Instead, he looked at the tablet and said, “We’re not finished.”

Mercer stopped struggling.

For the first time that evening, Maya saw something in his face that had nothing to do with anger.

Fear.

The agent holding his left arm tightened his grip.

“Keep moving.”

“No.” The silver-haired man raised a hand. “Let him hear this.”

The room remained silent.

Nearly two hundred people had watched Mercer humiliate Maya only minutes earlier. Now no one seemed willing to move, speak, or even reach for the phones lying beside their dinner plates.

Maya glanced down at the broken citation near Mercer’s shoe.

A few minutes ago, he had crushed it as if that settled the question of who she was.

Now the polished shoe was shaking.

The silver-haired man introduced himself as Daniel Reeves, an investigator assigned to review the fire response and the handling of department records afterward.

Then he tapped the tablet again.

The screen showed the burning apartment building from Maya’s body camera.

Smoke rolled through a second-floor hallway.

Someone was crying behind a closed door.

Maya remembered that sound.

She had heard it even through her mask.

Reeves paused the recording.

“Chief Mercer,” he said, “you told our office there was no usable body-camera footage from Lieutenant Torres.”

Mercer stared at him.

“I was told the file was corrupted.”

“By whom?”

Mercer said nothing.

Reeves waited.

One of the city officials near the front table shifted uncomfortably.

The fire commissioner, Thomas Bell, had spent most of the banquet smiling beside Mercer. Now he slowly lowered his eyes.

Reeves noticed.

“So did you receive that information from someone else, Chief?”

Mercer finally answered.

“I don’t remember.”

“You remembered it when you signed the report.”

A murmur passed through the room.

Mercer turned toward Bell.

The commissioner did not look back.

Maya watched the exchange carefully.

That was when she understood something had changed.

Mercer was no longer trying to control her.

He was trying to figure out who had stopped protecting him.

Reeves opened another file.

“This is the original incident log.”

Mercer’s jaw tightened.

“And this,” Reeves continued, “is the version submitted three days later.”

He displayed both documents side by side.

Maya could not read every line from where she stood, but she recognized the timestamps.

She also recognized her own name.

On the original log, her entry into the building had been recorded.

On the later version, that entry was gone.

Reeves looked directly at Mercer.

“Who authorized the alteration?”

Mercer shook his head.

“You’re turning an administrative correction into some kind of conspiracy.”

“No,” Reeves said. “I’m asking who changed a public-safety record.”

Mercer looked around the ballroom.

No one laughed now.

His command staff sat rigidly at their tables.

Several firefighters who had avoided Maya since the incident were staring at him.

Others were staring at Bell.

Then a chair scraped against the floor.

Captain Noah Price stood.

Maya knew him well.

Price had been outside the apartment building that night. He had been one of the officers ordered to establish a perimeter while Maya went back inside.

He had also refused to speak publicly about what happened afterward.

Mercer pointed at him.

“Sit down.”

Price remained standing.

“Captain.”

Price swallowed.

Then he looked at Reeves.

“I kept a copy.”

Mercer froze.

Reeves turned toward him.

“A copy of what?”

“The original radio log.”

Mercer’s voice cut across the ballroom.

“Price, don’t.”

That single sentence changed the room again.

Price reached inside his jacket.

One of the federal agents immediately stepped toward him, but Price slowly removed a small flash drive and placed it on the table.

“I was told to delete it,” he said.

Maya stared at him.

Price finally looked at her.

His face carried none of the relief she expected.

Only shame.

Reeves picked up the drive.

“Who told you?”

Price looked at Mercer.

Mercer pulled against the agents.

“He’s lying.”

Price’s eyes never left him.

“You called me the morning after the fire.”

“I called half the department.”

“You told me the official record needed to show that Lieutenant Torres entered before the evacuation order.”

Mercer shook his head.

“No.”

“You said if the timeline showed she went in afterward, people would ask why she believed civilians were still inside.”

Maya felt her hands tighten at her sides.

That had always been the missing question.

Not whether she had disobeyed.

Why she had disobeyed.

She had heard the children.

She had told command.

And someone had decided the safer story was that she had acted recklessly without cause.

Price continued.

“You told me to clean up the timestamps.”

Mercer laughed once, but there was no confidence in it.

“Do you hear yourself? You’re admitting you falsified records.”

Price nodded.

“Yes.”

The answer seemed to surprise Mercer.