The hallway outside Lydia Kemper's mansion was dark, the long corridor dimly lit by recessed sconces that cast strange, slanted shadows across the painted brick walls. Sharon walked slowly, the soles of her low-heeled boots echoing softly on the stone. Her coat was buttoned high, and her gloved hand — still bandaged beneath the leather — throbbed with every step, a sharp pulse of pain that reminded her why she was doing this.
Provenza had offered to come with her tonight. She'd said no. He'd already seen her break once. She wasn't ready for him to see this version — not yet. This version wasn't falling. This version was composed, deliberate.
Dangerous.
Stefanie had offered too — sweet, worried Stefanie who had already given more than she owed. But Sharon needed to be alone. She needed to walk through Lydia's house again. The quiet after Lydia's death wasn't just eerie — it was useful. Lydia had watched. Lydia had kept records. And now Lydia was gone. Sharon didn't believe in coincidences anymore.
The front door creaked when she pushed it open. The air inside was colder than she remembered, like something had been left unfinished .She moved down the side hall and entered the study. Same high shelves. Same soft carpet. Same empty desk where they'd sat just days earlier, watching Russo prowl through the shadows. That screen was dark now. But the room still remembered. Sharon closed the door behind her. Pulled the drive from her pocket. Slipped it into the tower. A new folder appeared. The footage loaded slowly. Most of it she'd already reviewed with Tao and Stefanie. But three files blinked at the bottom — unlabeled, untouched.
Late-night timestamps.
Two days after Russo. After Bishop showed up in person. She clicked the first. Static. Wind. Maybe a faint car in the distance. The second — footsteps. Muffled voices somewhere offscreen. The third— Rustling. Then motion. A shape on the edge of the frame. She froze. Not Russo. Broader through the shoulders. Taller. Slower, but with that same careful calculation. He stayed at the edge of the image. Just far enough to suggest uncertainty. Just close enough to suggest he knew exactly where the camera was. Alex Bishop.
She paused the frame. Zoomed in. His face was only there for a second, but it was enough. He wasn't wandering. He wasn't passing through. He was watching. And worse — he wanted her to know it. Sharon sat back, her heart pounding low in her chest, her hand aching beneath her glove. This wasn't surveillance. This was escalation. This was a message. First Miami. Then Stefanie. Now Lydia. Now me.
She opened a secure thread and typed:
New footage. Bishop outside Lydia's side gate, 48 hours after Russo appeared. I'm extracting the files now. Have Stefanie's security reviewed and updated. Every back entrance locked, every camera double-checked.
She attached the file. Waited for the encryption confirmation. Then she reached for her phone again. Paused. Andy's name was still on the screen. No new messages. No updates. Just silence. She almost called him. Almost. But she couldn't afford to crack his cover. Not now. Not with Bishop circling. Not with the next move already happening. Instead, she saved the still image from the footage to her phone — Bishop's face just visible in the shadows — and opened her secure folder. She renamed it. WAR. Then she stood. Slipped the drive into her coat pocket. And turned out the light. Whatever was coming next — she wasn't playing defense anymore.
The muted drum of Sharon's boots echoed down the stone steps as she exited Lydia's home, trench pulled tight against the colder than normal air. Her breath curled in the darkness, and for the first time in hours, the adrenaline in her system began to ebb — just a little. She had what she needed. She had proof. She reached for her keys in her pocket, deciding to go straight to her car and call Stefanie before driving to her office.
She froze. Across the street, near the hedge-lined sidewalk, a figure stood just beyond the pool of light cast by the lone streetlamp. Tall. Broad. Watching. Her fingers tightened around her keyring. "Raydor," the man said, stepping forward, voice low and soaked in disdain. "Still walking around like you own the place." The streetlight caught his face. And Sharon's blood ran cold. Greg Jenkins. Former patrol supervisor. Internal Affairs case from 2009. Fired after Sharon uncovered evidence he buried complaints from female rookies — including one filed by Stefanie's niece, Grant's sister's child, a fact that now twisted the night into an even uglier shape.
