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Chapter Text

Memphis International Airport thrummed with its usual chaos—the low, constant drone of voices layered over the sharp crackle of intercom announcements. Luggage wheels rattled across polished tile, colliding with the quick staccato of heels. The air smelled faintly of coffee, jet fuel, and too many bodies passing too close in too little space.

Through it all, she moved.

Her chestnut hair was pulled back into a severe braid that brushed against the collar of a weathered leather jacket. Dark jeans, black Converse worn down at the toes, a battered rolling suitcase trailing behind her in an unbroken rhythm—click, click, click. There was nothing rushed in her stride, nothing tentative.

She moved with the ease of habit, a routine centuries old. But for the first time in fifty years, the habit felt like a shackle.

The crowd seemed to part for her instead of forcing her to weave through it.

Overhead, the departures board flickered—letters and numbers shifting in steady columns. Gate changes. Delays. Cancellations. Lives rerouted with the pulse of electricity. No one noticed her. That was the curse. It had been decades since she’d wanted to be unseen.

Halfway down the concourse, she stopped. Not abruptly—just a measured pause, a subtle shifting of weight onto her heels. Not exhaustion—she didn't feel simple fatigue—but weariness. She was tired of the routine, the running, the endless, sterile silence of a life lived alone.

She lifted her chin and glanced over her shoulder. Her gaze found the security camera perched above the crowd. For three long beats, the lens caught her face in perfect clarity. Her features were sharp, deliberate. Her eyes seemed to register the camera not as a machine, but as a challenge to the fates. She knew the system would ignore her, but deep down, a terrible, lonely hope whispered: Prove me wrong.

And then she turned.

Her suitcase rattled once more, folding her back into the tide of travelers. She slipped between families and businessmen, swallowed by the restless current of strangers and gates.

Later, when the security footage was pulled, analysts marked that precise frame.

The instant she met the camera.

After that, she vanished.

No trace on the concourse. No trace on the planes. No trace in Memphis at all.

She had walked into the terminal like a shadow given form—and then she was nowhere.

Federal Building, Downtown Memphis

2:47 A.M.

Agent Angela Weber had drawn the graveyard shift again. The fluorescent hum of the surveillance room pressed against her skull, steady as a headache. Half a dozen monitors washed her in cold blue light, their glow seeping into the creases under her eyes. Her coffee sat forgotten at her elbow, cold and bitter.

The facial recognition software ground on, chewing through hours of airport footage with machine indifference. Most alerts were the usual noise—poor lighting, partial profiles, the algorithm confusing shadows for faces. Angela had learned to tune them out, her brain filing each ping under false positive.

But this one was different.

The alert came sharp and insistent, flashing across the bottom of her primary screen. Match Probability: 94.7%.

Angela sat up straighter, fatigue bleeding away as she clicked the frame open. The image sharpened. A woman’s face, caught in perfect detail, frozen mid-glance at a security camera. Timestamp: 11:42 P.M.

Angela’s pulse jumped.

The system was already pulling cross-references. Classification headers blinked red across the screen: EYES ONLY. COMPARTMENTED ACCESS REQUIRED. Each new file slammed against her clearance level like a locked door.

And then the profile loaded.

Angela felt her stomach hollow. Most of the page was nothing but black bars of redaction. Paragraph after paragraph blotted out by government ink.

Except for one photograph.

Black and white. Grainy. A woman’s face stamped with the word WANTED in bold red letters, the ink bleeding slightly around the edges. The image was decades old, yet the features were unmistakable.

Beneath it, a single surviving line of text:

Known aliases: Vera, Morgan, Catherine.

Angela’s throat tightened. She’d heard whispers of files like this—buried cases, compartmented to the point of myth. But she’d never expected one to surface in her watch.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the phone.

“Sir?” Her voice cracked when her supervisor answered, the word rasping against the silence of the room. “You’re going to want to see this.” 

Chapter Text

Edward Masen had been at the agency just long enough to realize he was invisible.

Twenty-four days in, and his name was still “kid” or “rookie” in the hallways. He fetched coffee, carried case files from one floor to another, and sorted archive boxes for men who hadn’t cracked one themselves in years. The older agents ribbed him in passing, cuffing him on the shoulder with smirks that weren’t friendly.

“Hey, Bureau Baby,” one muttered when Edward set a stack of reports on his desk. Another asked if he polished his badge at night like a good little Masen. They all knew who his father had been—Edward Mason Sr., bureau legend, the kind of man whose career left shadows on every wall of this building. His father had built a reputation on arrests that still made their way into training manuals, and Edward knew most of these men had come up reading those reports.

