the radio.
“All units, priority traffic. Possible suspect vehicle active. Dark gray Ford F-250, Albrecht & Sons rear decal, mud-obscured plate, believed occupied by Nolan Albrecht. Last seen east bypass, southwest direction. Use caution. Suspect wanted in attempted murder of law enforcement, possibly armed with long-range rifle.”
Whitaker’s voice cut in hard.
“Lock down the cabin.”
Silas’s claws flexed.
Thane’s voice came from the sofa, rough and furious.
“Lawful wall.”
Silas stopped.
Gabriel stopped.
Mark stopped.
Crowe moved toward the side entry.
Voss followed.
Outside, patrol engines started.
The den held its breath.
Voss paused at the doorway and looked back once.
“He doesn’t get a second shot.”
Then she was gone.