"You were always so good at pretending to be righteous," he said, stepping closer, smirking. "Now look at you. Digging through dead women's footage, playing the hero. But you don't have a badge anymore, do you?"
"You working for Bishop now?" she asked, voice sharp, steady.
He tilted his head mockingly. "Everybody's got to eat."
"And he must be getting desperate if he sent you," she couldn't contain the smirk forming on her lips.
"You're poking your nose into places it doesn't belong again. Just like back then. And eventually, someone is going to shut you up for good."
Sharon didn't move. Not yet. But her pulse kicked hard against her ribs. "You want to shut me up?" she said, low and furious. "You'll have to do better than sneaking around driveways like some flunky."
Jackson lunged — no more pretense.
She ducked sideways, her shoulder catching the stone pillar near Lydia's gate. His fist glanced off her ribs. She gritted her teeth against the pain. He grabbed for her wrist — and that's when she saw her opening. Her left hand — the injured hand — palm side ready, she swung up fast. Bone and bandage and knuckle cracked against his nose. A sickening crunch. Jenkins stumbled back with a grunt, blood pouring from his face. But he wasn't finished. With a wild snarl, he lunged again, this time barreling into her shoulder. Sharon went down hard, her head slamming against the stone walkway. Stars burst behind her eyes. The world tilted sideways.
She blinked.
Once. Twice.
Then— darkness.
Stefanie stood in the kitchen, the tea kettle whistling faintly in the background, untouched. She glanced at the clock. 9:41 PM. Sharon said she'd be gone an hour, maybe less. It had been two.
She grabbed her phone. Dialed. It rang to voicemail.
Once. Twice.
By the third try, her fingers trembled. She didn't wait any longer. She pulled up her contacts and hit Julio's name.
Julio had just set down his fork when the call came through. He saw the name and stood up instantly, already moving for his coat. "Stefanie?"
"I don't know where she is," her voice was shaking. "She went to Lydia's house and she hasn't come back. She's not answering. Julio, something's wrong."
Julio's voice dropped into steel. "I'm on my way."
The light was soft. Too soft. And the world felt muffled — like she was underwater. Sharon's first awareness was pressure: something cold and damp on her forehead, something warm pressing against her hand. Her ribs ached. Her palm throbbed. Her head…
She flinched.
"Easy." A calm voice cut through the haze. Familiar, gentle. "Don't try to sit up yet. You hit your head pretty hard."
She blinked against the blur, her throat dry. The voice anchored her.
"Margaret?" she rasped.
The woman's smile was warm and professional. "Took you long enough."
Sharon tried to swallow. Her mouth felt full of cotton. "Where…"
"Stefanie called Julio. Julio called Mike. Mike called me." Margaret dabbed the cloth gently along Sharon's brow. "He didn't want to risk taking you to the hospital. Said you'd throw every monitor out the window if he did."
Sharon tried to sit up again, slower this time. Her head spun, but not as violently. "The…drive…" Her hand twitched toward her coat.
"We've got it," Margaret assured her. "Still in your pocket. Untouched. Julio brought everything back from the scene himself. You're safe. But you scared the hell out of Stefanie."
Sharon's eyes fluttered closed briefly. She could still see Jenkins' face. Still hear the crunch of his nose beneath her palm. Her ribs ached, but it wasn't broken. Just bruised. She'd taken worse.
She took a slow breath. "I should've seen him coming."
"You saw him enough to break his nose," Margaret said dryly. "I'd say you did better than most."
The door to the room creaked open, then closed with a whisper. Heavy footsteps.
Sharon didn't have to look.
"Don't say it," she murmured.
"Say what?" Provenza's voice was low, rough with emotion. "That you scared ten years off my life? That Julio had to talk Stefanie down from calling the Chief? That Tao called in a favor at LAPD Dispatch to make sure we kept this quiet for now?"
He stepped closer.
