“I was.”
“What changed?”
Marcus looked across the peaceful park.
Families walking.
Older couples talking.
Children running beneath the trees.
A place where one year earlier, a police officer had tried to manufacture guilt in broad daylight.
Marcus zipped his jacket.
“Somebody still thinks the uniform belongs to them.”
Leonard slowly stood.
“And?”
Marcus looked at him.
“They’re wrong.”
The two men began walking toward the parking lot.
Behind them, the park remained quiet.
Nobody noticed the black sedan that started its engine across the street.
Nobody noticed the elderly white-haired man sitting in the back seat.
And nobody heard him tell the driver:
“General Marcus finally found the photograph.”
The driver looked in the mirror.
“Should we move?”
The old man smiled.
“No.”
He watched Marcus disappear between the trees.
“Let him come.”
Then the sedan pulled away.
Marcus never saw it.
Not that morning.
But after everything Daniel Briggs had started with one small plastic bag in a public park, Marcus had learned one lesson he would never forget.
The most dangerous evidence was rarely the evidence someone planted on you.
It was the evidence powerful people were terrified you might uncover.