Now they looked at him and saw nothing but nepotism in a pressed suit.

He learned quickly to keep his head down. If he wanted to survive here, he had to work harder, stay later, and never complain. Visibility was a liability. Better to let them forget he existed—until the day he earned the right to remind them.

That day seemed far off. Until 9:14 a.m., when his section chief walked past his desk and dropped a thin file without a word.

Edward stared at it for a beat, his pen frozen above a notepad filled with errands. Then he slid the folder open. Inside was a still frame pulled from airport security footage: a woman, maybe late twenties, chestnut hair braided tight, leather jacket, dark jeans, black Converse. She tugged a rolling suitcase behind her as she glanced over her shoulder directly at the camera.

The image froze her in the act of looking, sharp and unflinching. It wasn’t the startled glance of someone caught off guard—it was deliberate, almost challenging.

Beneath the still photo sat another image, decades old and grainy. Black-and-white. The same woman. Not older. Not younger. Not changed at all. A bold red stamp cut across the picture: WANTED. Nearly every line of the attached profile was swallowed by thick redaction bars.

Edward frowned. “What is this?”

His chief didn’t bother to sit. “Facial recognition flagged her last night out of Memphis International. Looks like one of the old ghosts. Probably a false positive.”

“A ghost?”

The older man shrugged, already turning away. “We’ve got a handful of cases like this on the books. Faces that show up in classified archives—same woman, same guy—decades apart. Wild goose chases, conspiracy garbage. But the system pinged, so now it’s your problem. Write it up, close it out.”

And just like that, he was gone, leaving Edward with the file.

Edward studied the photos again. The redactions swallowed everything except a few dangling threads—aliases listed at the bottom of the profile. Vera. Morgan. Catherine. Names stripped of context, hanging in the dark.

False positive, the chief had said. But Edward’s eyes stayed fixed on the woman’s gaze in the still frame. He’d spent hours reviewing footage in training, and most people looked away from the camera if they noticed it at all. This woman hadn’t. She had looked into it. As if she wanted to be seen.

He leaned back in his chair, tension winding tight in his chest. Every instinct said to do what he’d been told: close the file, keep his head down, keep proving he could take orders like everyone else. But every instinct that truly belonged to him—the instincts he had inherited from his father, the ones that had driven him into this line of work—told him something different.

He wasn’t built to let questions go unanswered.

And this woman—whoever she was—was a question the agency hadn’t answered in decades. Now she was sitting on his desk.

Edward logged into the sanitized file system, the version scrubbed for junior analysts. It was a labyrinth of redactions. Every click led to another wall of black. He started with the aliases.

Vera brought up nothing but false hits: a Russian translator from the seventies, a dead librarian in Kansas, a scattered handful of background noise.

Morgan was worse—thousands of names across decades of record-keeping. Too many threads to follow.

Catherine narrowed the pool, but nearly all of them led to dead ends: women long deceased, records sealed beyond his clearance.

Until he found her.

One entry, buried deep, had slipped through the redaction net. Not much—barely more than a name in a forgotten cross-reference—but enough. His pulse quickened as he clicked it open.

For the first time since joining the agency, Edward Masen wasn’t invisible. He had something no one else seemed to notice. And he wasn’t about to let it go.

Catherine McKennan.

File date: 1914–1916.

Service record: U.S. Army Nurse Corps, attached to British forces in France.

The document startled him with its clarity. Unlike the redacted wasteland of most classified profiles, this one breathed with detail. Commendations. Medals. Citations for bravery under fire. An entire section praising her actions at the Battle of the Somme—how she’d dragged bleeding men out of a burning field hospital, set shattered bones with her own hands, and refused evacuation until every survivor was accounted for.

But no photograph. Not a single image.

Edward scrolled slowly, combing for scraps. At the bottom, a line caught his eye:

Married: Colonel Jasper Whitlock, U.S. Army. Deceased 1953 (cancer).

Children: Two.

And Catherine?

Her service record ended in 1916. Status: MIA. Presumed dead.

Edward sat back, the chill sliding down his spine.

If Catherine McKennan had disappeared in the chaos of the First World War, then who was the woman striding through Memphis International in 2020—her face untouched by time?

Before he could dig deeper, the system snapped shut. A red banner swept across the screen:

FILE ACCESSED. AUTHORIZATION LEVEL: INSUFFICIENT.

Then the page blinked out, replaced with a sterile wall of denial.

Edward’s pulse thudded hard in his ears. He’d only had seconds, but it was enough. More than enough. Someone had buried Catherine McKennan, but not deep enough. He’d pried up the edge of the stone.