"Or maybe you'd rather I skip to the part where I almost went to Lydia's house myself, because I had a hunch you were walking into something alone."
Sharon opened her eyes, met his gaze. "I had to go."
"I know." His anger cooled slightly, replaced with something else. "But next time, you don't do it like this. Not without backup. Not with your damn head barely held together."
Her lips curved faintly. "I think the stone walkway took care of that."
He exhaled sharply, jaw tight. "You're lucky that guy didn't do worse."
"He tried." Her voice was raw but steady. "Did you get a hit on the prints?"
"Not yet. Jenkins has covered his tracks, but the blood on your glove might give us what we need. Julio's running it through Evidence Control now."
Sharon turned slightly in the bed. Margaret helped brace her shoulders. "Tell him… to push it through Tao. Bishop sent Jenkins. This was a warning."
"No," Provenza said flatly. "This wasn't a warning, Sharon. This was a message. The kind of message you send when you're running out of ways to control the narrative."
She nodded slowly. "Which means we're close."
Margaret exchanged a glance with Provenza, then turned back to her patient. "You need to rest. At least a few more hours. You were out cold for ten minutes. I don't love that."
"I can't—"
"You will." Provenza's tone left no room for argument. "Julio's outside with Stefanie. She's not letting anyone near the property. Tao's already checking the footage. And I'm here. Which means for the first time in a week, you don't have to carry the whole damn investigation on your own."
Sharon looked at him for a long beat, eyes glassy but clear. "I almost called him," she whispered.
"I know." He pulled up a chair beside her. "But you didn't. And that tells me you still know what's at stake."
She looked down at her hand, the bandage darkened with new blood. "It hurts."
"I know," Provenza said again, voice gentler now. "But we've got you."
Sharon closed her eyes — just for a moment — and let herself breathe.
Mike Tao sat at his workstation in the tech alcove of Major Crimes, multiple monitors casting a dim, flickering glow across his face. It was just past midnight, the building mostly dark, but the case hadn't let him sleep — not since Julio called to say Sharon had been attacked.
He leaned forward, fingers flying across the keyboard as he pulled up a restricted personnel archive. Gregory R. Jenkins — former LAPD, terminated 2009. Internal Affairs notes flagged. Sharon's name on the file. Mike exhaled through his nose. "Of course it was you."
He opened the case history. Jenkins had been a patrol supervisor with a spotless surface record — until Sharon opened the books and found discrepancies in rookie assignments, reassignment patterns, and three nearly buried misconduct complaints. The youngest of the complainants had been just twenty-one. Stefanie's niece. Sharon's final report had recommended immediate termination. It was granted. Mike cross-referenced Jenkins' badge number with other department systems. "Let's see who you've stayed in touch with," he muttered, opening social trace logs and phone dump archives.
A few clicks later, something popped: two recent encrypted pings from a burner account traced back to a device logged on LAPD's periphery systems — the same frequency Bishop's hotel alias had used in Miami. Tao opened the metadata. "Crap," he whispered.
Jenkins' phone had been within a one-mile radius of Lydia Kemper's property on three separate occasions in the last ten days — including tonight. The timestamps lined up almost exactly with the footage Sharon had just sent. He dug deeper. The device had also pinged twice near a downtown storage facility — the same one Bishop's digital footprint had circled weeks earlier. Tao's stomach turned. He pulled up Jenkins' DMV photo and dropped it into a facial recognition frame, running it against private security cam pulls near Lydia's. Ten seconds later, a match hit from an old Ring doorbell cam three houses down: Jenkins — clear as day — walking toward Lydia's gate two nights ago.
Tao picked up his secure line and dialed Provenza's number. It rang twice.
"What?" Provenza barked on the other end.
"Greg Jenkins has been circling for days. He was at the house tonight, and he's been near a storage unit that matches Bishop's access log." A pause, then... "Sharon was right. This is coordinated."
"She was more than right," Tao said grimly. "She's the target."