Black-Belt Cop Choked a Nurse in Sparring — Then Her Navy SEAL Past Made Him Regret It
Chapter 19
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Savannah looked at her. She hadn't expected that. Not that Fitch had done anything wrong—she hadn't—but she hadn't expected it stated so plainly, without qualification."Thank you," she said.Fitch picked up her pen. "Don't thank me. Do your job. Go home."Savannah went home. She called Quinn and gave him the full accounting: the reporter, the union call, Fitch's response. He listened without interrupting."The union is going to try to run a parallel narrative," he said. "Make it about a disgruntled member with a personal grudge rather than a pattern of misconduct. It's standard. It buys time and muddies the public record in case the review board decision gets appealed.""It won't work," Savannah said. "There are three of us.""I know. But they don't know about Cassandra Vale yet. When they find out there are three witnesses, the narrative shifts. That's why Sandoval needs to move faster than they're expecting.""Is he going to?""I talked to him this afternoon. He's moving the hearing timeline up. He got authorization today." A pause. "Savannah... the gym.""What about it?""Garrett called me tonight. Rork came in this afternoon after receiving the notice. He didn't train. He just came in, talked to a few people, left."She understood the implication: he's working the room, shoring up support before the hearing."Yes," Quinn said. "And Garrett's nervous. He doesn't have the spine Fitch has." Quinn's voice was careful, not critical—a statement of operational fact. "I think we need to go in together on Saturday. Open mat. Be visible. Let the room see that we're still there."She thought about it. Her instinct was to agree, and her secondary instinct was to examine whether that was sound, or whether she was just tired of being careful and patient. She examined it; she decided it was sound."Saturday," she said."Okay."She slept better than she'd expected to.Saturday open mat started at 9:00 a.m.They arrived separately: Quinn first, Savannah about ten minutes after. The room was more full than usual, which meant word had gotten around. Twelve people on a Saturday morning was three more than the typical turnout, and the energy in the room had the particular texture of people who were present because they wanted to see what would happen, not because they wanted to train.Garrett was behind his desk. He looked at Savannah when she came in and then looked at something else immediately, which was all the information she needed about where he'd landed.She changed her shoes, stretched, found a space on the mat, and started working through entries by herself. Quinn was across the room doing the same thing, and they didn't acknowledge each other directly because that wasn't unusual and they were not going to make the morning about theatrics.For the first 45 minutes, it was just training.Then Dale Rork walked in.He wasn't supposed to be there. He was suspended pending review, which didn't technically prohibit him from entering a private gym he was a fee-paying member of, but which created a specific kind of tension when he came through the door with his gear bag and signed his name at the front desk with the ease of someone who had decided to make a statement by acting like nothing had changed. Garrett signed him in.