Chapter Text
Grove's neon sign casted amber light through the drizzle, painting jagged shadows across wet pavement. I pushed through the heavy door, its hinges groaning under my weight.
Heat hit me immediately—thick air heavy with stale beer, grease, and something metallic. Dim lighting carved the room into patches of gold and red from mismatched wall sconces and the jukebox's pulsing glow. Overhead bulbs flickered and buzzed.
Notes of a blues guitar drifted through the room, voices murmuring beneath it. Pool balls cracked. Glass clinked against wood. Behind the bar, ice scraped against metal.
My boots caught on the sticky floor as I moved deeper inside. The crowd was heavier than expected for a Tuesday. Too many bodies generating heat that pressed against my skin.
And then I saw him.
Corner booth. Straightening his coaster every thirty seconds. Precise movements that matched his financial auditor cover. Clean-cut in a room full of denim and sweat. Neatly parted hair, crisp button-down tucked into tailored pants, dress shoes reflecting the bar's flickering light. A man known by many names, home to many cities.
His date hadn't arrived yet.
I slid along the perimeter toward the bar, hunting for a clear sightline.
Three steps in, I hesitated. Eyes locked on his booth, calculating the best vantage point—
Then his eyes met mine: sharp, cold. Like someone had jammed a wire straight through my chest and yanked.
Shit. Shit shit shit—
“Josie?” The voice cut through the low hum of conversation, deep and familiar enough to jolt me mid-step.
I turned around.
He stood lean and athletic, dark hair slightly tousled, blue-gray eyes catching the dim light. His jaw tensed when he saw me, a quick, involuntary reaction beneath two-day stubble. The confidence in his posture made the crowded room seem to bend around him, like gravity had shifted its center.
Kelly Severide.
His brow creased, the faintest flicker of surprise breaking through the usual calm focus and understated charisma. Then he started toward me, weaving through the crowd with an easy, measured gait that devoured the space between us.
When he stopped in front of me, close enough that the faint trace of his ocean-scented cologne threaded through the beer-and-grease haze, his eyes asked the question before he did.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hey! Pretend you know me,” I said fast.
One eyebrow arched, mouth tugging into a smirk. “Pretty sure I do know you.”
“Pretend we’re together.”
“We are, aren’t we?”
My arms crossed. Kept my eyes moving. Bartenders to my right, booths to my left. The man at the front table was still watching, but now his attention was fixed on Kelly.
Whose…eyes stayed on me, weighing…something. Then the faintest glint sparked there—like he’d just decided how this was going to go—and he closed the last step between us, angling so I was in his shadow and the booths were blocked from view.
He also didn’t glance towards the front window, thankfully. If he had, it would’ve blown this entire two month long investigation straight to hell and I’d have to flee town immediately.
The older bartender caught my eye. A woman in her fifties with strong arms and bare shoulders, curly black hair streaked in silver. She nodded at us while wiping down the counter.
“Severide. What’s she having?”
“Whiskey, neat,” I answered before he could, “Something decent.”
The bartender's lips curved into a slow smile as her gaze flicked between us, one eyebrow rising before she turned away.
“Next time,” he said under his breath, voice low and tantalizing, “start with the part where you’re using me as cover.”
He didn’t move away. Instead, he held position, angled half a step behind me so anyone watching had to look through him first. Every so often his eyes slid my way, sharp and searching, like he was clocking details I wasn’t giving him.
The bartender poured two fingers of Jameson and slid it down the bar to me.
“Thanks Maggie. Add it to the table,” he said.
“I can pay—” I started, but he tipped his head toward the back, where a round table sat near the pool tables. A handful of navy CFD jackets hung on chair backs.
“Let’s talk over there.”
Damn it. Poorer vantage point.
But with Severide already steering the way, the heat of his hand brushing my back as he guided me through the crowd, I went.
I resisted the urge to look back at the window. My eyes swept past the back door, took in the modest crowd, then landed on his crew gathered at a table near the pool tables. A few wore CFD gear, others dressed like they were ready for a night out on the town. One chair sat empty, aisle-side, angled toward the front.
The rest were already claimed.
One man leaned his chair back against the wall, clean-shaved, thick dark hair that look liked he’d ran his hand through it a few times, dark eyes never leaving the phone in one hand, his other holding a beer balanced on his knee. Handsome. The clean kind.
A low raspy laugh from the man next to him drew half the table towards them. Older, by ten years, easy. Buzzed gray hair, strong build, voice that rumbled like rocks in a whiskey barrel. Light hit his hand as he talked—gold band. His wife was lucky—he aged well. Confident in it too.
“All's I'm sayin' is, if a guy's pants are already goin' up in flames, maybe skip the small talk and get to puttin' him out,” He was saying, waving a hand for emphasis as laughter rolled around the table.
“Wait Herrmann, that actually happened?” a younger one I hadn’t seen before jumped in, voice quick. “That’s awesome.” Still had that fresh-out-of-academy look: clean face, eager eyes, not enough scars yet. Nice smile, light brown skin. Close-cut hair.
