By sunrise, the warehouse was silent again. The uniforms had packed up, the floodlights gone, leaving only the tape flapping lazily in the wind. But Adrian was still awake, hunched over his desk at the precinct, staring at the playing card.The king of spades sat inside a fresh evidence bag, mocking him.Two years. Two years without a whisper, and now it was back.The last time he’d seen one, his partner had been lying on the wet pavement, eyes glassy, throat gurgling with blood. Officially, the case had gone cold. Unofficially, Adrian had been told to “let it go.”He hadn’t.“Cross.”He looked up to see Mara Vey standing in the doorway, balancing a coffee in one hand and a folder in the other. Her dark hair was loose now, brushing against her shoulders, but her expression was the same—composed, unreadable.“You look like hell,” she said, setting the coffee down without asking if he wanted it.“Thanks for the pep talk,” he muttered.She ignored the jab and flipped open the folder. “Vi

The king of spades swung in the breeze, the metal of the knife catching the moonlight.For a moment, Adrian didn’t move. He could feel Mara’s gaze burning into the side of his face, silently demanding answers.He didn’t give them. Not yet.“Back up,” he said instead, scanning the shadows between the shipping containers.The sound came again—a faint scrape, metal on metal, closer this time. He raised his gun, angling his body to shield Mara without making it obvious. She might have been a forensic analyst, but in the wrong alley, job titles didn’t matter.“Who’s there?” His voice carried across the yard, swallowed almost instantly by the maze of containers.No answer.They moved in slow formation, Mara’s flashlight cutting arcs across the rusted walls while Adrian kept his weapon trained ahead. Every corner felt like it could hold a muzzle flash, every shadow a set of watching eyes.They rounded a container and stopped.A figure stood about thirty feet away, half-hidden by shadow. Tall

The precinct’s fluorescent lights felt harsher than usual, buzzing faintly over the low murmur of early-shift chatter. Adrian had walked Mara straight from the car to his office, ignoring her protests the entire way.“I don’t need a babysitter,” she said for the third time, leaning against the desk instead of sitting in the chair he’d pulled out.“You don’t need to be a target either,” Adrian replied, stripping off his coat and tossing it over the back of his chair. “That photo wasn’t a warning—it was a promise. Whoever’s running this knows where you sleep.”Mara crossed her arms. “Then maybe we should be focusing on them instead of caging me in here.”“It’s not a cage. It’s protection.”“It feels the same.”Adrian’s jaw ticked. He wasn’t used to people pushing back once he’d made a call, and Mara’s glare was sharp enough to cut through his resolve. But the image of that grainy photo—her silhouette framed in her own apartment window—was still burned into his mind. He wasn’t losing som

The address burned in Mara’s mind all night, a single thread tugging at the back of her thoughts until it unraveled her sleep completely. By dawn, she was already sitting at Adrian’s kitchen table, staring at the card like it might start whispering answers.Adrian emerged from the bedroom—not the couch. She didn’t question it, but the faint scent of coffee and gun oil followed him as he crossed the room.“You’re up early,” he said, setting a mug in front of her.“Couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the address.”“That’s exactly what they want.” He sipped his coffee. “Keep you restless. Push you toward a bad decision.”She frowned. “So we don’t go?”“Oh, we’re going,” he said, deadpan. “But on our terms.”By mid-morning, they were in the car, the city’s gray skyline giving way to industrial decay. The address led them to the old Harrington Textile Mill—abandoned for over a decade, its red-brick walls stained with soot and graffiti.The air was colder here. Still. Even the gulls that

The rain started halfway back to the precinct.Not a gentle drizzle but one of those hard, needle-sharp downpours that made the city feel like it was drowning in its own sins.Adrian drove in silence, eyes fixed on the slick road ahead. Mara watched the reflection of streetlights racing across the windshield, each one breaking against the glass like a fragment of truth he refused to give her.Finally, she spoke.“You’re going to tell me who that man was.”His jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer.“Adrian,” she pressed, her voice sharper this time, “I just watched you take down someone who clearly knew you. And he was willing to kill you. That doesn’t happen by accident.”They hit a red light. The wipers swiped once, twice, the sound like the slow sweep of a pendulum.Adrian’s hands stayed locked on the steering wheel. “It was a long time ago.”“How long?”“Eight years.”“And what happened eight years ago that has armed men dropping out of catwalks to take your head off?”He glanced at