Jordan finally reached for Camille's uninjured hand. Kerr looked at their joined fingers, then at the preservation receipt on the blanket.
"I'll make the request," he said.
Outside the curtain, Pike's footsteps stopped. He had heard every word.
Velcro rasped across Camille's kitchen table as Jordan replaced the dressing on her forearm. The sound made Camille think of the cuffs closing, and her muscles tightened before she could stop them.
"Too tight?" Jordan asked.
"No, keep going."
Jordan loosened it anyway. Camille had been discharged into her care the previous night with instructions not to drive, ride, or make critical decisions while the concussion symptoms remained.
The irony was not lost on either of them. Camille's entire job consisted of critical decisions, and the county was still cleaning storm debris while its sheriff sat beneath a kitchen light wearing one sleeve. Her deputy chief had handled the emergency plan exactly as designed; no lives had depended on Camille's personal arrival.
Even so, she kept replaying her command over the radio: No armed response. It had prevented a dangerous confrontation. It had also left Pike in control long enough to injure her, seize the motorcycle, and write the first public version.
Jordan secured the bandage. "You made the safest decision you could while two guns were pointed at you."
"I made the safest decision for everyone standing behind me. That is not the same answer."
Before Camille could respond, the doorbell rang. Naomi Cole from the State Public Integrity Bureau waited outside with Laya Gomez. Naomi was compact, gray-haired, and direct. Laya looked younger than her steady telephone voice had suggested; she carried no files, only a city identification card and the strain of someone who had been warned not to be there.
"Chief Kerr requested an independent review," Naomi said after they sat down. "The prosecutor has paused the obstruction referral, but it has not been formally declined. I need your account as a complainant, not as a sheriff directing an investigation."
Camille nodded. "That distinction matters."
Laya placed her hands flat on the table. "City Council instructed employees not to discuss the event outside the administrative chain. Investigator Cole requested me as the system custodian, so I'm here under her authority."
That was how trust began for Camille: not with loyalty, but with someone naming the boundary and staying inside it.