The search team arranged it with attention to legal authority, ownership, and immediate safety. They did not treat a vacant structure as permission to ignore those questions.
Celeste came to the operations desk while June prepared the next steps.
“If we locate her, she controls what personal information is shared unless a lawful reason requires otherwise,” she said.
June nodded.
Finding Leah was not the same as returning her to the last place somebody expected her to remain.
It meant giving her back a choice.
Victor Drake called Wade before the search reached the old ticket office.
His voice was familiar enough to make the instruction sound like concern.
“I hear Bennett is turning an old absence report into a command project.”
Wade looked through the glass toward the operations room.
“There's more information now.”
“There always is when someone wants to reinterpret a closed file.”
Drake was no longer in command at Harborside. That did not stop him speaking as though Wade remained answerable to the same office.
He asked whether the team had located Leah.
Wade said he was not the case lead.
“You know your way around the records.”
The sentence created a pause.
Wade remembered Orton greeting him in the corridor. He remembered the foundation dinners, the easy assumption that people connected with the station were more reliable than people coming in upset.
“Any request for current case information needs to go through Captain Bennett.”
Drake laughed once.
“That's how it's going to be?”
Wade did not answer the emotional question hidden inside the practical one.
He repeated the channel and ended the call.
Then he sat at his desk for several minutes, looking at the phone.
Refusing Drake did not make the earlier closure disappear.
It did mean the next decision had not yet been made.
He reported the contact through the designated integrity channel, preserving the available information without privately searching for something he hoped would protect him.
The investigator asked whether Drake had requested case information before.
Before answering, Wade asked about obtaining representation for the formal interview. The investigator explained the arrangements and did not describe the request as proof he had something to hide.
That mattered.
Wade had spent years expecting people to answer more quickly when they were frightened. Now he needed time to understand the consequences of his own words.
He was given it.
With advice available, he described the earlier contact and identified which parts could be supported by messages he retained. He did not search other people's files in an effort to create a better defense.
The record would be examined through the proper process.
He remembered Drake presenting the request as helping someone resolve a private concern before it became unnecessary public work.
“Did you ask what authority supported the request?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He was my captain.”
The answer explained how the instruction sounded to him.
It did not establish that the instruction was proper.
His representative asked for the exact scope of the question to be clarified, and the interview continued carefully. Wade found that more unsettling than shouting would have been. He could have dismissed anger as hostility.
Calm questions left him with the sequence.
When he returned to his assigned workspace, he did not expect Celeste to announce that he had redeemed himself by providing the information.
He had answered one set of questions.
There would be others.
The first-morning apology waiting in his head sounded different now. It could no longer begin with his surprise about her rank.
“Yes.”
“About Leah?”
Wade looked down.
“About another person connected with a support referral.”
“What did you provide?”
“The incident reference and the officer handling it.”
He explained the circumstances and received advice about his rights and the formal process. He would have an opportunity to obtain representation. His account would be assessed rather than rewarded with a promise that cooperation erased everything else.
Celeste learned of the contact through the appropriate channel after operational details were protected.
She did not summon Wade to congratulate him.
She asked that his access and assignments be managed consistently with the review, then returned to the search.
Later, he approached her office with the door open and another supervisor present.
“I should have checked the list yesterday.”
She looked at him.
“Yes.”
“I didn't know—”
He stopped before finishing the sentence.
Celeste waited.
“I didn't need to know,” he said.
“That's a better place to begin.”
He nodded awkwardly.