BUILT ON BONES

Chapter two

Three security guards surrounded Marcus within thirty seconds.

They materialized from the sides of the lobby. Two from the elevator bank, one from the reception desk. All three wore the same black uniforms with "HUTCHINSON SECURITY" embroidered in silver thread, the same earpieces, the same cold professional expressions.

"He did something!" Hutchinson was shouting over the alarm, pointing at Marcus with a shaking finger.

His composure had shattered completely, his carefully styled hair now disheveled, his designer suit jacket askew. "He sabotaged the floor! He—"

"I'm a building inspector," Marcus said calmly, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. His palms were still burning from the vision, phantom pain that felt like frostbite and fire at the same time. The memory-burn always felt like this, intense as if his nerve endings were still processing fifteen-year-old rain and violence. "I didn't sabotage anything. The foundation has structural instability. Everyone needs to evacuate—"

"You're not going anywhere except jail," the head security guard growled. He was a boulder of a man, six-foot-four at least, with shoulders that looked like they could move cars. His name tag read "DAVIES" in block letters. His hand moved to the taser on his belt. "Down on the ground. Now."

Marcus glanced around the lobby, his mind racing through possibilities and outcomes. About forty people, office workers in business casual, construction crew members in hard hats and hi-vis vests, executives in thousand-dollar suits, were steaming toward the exits. The fire alarm was still shrieking, a piercing wail that made it hard to think. But underneath that sound, Marcus could hear something worse.

The building was groaning. A DEEP SUBSONIC RUMBLE that he could feel in his bones. This was the sound of a structure in its death throes, fighting against itself, trying to purge the violence buried in its foundation.

The crack in the floor was still spreading too, a spiderweb of fractures radiating out from the impact point like lightning frozen in stone. Some of the smaller cracks were already six inches wide. Marcus could see the rebar underneath, twisted and corroded in patterns that shouldn't be possible in a brand-new building.

And he could feel the weight of what he'd seen. The vision still pressed against the inside of his skull, Victor Hutchinson Sr.'s terrified voice, the wet crack of his skull hitting concrete, the rain mixing with blood. Marcus's stomach churned. He'd experienced deaths before, touched buildings that held murders in their bones, but this felt different. .

Because the killer was standing right there, ten feet away, staring at him with eyes that had watched a man bleed out.

"Listen," Marcus said urgently to Davies, forcing himself to focus on the immediate threat. "I know how this looks, but I'm telling you, this entire structure is compromised. Those cracks are going to keep spreading. The foundation is failing from the inside out. We need to—"

Davies grabbed his arm, his grip like iron. "Save it for the cops."

That's when the elevator exploded.

The elevator car dropped three floors in the shaft with a sound like thunder, gravity taking over where the cables had failed. The impact echoed up through the building's skeleton. Somewhere above them, on one of the upper floors, someone screamed that it cut through even the fire alarm.

Davies's grip loosened in shock, his head snapping toward the elevator bank.

Marcus didn't think. He ran toward the emergency stairwell on the east side of the building, the one he'd marked on his mental map during his initial walkthrough this morning. He'd studied the blueprints last night at his apartment, hunched over his laptop at 2 AM with coffee going cold beside him, memorizing every detail. He knew this building's layout like he knew the lines on his own palm. Every corridor, every stairwell, every utility chase and access panel.

And he knew something else, something he'd realized the moment he touched that marble floor and fell into the memory.

The body was buried under the northeast corner of the foundation. Directly beneath the elevator shaft.

The building had been trying to reject it for months, maybe longer. That's why the elevator had been acting up, according to the maintenance reports he'd reviewed in the file Bridgemont had given him. Intermittent failures, unexplained stops between floors, cables showing wear that shouldn't have been there. That's why there were microfractures in the underground parking garage walls, tiny stress patterns that the previous inspectors had dismissed as normal settling. That's why the whole damn structure was falling apart before it even opened.

Buildings absorbed violence into their bones, held onto it like a wound that wouldn't heal, and sometimes—like now—the materials themselves began to fail, as if trying to purge the contamination.

"STOP HIM!" Hutchinson's voice echoed across the lobby, high and desperate.

Marcus heard footsteps pounding behind him—Davies and at least one other guard in pursuit. But he had a head start and he knew where he was going. He slammed through the stairwell door, the crash bar hitting the wall with a bang that echoed in the concrete shaft, and took the stairs down three at a time.

