Echoes in the Dark

CHAPTER 2 - Ghost on Papers

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. “Victim’s name is Charles Denton. Forty-six. Corporate accountant for a shipping company called Ferris & Cole. Divorced, no kids. No priors, nothing flashy in his background except this.” She slid a photocopy across the desk.

It was a bank statement, numbers blurred from poor scanning. But even Adrian could see the irregular transfers—small amounts, spaced exactly a week apart, funneled into an account flagged offshore.

“You think he was skimming?” Adrian asked.

“Maybe. But I also found this in his office trash bin.” She held up a torn piece of paper inside another evidence sleeve. The fragment was from a printed email, but the words were enough to make his stomach knot:

…they’re watching me. I can’t keep this up. I’ll hand everything over if you can guarantee safety.

Adrian leaned back. “He was a whistleblower.”

“Looks that way.” Mara tapped the edge of the folder. “And if he had something worth killing for, it probably wasn’t just stolen office pens.”

Adrian studied her for a moment. She didn’t look like someone rattled by the thought of a network big enough to kill an accountant. Instead, there was something sharper in her eyes—curiosity, or maybe recognition.

“You seem awfully sure,” he said slowly.

“I analyze patterns for a living,” she replied, not missing a beat. “This doesn’t feel random. And your reaction to that card tells me you’ve seen it before.”

His jaw tightened. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“I’m connecting dots.”

The air between them held a quiet challenge. Adrian had worked with plenty of analysts over the years—most kept their distance, stayed buried in lab reports. Mara was different. She looked at him like she wanted to peel back every layer until she saw what he was hiding.

Before he could decide whether to tell her anything, his phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

He answered. “Cross.”

A pause, then a distorted voice: “You shouldn’t dig. He didn’t listen. Neither will you.”

The line went dead.

Adrian set the phone down slowly, aware of Mara’s gaze narrowing.

“That was…” she prompted.

“Nothing that concerns you,” he said, even though the hairs on the back of his neck were already standing on end.

She didn’t press, but he caught the faint curl of her mouth—as if she knew he was lying.

---

Later that afternoon, they stood outside Ferris & Cole’s headquarters, a glass-and-steel tower that gleamed like money in the winter sun. Inside, the lobby smelled faintly of polish and expensive cologne. The receptionist barely glanced at them before paging Denton’s supervisor.

The man who arrived—Harold Beck—looked like he’d been carved out of beige cardboard. Mid-fifties, thinning hair, a handshake that felt rehearsed.

“We’re deeply saddened by Charles’s… accident,” Beck said, eyes darting anywhere but at them.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Adrian replied.

Something flickered across Beck’s face but gone too fast to name. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. Charles kept to himself. Didn’t have enemies here.”

“Yet someone thought he was worth killing,” Mara said softly, her gaze pinning him like a scalpel.

Beck shifted. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Adrian leaned forward, voice dropping. “Then you won’t mind if we take a look at his office.”

The hesitation was brief, but telling.

They found the office stripped bare—desk cleared, computer gone. Whoever had been here had moved fast. Too fast for HR.

“This wasn’t the company,” Mara murmured as she scanned the room. “This was someone trying to erase him.”

Adrian’s phone buzzed again—this time, a text. No name. No number. Just an image: a close-up of a king of spades, lying in a puddle of water.

And in the reflection, distorted by ripples, was his own face.