Criminal puzzles In Texas

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The sun hadn’t fully risen when Victoria cracked open her laptop, a half-drunk mug of coffee beside her and Derek’s message still fresh in her mind.
Ghost op folder. The phrase alone twisted something in her chest.

She typed in the old encryption passphrase — a relic from their Phoenix days — and a black window blinked open. Inside, just three files. No names, just strings of numbers and a single red flag marker tagged to the last one. Victoria opened the first.
Photos. Blurred and aged, but unmistakable: Herrera, standing beside a convoy of unmarked SUVs in the desert, mid-2000s. Several faces blurred, but one stood out — not for clarity, but because it had been scrubbed too clean. Deliberately.
The second file was worse. Reports. Unofficial raids. Confiscations never booked into evidence. Names redacted or missing altogether. It wasn’t just that Herrera had disappeared — it was that someone wanted his shadow buried, too.
The third file required a second code. Victoria typed slowly.

The screen blinked. Access granted.

It was a personnel list. Dead informants. Moved handlers. An operation known only by a call sign: GRAVEDUST. All tied to unsanctioned smuggling — possibly cartel work, but murkier. Less obvious. One name, near the bottom, made her freeze.
Marco Ibarra.
Victoria exhaled sharply.
He wasn’t just running from something. He had been part of it.
Her phone buzzed again — this time, not Derek.
Sam: Leaving early! Coach wants lanes set by 7:30. I’ll see you after?
Victoria glanced at the clock. 6:28 a.m.
Vic: Good luck. You’ve got this.
Sam: Dylan says I swim like I’m chasing something. Not sure if that’s good or creepy?
Vic: Sounds accurate.
Sam: I think he was trying to be romantic. Maybe? IDK. He got real red after.
Victoria smirked despite the weight of her morning.
Vic: You’ll have more time to decode that after you win your heat.

By 8:45 a.m., Victoria was back at her desk in the station, the hum of daytime noise pulsing around her. Alan approached, fresh file in hand, coffee stains already dotting the corner.
“You look like you didn’t sleep,” he noted.
“I read something last night that did a number on my blood pressure.”
Alan sat on the edge of her desk. “Let me guess — Phoenix ghosts?”
Victoria nodded. “Herrera wasn’t just a name. He was part of a black-file op called GRAVEDUST. And Marco was linked to it.”
Alan's face darkened. “That op? I’ve heard whispers. People who poked at it lost careers.”
“Or vanished entirely,” Victoria added.
Alan straightened. “What do you want to do?”
“We keep digging. Carefully. Marco didn’t just skip town — he ran because he knows something that someone still doesn’t want uncovered.”
Alan passed her the file he brought. “Then maybe this will help. We traced the burner used to tip off the apartment incident. Pinged off a tower near a closed scrapyard. South side. Want to check it after lunch?”
Victoria nodded. “I’ll drive.”
That afternoon, the heat clung to San Antonio like a second skin. The scrapyard was rusting and deserted, only the hum of cicadas and the creak of warped sheet metal breaking the silence. They swept the site slowly, eyes sharp. Behind a gutted SUV, Victoria found a makeshift stash spot — torn pages from a ledger, corners charred like someone had tried to burn them. She carefully placed them into an evidence bag.
“Names. Routes. Payment cycles,” she muttered, scanning the jagged handwriting. “Ties back to Herrera’s last known movements.”
Alan whistled low. “You think this is fresh?”
Victoria didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes tracked a symbol scrawled faintly along the bottom corner of the paper — a red cross over a stylized dust cloud. She’d seen it once before, buried in a Phoenix report.
“Someone’s resurrecting a ghost,” she said.

Her phone buzzed.
Sam: Meet’s done. Not gold... but silver. I’ll take it.
Victoria smiled. She typed back:
Vic: I’ll take it too. Proud of you. Want me to pick up anything?
Sam: Tacos. Please. Dylan’s riding with me, I’ll be home by 6:30.
Victoria raised an eyebrow at the mention of Dylan. The two had been circling each other more deliberately lately — not in a loud, dramatic way, but in that quiet gravity teenagers had when they weren’t ready to say anything out loud yet. She didn’t mind it, not really. Dylan had shown himself to be kind, patient. More importantly, he made Samantha laugh in a way that wasn’t guarded. She texted back:
Vic: Tacos incoming. Silver earns queso.

By the time Victoria walked in the door, a paper bag of food tucked under her arm, the sound of Samantha’s laughter echoed faintly from the living room. Dylan sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through her old yearbook, while Samantha sprawled across the couch, a damp towel wrapped around her hair.
“You’ll never recover from page 42,” Samantha said as Victoria entered. “I had braces and confidence.”
Victoria set the bag down. “I’m afraid to ask what he’s looking at.”
“She’s showing me her middle school haircut,” Dylan said with a grin. “It’s heroic.”
“Careful,” Victoria warned, tossing her keys into the bowl near the door. “That girl won second place today.”
Samantha smiled, bashful but proud. “It was close. Like, photo-finish close.”
“Coach said she paced it perfectly,” Dylan added. “It was textbook.”
Victoria handed out food, then sat down with her own plate and let the rhythm of the house take over. Stories from the meet, quiet teasing, a shared playlist playing low through the Bluetooth speaker. Normalcy. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.
Later, after Dylan left and the house quieted, Victoria found Samantha sitting at the kitchen island, medal still around her neck, idly spinning it between her fingers.
“Proud of you,” Victoria said again, her voice low.
Samantha looked up. “Thanks for being there the other day.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it.” She paused. “And Dylan’s... good company.”
Samantha smiled faintly, trying to seem casual. “Yeah. He is.”
Victoria leaned back, studying her daughter’s face — flushed from the day, exhausted in the best way. She looked older somehow. More centered.
“Three more days,” Victoria murmured. “Then we get a real weekend.”
“You mean the kind where you don’t chase down suspects on your day off?”
“That’s the dream,” Victoria said, smiling, then leaned back against the couch. “You’ve had a big day.”

Later that night, as Victoria rinsed out her coffee mug and flicked off the kitchen lights, she caught Samantha still at the table, sketchbook open, pencil hovering just above the page.
“Thought you were heading to bed,” Victoria said softly.
“I was. Just… can’t shut my brain off.” Samantha looked up, a crease between her brows. “Design competitions next week. Mr. Baez, chief of the department, finally announced it today.”
Victoria leaned against the doorway. “That’s the one you submitted for after we moved, right? The wearable tech project?”
Samantha nodded. “This time it’s freestyle — but they’re judging it hard. It’s statewide, so all the magnet schools are sending teams. I want it to be good.”
“You sound like you’re already halfway there.”
“I’m just nervous,” Samantha admitted, voice quieter. “Like... more than with swimming. I care about this in a different way.”
Victoria crossed the room and gently closed the sketchbook. “Then do what you’ve always done — one line at a time. You don’t have to win the whole thing tonight.”
Samantha gave her a grateful look — a flicker of reassurance in tired eyes.
“I’ll be home before dinner tomorrow,” Victoria said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We can go over it if you want.”
“Yeah,” Samantha murmured. “That’d help.”

After Samantha was finally asleep, Victoria returned to the files Derek had sent. She clicked through the photos again, stopping on a satellite map buried in the last one.
A single note was typed in the corner.
“If he talks, they all burn.”
Victoria stared at it long into the night.