“Okay, candidate, let’s maybe dial it back from an eleven to a solid six or seven,” yet another man said, back to me. Still I could see it: glasses, round face, thinning reddish hair, little red in the cheeks. “Herrmann’s perfectly capable of tooting his own horn.”
“Toot my own horn? Hell, I’m the whole damn brass section, Mouch. Kid’s just callin’ it like it is.”
Mouch rolled his eyes.
“You toot it so loud we’ve all got hearing damage,” the cleanly attractive one muttered, sipping his beer, eyes never leaving his phone.
Herrmann barked a laugh. “That’s 'cause you millennials got tissue paper eardrums, Morgan. Back in my day, we called that character building.”
“Careful, Herrmann. That horn might be the only thing still working.” Kelly announced our presence, arms folded. His dark hair was deliberately more tousled somehow, sharp eyebrows raised above that quiet smirk he flashed at the table—if there were a woman present, her heart’d be fluttering faster than a butterfly.
Oh wait, it was me. I was the present woman.
"Severide, you son of a—" Herrmann started, then caught himself, glancing up from the table. They all did. “Well, I'll be! Josie May in the flesh. ’Bout time you came around again!”
Chairs scraped as a couple of them shifted to see us. The candidate’s gaze slid between me and Kelly like he was trying to place the connection. Mouch’s mouth was already tugging into a grin.
Herrmann leaned back in his chair. “What, too good for Grove’s these days?”
“Not too good, too busy,” I smiled.
“Busy, my ass,” Mouch cut in, pointing a finger like he’d caught me red-handed. “You vanish for months and expect us to believe that?”
“It hasn’t been months,” I scoffed. “It’s been, what, one? Maybe two?”
Kelly leaned in, breath warming my ear. “Three.”
I glared at him; way to out me, Kelly. Then shifted my gaze back to the table. “I better not be hearing you guys giving my best friend a hard time.”
I felt his stare on me, heat climbing in my chest. Could already see his mouth tugging in that infuriating half-smirk. “Never.”
“Nah, it’s fine Josie,” Herrmann shook his head. “Heck, if my horn’s the only thing that’s workin’—” He stopped, scanning the table like he was weighing the wisdom of the words. He finally shrugged. “You know what? Fair point. At my age, I’ll take what I can get.”
The kid beside him nearly choked on his beer. “Did Herrmann just admit—”
“Careful, candidate,” Mouch said, but the grin behind his newspaper betrayed the warning. “You’re about to poke the bear.”
“Bear?” Herrmann’s spine snapped straight. “I prefer ‘distinguished gentleman with years of experience.’”
“Distinguished’s one word for it,” Kelly murmured, tipping his beer back.
I jabbed my elbow into his ribs. Hard enough to make my point.
He caught my arm before I could do it again, his grip warm, steady. My pulse skipped under his thumb, a small betrayal my brain couldn't control.
“So…” the younger guy glanced between us. “Josie?”
I nodded. “And you are?”
“Pe—” he started, but Mouch cut him off.
“The new candidate.” He took a slow sip, the kid’s face falling at the interruption. “But Otis is still Otis.”
Kay. Got it. “Is my brother out tonight?”
“Not tonight.” Herrmann drummed his fingers on the table once. “Not sure what he’s up to.”
“Who’s your brother?” the candidate asked, leaning forward like he was desperate to catch up.
“That’s Casey’s kid sister,” Herrmann announced before I could get a word in. “Sharp as they come, cooks better than Dawson—but don’t you tell her I said that—and enough fire in her to keep this place lit for a month.”
“You’ve been warned, kid,” Mouch said, glancing over the paper. “She’s got a way of pulling people in. You get caught up in it, Casey’ll have your hide.”
I opened my mouth to protest—because seriously?—but the words snagged on the bold black type glaring up from the newsprint. ‘‘The Phantom’ on the Move: Third Body Found in Peoria.
The laughter around the table dimmed as I scanned the blurb.
Police confirm a third victim in the multi-county “Phantom” investigation, which began two months ago in Michigan City, IN. Investigators now reveal all victims — slim, brunette women in their late twenties to thirties — were active on dating apps before their deaths, a new discovery linking the cases. Each was found alone. No signs of forced entry. No forensic evidence.
The words blurred somewhere between “dating apps” and “no forensic evidence.” Finally the damn police caught up. We’d known he was vetting his targets through dating apps for weeks.
I glanced at the table up front again. Just long enough to see his date arrive. Thin, average height, fluff of dark hair falling over one shoulder. And him—this week's Bryce Campbell—standing to greet her with such mechanical precision one might think he was a brain surgeon. But not the good kind that saved lives.
The kind that saved trophies.
His handshake was three seconds exactly. His chair was pulled back at the perfect angle. His smile was calibrated to the millimeter. Something settled low and cold in my stomach. Every gesture, every stiff movement made my skin crawl.
I was going to get this guy, pin something—anything—to him if it was the last thing I did.