Consciousness returned to Davon Deshaun not as a swift sunrise, but as a slow, reluctant tide washing over a barren shore. He woke feeling dredged from the depths of a deep, heavy sleep, his limbs leaden, his mind cobwebbed and slow. A profound, cellular tiredness clung to him, the accumulated exhaustion of too many crime scenes, too many lies, and too many nights spent staring at a ceiling that offered no answers. For long, motionless minutes, he simply sat on the edge of his bed, the cool air of the apartment raising goosebumps on his bare torso. His gaze was lost, unfocused, through the large floor-to-ceiling window that formed one wall of his bedroom.Outside, the world was a study in muted tones. A low, granite-grey sky pressed down on the city, and a persistent, gusty wind whipped through the concrete canyons, tearing the last brittle, brown leaves from the skeletal branches of the trees in the park below. They swirled in frantic, chaotic dances before being dashed against the g

Consciousness returned to Davon Deshaun as a series of disjointed, painful sensations before it coalesced into coherent thought. First was the smell—antiseptic, sterile, and unmistakably hospital. Then came the sound—the steady, rhythmic beep of a heart monitor, a sound he’d heard in too many rooms for too many victims, never imagining himself as the source. Finally, the pain arrived, a deep, throbbing orchestra of agony conducted from every part of his body. A sharp, stabbing fire in his ribs with every shallow breath. A dull, persistent ache in his skull. A constellation of bruises and aches across his torso and limbs.He tried to open his eyes, but one was swollen shut, the lid heavy and uncooperative. The other eye cracked open to a slit, revealing a blur of white ceiling tiles and the soft, grey light of day filtering through a window. He was in a private room.Memory returned in a nauseating rush. The dark sedan. The professional, chilling precision of the ramming. The gloved fi

The fluorescent lights of the precinct squad room hummed a low, persistent note of institutional fatigue, a sound Claire McGuire had come to terms and association with the slow grinding of justice. It was 8:17 AM. She sat at her desk, a fortress of organized case files, her posture so rigid it seemed to defy the very physics of the worn-out office chair. She was staring at her computer screen, a dense financial report from the FBI accountant blurring into a grey smear before her eyes. She had been “reading” the same paragraph about Luxembourgish shell corporations for ten solid minutes, her mind a thousand miles away, trapped in the memory of cheap cotton sheets and the scent of gun oil.Every nerve ending was hyper-aware, tuned to the specific, heavy sound of the squad room door swinging on its hinges. She heard the scuff of a boot on linoleum, the shift in the room’s air pressure, and knew, with a sinking certainty, that he had arrived.Davon’s entrance was not subtle. The door shut