Miller’s private office feels smaller now, stripped of excuses. The forged route, the booking logs, and the signature trail sit between Dallas Fontaine and Captain Miller like evidence that finally learned how to breathe. Jackson Temple holds the door, grim and steady.

Miller’s jaw works. He looks at the terminal, then at Dallas, and the fight drains out of his shoulders by inches. He slides a sealed access packet across the desk, along with a private directory and a city oversight chain.

Jackson takes the packet. Dallas pockets the proof, and the room’s stale air finally shifts. Outside, the precinct keeps humming, blind and ordinary, while the machine inside it starts to come apart.

The next move belongs to Dallas Fontaine, with the evidence in hand and St. Lucia waiting at the far end of it.

Dallas flips through the mayoral liaison's file, finding a series of signed authorizations that mirror the clerk's own handiwork. The signature is unmistakable, a direct link between the city's highest office and the corruption rotting the harbor.

Dallas turns another page, and the signatures stop looking like paperwork and start looking like choreography. The liaison’s approvals match the clerk’s route marks, line for line, as if one hand is training the other.

He keeps reading, and a folded insert slides free onto the desk. It is a district address card stamped no public desk, tucked behind a routing memo with the same clerk’s signature.

Dallas’s thumb catches the edge of the page again, the old seal cut reopening just enough to sting. The file’s back matter shows a payment trail, and the liaison is listed as the architect, not the liaison.

Miller exhales, shoulders sagging as the last page lands flat. The room goes quiet around the evidence, and even he seems to understand there is nothing left to hide.

Captain Miller set the sealed packet on the table and folded back into silence.

Dallas slid the liaison file shut, the signed authorizations resting heavy in his hand.

The corruption had been mapped, named, and handed over in full. Captain Miller was left with nothing to protect, and Jackson Temple had the proof to make the wreckage hold. Dallas Fontaine walked out with a clear path and a clean break, the chapter closed behind him.