Two months later…

Charlie leant back in her chair, sipping her coffee, while perusing her emails. Desk duty was a welcome relief after the last few months. It wasn't a permanent appointment or even any kind of punishment, since she'd actually been the one to request a transfer from WitSec to Station desk duty. She'd just needed a break after the full-on run for her life saga, that had been followed by an investigation into her own actions. A near daily grilling that had been repeated until the Brass had been satisfied she'd acted appropriately for the situation. At core of their concerns, had been the possibility she'd been in league with Joey in a criminal sense, or at least, in love with Joey. Even her dalliance with Joey on the beach had come up. It had been a deliberate attempt to sell that they were a real couple, and the fact people had believed it, was proof their ruse had worked, had been Charlie's response to all accusations of any impropriety on her part. Since that had been hers and Joey's intention at the time, it wasn't exactly a lie, even if she had left out the part about their unacknowledged attraction to each other at the time, being the real cause of them going overboard with their public display. Still, she wasn't entirely certain she'd convinced everyone, but after a couple of weeks of intense interviews, the matter was no longer being pursued, much to her relief. It had been hard to maintain the lie, and even now, she knew it was one she'd have to carry on forever, because no one could ever know the truth. That she had fallen in love with a criminal.

She sighed as her thoughts turned to the woman she'd never see again. Charlie could still recall with absolute clarity that moment when Alf Stewart had walked over to them, with Joey's bloodied and torn shirt in his hand, and declared it was unlikely Joey would be found alive and that they'd be scaling back the search. She'd barely held it together. A few tears had been allowed to escape and Graves had understood. She'd been tired, anxious and a woman she'd been through hell with had died. It was the first, and probably only, time she'd actually felt Graves hadn't been searching for more in her reaction, which she'd been grateful for at the time. Everything about that moment had become seared in her brain, because it was the moment she'd lost all hope for Joey, and three days later, the search had been stopped altogether. Joey's body had never been found. A coronial inquest was still to be held before Joey could be declared legally dead, but for all intents and purpose, Joey was dead.

In the weeks since Charlie had come to accept Joey's death, her love for Joey hadn't diminished, nor had the pain at losing her. While she'd spent many nights crying herself to sleep, she'd also become better at dealing with it in public, especially around Graves. After that moment of understanding on the bridge, Charlie had made a concerted effort to never let her guard down around Graves, still believing that the young Detective was after that 'gotcha' moment. The lies and the mask of professional detachment she wore to hide her pain in public, had become second nature and instinctive for Charlie these days, so it was far less taxing on her, not that it eased her hurt in anyway. Nothing could really do that, and there were days where she wondered if she'd ever get over Joey and find love again. She'd even tried to dig into Joey's background as a way of coping, but her colleagues hadn't seen the point of wasting resources investigating a dead woman, not when they'd still had others to catch, and so they'd advised her to stop, and upon reflection, Charlie had decided that perhaps it was best not to dig too deep, and just remember Joey for how she'd come to see her. As a woman of strength and love. A woman now lost to her.

Charlie shook her head, preferring not to think like that, especially at work. This was not the time, nor the place, for melancholy. Better to focus on the job. She opened the next email. It was an update from Nick. Even after Graves' assurances about Nick, things had still been a little tense between them when they'd first caught up with each other, but after talking to Nick, Charlie had realised that he really had had her best interests at heart. And for his efforts, Nick had copped an absolute bawling out for the decisions he'd made, especially his decision to keep the original incident quiet for as long as he had, but other than having a reprimand formally placed in his record, he'd escaped relatively unscathed. They both had. It had helped that there was currently a lot of good will in the Police Force with the bringing down of the Braxton Empire, and the successful weeding out of their paid informers.

The fall of the Braxton Empire really had been a sight to behold. By taking down the head, the body had proven incredibly fragile, with loyalty largely forgotten by this stage of events, which was somewhat of a relief to Charlie, as it meant it was unlikely she'd be required to speak in court on Joey's behalf. So much other evidence had been gathered, and along with Joey's evidence bag and witnesses willing to do deals now that Braxton's power was eroding more with each passing day, there was more than enough to lead to convictions, without her having to testify. There was however, one particular court case in which she was actually looking forward to testifying in. Hayley O'Connor's. Tegan and Brodie had taken deals, but Hayley had refused to plead guilty, much to Charlie's fury.

After she'd formally been charged with Joey's murder, Hayley had had quite a bit to say. In fact, she had become quite talkative, both with her denial and the absurd story she'd had to tell. About how someone, she couldn't say who, since she never saw him, had come up from behind her, knocked her out, and that person must have shot Joey, then staged the accident so she'd get the blame. It was a fantastical story, unsupported by the evidence. While Hayley's fingerprints hadn't been on the spent bullet Avery had found, Tegan's had. Hayley, representing herself, had argued that had cleared her, but given it was Tegan's rifle, and she had likely loaded it, it still didn't mean that Hayley hadn't been the one to fire the shot, and since Hayley's fingerprints had been found all over the rifle, including the trigger, she'd have a hard time proving she wasn't the shooter, especially when witnesses had placed the gun in her hands at the vet's surgery, and it had then been found to be in her possession after the car accident. There were also no fresh fingerprints in or outside her car that hadn't been accounted for. Still, to this day, Hayley continued to plead her innocence, to no avail. She'd even tried the old, 'you can't charge me with murder when there is no body' argument. Even Charlie knew of precedents from other cases where a body had never been found, yet a murder conviction had been upheld, so she wasn't too worried about it. The gun used connected Hayley to the shooting, and Charlie had been there to witness Joey being shot and then falling into the water, so Hayley was going down, and so all she was doing with her ridiculous storytelling, was trying to delay the inevitable as far as Charlie was concerned, which just made her despise the woman even more. That bitch had taken Joey from her, and for that, she'd never forgive her and would look forward to the day when the guilty verdict came in.

Charlie did have to admit though, there were some small inconsistencies with the evidence. As Robertson had suggested, there had been a tracking app on both Tegan and Hayley's phones, which explained how Hayley had tracked them to the bridge. The text, 'YOU'RE DEAD!', had also been found in the sent logs on Hayley's phone, but Hayley had denied sending that message, just as Tegan had denied making any call while she'd been in the bush chasing Joey, and since that call had been made to a pre-paid phone linked to a fake identity, and was no longer in use, it was untraceable. Every other number on both Tegan and Hayley's phones were accounted for, except for that one. Whom had it been made too? They really had no idea. All the phones and records confiscated in all their other raids during the course of the investigation, had also failed to turn up any trace of that call being made to any individual within the Braxton organisation. Graves had raised the possibility that perhaps Joey had made the call, since she'd been the last one to have possession of the phone, but they'd had no way to prove that, and for once when it came to answering a question about Joey, Charlie had been able to reply with the truth. She really hadn't known about that phone call at the time, because Joey had never mentioned it. If she had made the call, who was it to and why? She honestly didn't know, and it was one thing that did bother her, because everything else was falling into place, except for that one phone call.

"Oh well," she murmured. In the overall scheme of things, it was one small detail, an annoying one, but small in comparison to the whole picture which was still constantly unfolding before them. The investigators had managed to piece together quite a trail of crime from the phone records of various suspects, even linking them to people that hadn't previously been on their radar, but the most amazing development wasn't the little minions and others turning on their former boss and friends, it was Heath Braxton turning police informant on his brother.