And he wasn’t about to stop.

He leaned back, lips quirking into the faintest smile. Catherine McKennan wasn’t just some specter in the archives—she was the woman in the Memphis footage. She had to be. The missing nurse who vanished from history without explanation, now walking through an airport as if no time had passed.

But even as the thought settled, something caught in the back of his mind. A detail, half a line:

Husband: Colonel Jasper Whitlock.

Edward straightened. If Catherine’s file was locked, maybe her husband’s wasn’t.

He keyed in Jasper’s name, and the sanitized archive opened wider than it had for her. Jasper Whitlock was not elusive at all. He was a decorated officer with a career spelled out in meticulous detail—Silver Star, Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Cross with “V” for valor. His record was precise, preserved, almost reverent, as though the system itself wanted him remembered.

And then came the pivot.

Remarried: 1935. Spouse: Renee Thatcher Whitlock.

Children: David (b. 1937), Thomas (b. 1941).

Edward stared at the lines until the words blurred. Jasper had gone on. He’d built a second life, raised sons, outlived his first wife by nearly four decades. If Catherine had returned—if she had been alive—why hadn’t she aged beside him? Why hadn’t she come back at all?

Instead, she had vanished from the record like smoke.

Edward drummed his fingers against the desk, the certainty he’d felt draining away. This wasn’t neat. It wasn’t the clean victory he wanted—the “aha” moment of catching a ghost on paper. Every answer only raised another question, each contradiction deepening the mystery.

Still, the Whitlock name gave him something tangible: descendants. Surviving family. People who might have grown up hearing whispered stories about Jasper’s first wife—the nurse who never came home.

Edward’s mouth curved into a sharper smile.

He hadn’t found Catherine yet. But Jasper Whitlock’s shadow might be enough to lead him straight to her.

Dallas, Texas – 12:12pm

The retirement community smelled like two worlds colliding—the sharp tang of industrial lemon cleaner fighting a losing battle against decades of cafeteria grease. Edward signed in at the front desk, flashing his badge just long enough to be noted but not questioned. The clerk, a stout woman with tired eyes and a crossword puzzle half-finished at her elbow, looked him over with the weary suspicion of someone who had seen too many men with badges pass through her lobby. She waved him on without comment, though her gaze lingered as if she wanted to ask what business a federal agent had in a place like this.

Edward threaded through corridors painted in the same pastel palette of every retirement home in the country—mint greens, washed-out yellows, beige carpeting so soft it muffled even the squeak of his polished shoes. A television droned from the common room, the laughter track of a decades-old sitcom echoing through the hall. Residents sat slumped in armchairs, some dozing, some staring at the screen with glazed eyes, as though time itself had worn their edges smooth.

But David Whitlock wasn’t among them.

Edward found him in a corner nook, a pocket of shadow near a curtained window. The old man sat in a vomit-green armchair whose stuffing sagged like it had been through wars of its own. Stains darkened the armrests in uneven patches, each one like a scar. Beside him, an end table bore a squat lamp with a shade gone gray from dust and a chipped black mug that read World’s Best Grandpa in flaking letters.

David Whitlock didn’t look like a man waiting out his years. He looked like a man coiled—thick through the shoulders, chest broad, still carrying weight like old armor. His arms were corded with muscle softened only slightly by time, his hands wide and rough, veins raised like old maps across them. A prosthetic leg jutted stiffly in front of him, the cane hooked over the chair’s arm more like a weapon than a support. His striped polo was tucked tight into pressed khaki slacks, a thick leather belt cinching everything into place with military neatness.

When he spoke, his voice was gravel over stone. “You’re the agent.” He didn’t bother to look up.

Edward adjusted his tie, straightened, and offered his hand. “Special Agent Edward Masen. I appreciate you taking the time—”

David finally glanced at him, eyes sharp behind bifocals, the stare of a man who had measured men all his life and found most wanting. He ignored the hand. “Don’t thank me. Get to it.”

Edward withdrew the hand and sat opposite him. The chair gave a reluctant groan under his weight. “I’ve been researching your father, Colonel Jasper Whitlock. His service record was… extraordinary.”

That earned the faintest smile, tugging one corner of David’s mouth. “Yeah. The old man was a hero. Wouldn’t admit it, but we knew.” His voice carried pride, but it was a muted kind, dulled with years.

Edward leaned forward slightly. “And his first wife—Catherine?”

The smile vanished like a shutter dropping. David’s eyes cooled. “Now that’s the one thing I can’t help you with.”

“You don’t know anything about her?”

