They walked into the Council Chambers like persons who had entered a courtroom. The mayor rose from behind a high desk, his face as cold as a sealed window. Council members lined the walls like officials on a theater set, soft murmurs like whispering wind.
"Sheriff Wolf," Guerieo intoned. "I expected better from my town's law enforcement. I expected clear justice from you. To be honest... even high expectations as well."
Brendon stood as though the strength of his own spine might anchor him. "Mayor please—"
"Silence." Guerieo laced his words with the practiced cruelty of a man who had never done real dirt and therefore never had to explain it. "You walked into the den of an anthro who for years has preyed on this town and now appear as his confidant. The video is concrete. The public is afraid. The council has voted unanimously: you are suspended and will be placed under arrest pending a full, independent inquiry. Am I clear to you?"
There it was — the guillotine falling not on a neck but on his life. Brendon felt the collective breath of the room tighten. He thought of Drago — thought of the conversation about deals, the line about forensic sanctity. He thought of the portrait, of Elena's delicate stroke now trapped in paperwork. He thought about Donna's therapy sessions for a moment. It seems like he has to miss out today's session. He thought of Whitney's face and the press's appetite for monsters and spectacle.
"You're making a mistake," he said, voice low, but clear enough for chief and mayor to understand.
"Enough," Guerieo said. "Chief Tyson, take him into custody."
The chief looked torn in a way that broke something in Brendon's chest. There was a conflict there — duty to a mayor who could pull budgets and headlines away with a breath, and loyalty to a associate who had run through hell and had the scars to prove it. He stepped forward and set the handcuffs on the desk.
Tyson's hand was steady. He moved like a person following orders, and orders in this town were thinly veiled threats with envelopes attached. "Brendon." Tyson said quietly, as much to himself as to the sheriff, "You have left me with no personal choices here. You know how this looks."
Brendon's world narrowed to the cold weight of the handcuffs and the raw, immediate knowledge that his options had become small and violent: cooperate and likely be crushed under a public spectacle that would never let him be anything other than a cautionary tale, or resist and become a fugitive in a town that already feared him.
He chose the instant of motion. He didn't think it through; thought only happens in courtrooms and sleep. He grabbed the handcuffs as the chief moved in and twisted, the metal biting into the meat of his wrist as he pulled. For a flash — a heartbeat — the room stood in a strange, suspended tableau: chief reaching, sheriff twisting, council members frozen like marionettes.
Then Brendon broke toward the nearest window and hurled his shoulder into it.
Glass exploded in a spray of glittering rain. The TV cameras, outside the hall, thudded as fragments hit their lenses from above and the room roared into chaos. The mayor's face snapped into a shape Brendon would later read on countless feeds: shocked, offended, triumphant in an instant.
He ran.
Tyson recovered quickly, older reflexes snapping into place. He moved to secure the crowd and to send orders. "Lock the exits!" he barked, voice rebelling against the tremor in it.
Some council members screamed, not at the mayor now but at the live spectacle, as if their job was not to make decisions for the town's development but to witness blood at the foot of a building. Brendon vaulted down the marble steps, windows smashing behind him as he crashed through the press scrum, and then into the street where cameras followed like hungry wolves.
A line of officers — some uniform, some plainclothes — fanned out to cut him off. Tyson moved with them, his bulk filling the doorway like a rock. Judith was there — gun out, tension knifing her jaw.
"Brendon!" she shouted, voice breaking with something that was still allegiance. The crowd of reporters parted, phones pointed like a thousand accusatory fingers.
He dipped between them, sprinting for the alley that led to the river. The cold air hit his face; his breath came out like steam. He could hear footsteps behind him — thunder, the heavy steps of men who had been trained to close ranks.
He ran fast in spite of the weight in his chest, past the hardware store, past the boarded-up pharmacy, the same streets he had walked endless times at night. He felt the wolf in him wake — not the legend Drago had mocked, but an animal survival stripped down to instinct: ears burn for prey or for sound, nose cataloguing a thousand small stabs of scent — wet concrete, oil, the trace of something sweet and sick that clung to the river.
He dove through a gap between a delivery truck and a dumpster and skidded, half-sliding into the alley, feet clawing for purchase. Men shouted; the world condensed into sound and motion. He lept fences, scaled a low wall with the grace of someone who had been on the wrong side of many laws and had spent a life learning how to move like a ghost.