The city was quiet in that strange, almost threatening way that comes just before a storm. The streets glistened from an earlier drizzle, streetlamps casting fractured halos on wet pavement. Adanna pulled her coat tighter around her, the collar brushing her jawline as she walked toward the small café where Ethan had insisted they meet.He rarely picked the location. That, in itself, made her uneasy.Inside, the café was dim and warm, with the hum of soft jazz bleeding from a speaker somewhere near the counter. A scattering of late-night customers lingered over their mugs, lost in their worlds. Ethan sat in the back, his face half-hidden in the shadow cast by the overhead light. He didn’t look like a man meeting a lover or even an ally. He looked like someone bracing for war.Adanna slid into the seat across from him, setting her gloves on the table. “You said it was urgent.”He didn’t answer right away. His fingers were wrapped tightly around a coffee cup, as if drawing heat from it h

The day the evidence surfaced was not marked by thunder or lightning, but by a cruelly ordinary blue sky.Adanna sat in her office, the late morning sun bleeding through the half-open blinds in sharp, golden slats. Her desk was buried under stacks of files — paper towers that smelled faintly of ink and tension. The hum of the old ceiling fan was the only sound, steady and unbothered, as though the world wasn’t about to tilt under her feet.She was deep in thought over a chain of phone records when a knock broke her concentration. It wasn’t the hesitant tap of an intern or the firm rap of her boss. This was sharp. Urgent.“Come in,” she called, her voice steady, though a pulse of unease stirred in her chest.Detective Chike strode in, holding a thin brown envelope. His expression was unreadable — but his eyes… they avoided hers.“I thought you should see this first,” he said, setting the envelope down in front of her.“What is it?” She reached for it, her fingers brushing the coarse pa