Down, not up. Everyone else was evacuating up and out, following the emergency procedures, heading for the roof or the street level. But Marcus needed to see the parking garage. Needed to find exactly where the body was buried, needed to document it, needed proof that he could show to someone who might actually believe him.

Because if he was right—if he could prove what Hutchinson had done—then maybe, finally, someone would listen when he said buildings held memories.

Maybe his gift wouldn't be a curse anymore.

His foot hit something slick on the landing between the first floor and basement level. Water, or oil, or something else. His legs went out from under him and he fell hard, his clipboard skittering away into darkness, his shoulder slamming into the concrete wall. Pain exploded through his arm—not phantom pain from the vision, but real, immediate agony. He tasted copper. His lip had split open on impact.

He pushed himself up, ignoring the pain, ignoring the blood he could feel running down his chin, and kept moving down. His left arm hung uselessly, probably dislocated. He cradled it against his chest and kept going.

The stairwell lights were flickering now, the emergency power struggling to keep up with whatever was happening to the building's electrical system. Shadows danced on the walls like living things. Marcus's breath came in ragged gasps. His bad knee—the basketball injury from college—screamed in protest with every step.

But he kept going.

The parking garage was a concrete tomb when he finally reached it, lit by sickly yellow emergency lights that cast everything in shades of jaundice. The air was thick with dust and the smell of ozone—something electrical had shorted out somewhere. The crack from upstairs had propagated down here, a jagged canyon splitting the floor right down the middle.

And the smell—

Marcus gagged, his hand going to his mouth instinctively. Decay. Old and deep and wrong. The smell of organic matter breaking down in places it was never meant to be, sealed away from air and light and the natural processes of decomposition.

He approached the crack carefully, pulling out his phone with his good hand and activating the flashlight. The beam cut through the dusty air like a sword. His hands were shaking—not from fear, but from the accumulated weight of what he'd seen. The vision still echoed in his mind. Victor Sr.'s voice: Please, I'm your father—

The flashlight beam cut through the darkness of the crack. Six feet down, caught between layers of broken concrete like an insect in amber—

A skeleton. Partially preserved by the cement, the bones yellowed and stained but unmistakable. The skull was caved in on one side, exactly where Marcus had seen it struck in the vision. Fragments of expensive fabric still clung to the remains—a suit jacket, designer even in death. And around the neck bones, still somehow intact despite fifteen years of burial—

A platinum necklace with a name engraved on the pendant.

Marcus squinted, leaning closer to the edge, his phone's light catching the engraving. The letters were tarnished but readable: VICTOR HUTCHINSON SR.

"Got you," Marcus whispered, his voice barely audible even to himself. Relief flooded through him—proof, finally, undeniable proof that his visions were real, that he wasn't crazy, that—

"Got YOU," a voice said behind him, cold and flat.

Marcus spun around, his heart lurching. Davies and two other guards were approaching from the stairwell, tasers and flashlights raised. Their faces were hard, professional. They'd done this before—corralled people, contained problems, made inconvenient things disappear.

And behind them, framed in the emergency lighting like a demon from hell itself—

Hutchinson. But his face had changed. The fear was gone. The panic was gone. What remained was cold calculation, the same expression Marcus had seen in the memory, standing over his dying father. The expression of a man who had killed before and would kill again without hesitation.

"Quite a story you could tell," Hutchinson said softly, his voice carrying in the concrete space despite the chaos above them. "About a crazy inspector who destroyed a building. Who fell into his own trap during the collapse. Such a tragedy. The media will eat it up—unhinged employee, history of mental instability, wrote reports about buildings that were perfectly safe. Another workplace violence incident."

Davies hesitated, looking between them. Even through his professional mask, Marcus could see uncertainty. "Mr. Hutchinson, I don't think—"

"You're paid to follow orders, Davies. Not think." Hutchinson pulled out his phone, his thumb moving across the screen with casual efficiency. "Mike? It's me. Remember that cement truck from fifteen years ago? I need another one. Tonight. Same location."

Marcus's blood went cold, ice spreading through his veins.

He was standing at the edge of a crack that revealed a fifteen-year-old murder.

And the killer wanted to bury him in the same grave.

Dust rained down from the ceiling. Somewhere in the structure above them, something massive shifted.

Marcus looked at the crack, at the skeleton, at Hutchinson's cold eyes.

And he made a choice.

He jumped into the crack.