He shook his head once, clipped and firm. “Nothing. My father said her name was Catherine, once or twice. That’s it. No photos. No stories. If we asked, he shut it down.”

“Shut it down how?”

David tapped a thick finger against his mug, eyes gone distant. “Like a steel door slamming shut. My old man didn’t scare easy. Didn’t scare at all. But Catherine?” He paused, his jaw tightening. “He’d get this look. Eyes somewhere else. He never said it out loud, but I knew. He was afraid of her. Or afraid of what would happen if we kept talking about her.”

The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the faint hum of the lamp bulb overhead.

Edward broke it carefully. “Do you think something happened to her?”

David let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Of course something happened. Women don’t just disappear in 1916. But if you think I’ve got answers, you’re wasting both our time.”

Edward studied him a moment longer. The man’s face was carved with age, yet his eyes still had the hardness of someone who’d once stood unflinching in the face of fire. But when Catherine’s name had entered the air, that hardness cracked. Just slightly. Enough for Edward to see the edge of something like fear.

He exhaled slowly and rose, smoothing his jacket. “Before I go, there’s one more thing.”

He pulled a slim folder from his case and laid a single page on the table between them. A printed still frame. Chestnut hair in a braid. Leather jacket. Converse. The moment captured at Memphis International.

David barely looked before snorting. He shoved it back with the flat of his palm. “I don’t know who that is, and I don’t care. My father’s ghosts aren’t mine. Don’t drag me into whatever game you’re playing, Agent.”

Edward slipped the photo back into the folder. David leaned forward, his blue eyes pinning Edward in place.

“Let it go,” he said, each word a nail hammered into wood. “Catherine’s dead. Been dead a long, long time.”

The finality in his tone left no room for argument.

Edward left with more questions than answers. But as he stepped into the cool Dallas evening, one thing gnawed at him like a worm in the wood: Jasper Whitlock had faced bullets, bayonets, and shells without flinching. He had lived through trenches, smoke, and fire, and come out decorated.

And yet when it came to Catherine? He’d been terrified.

Edward slid into the driver’s seat of his black 2020 Challenger. The door shut harder than he intended, the thunk echoing in the quiet lot. He stayed still for a moment, hands braced on the steering wheel, listening to the cooling engine tick like impatient fingers. His jaw worked as he dragged a hand back through his bronze hair, the frustration bleeding through.

David Whitlock had given him nothing. Not one breadcrumb. Just a wall. A wall built from silence and fear.

On the passenger seat, his tools waited: a thick manila envelope, corners bent, and a battered blue spiral notebook swollen with ink and crumpled pages. He flipped the notebook open with his thumb. The paper was scarred with the grooves of long nights, filled margins, scribbled arrows, and names scratched so hard the ink had bled.

The page in front of him was a ledger of obsession:

• Vera — slashed out with heavy strokes.
• Morgan — crossed clean through.
• Catherine (McKennan) — still intact, circled twice.

Beneath it, a column of men:

• Jasper (X)
• David (X)
• Thomas

Edward clicked his pen and dragged a dark line through David’s name. The man was a dead end. He snapped the notebook shut and tossed it back to the seat.

The envelope came next. He cracked it open, pulling free two fat packets of paper clipped together. The first packet bore a name stamped across the top in block letters: Thomas Whitlock.

Edward skimmed, eyes narrowing as the details sorted themselves into place:

• Residence: Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• Marital status: Divorced. Lives alone.
• Profession: Former internal medicine physician, Washington D.C. Retired 2012.
• Family: One daughter, Jessica. Estranged. No recent contact.

Edward tapped the page with his forefinger, a steady rhythm he always fell into when something began to click. Florida. Retired. Alone. A man with fewer walls, fewer distractions. Easy to reach. Harder to hide behind excuses.

The Challenger’s cabin smelled faintly of old coffee and the metallic tang of gun oil. In that closed space, Edward’s pulse felt loud, hammering in his ears. He slid the packet back into the envelope, tucked it into his case, and started the car.

The Challenger roared to life, dashboard lights glowing across his face, painting his features in green and blue. He shifted into gear, headlights flooding the dark lot.

David Whitlock had given him nothing. But Thomas might.

And if Thomas didn’t? Edward would keep going, name by name, branch by branch, until the family tree was stripped bare.

Because Catherine McKennan wasn’t just a ghost in the archives anymore. She was out there. Alive.

And Edward Masen was going to find her.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida – 6:12 PM

The humidity pressed in heavy, coating Edward’s skin with a sheen of dampness the moment he stepped from the Challenger. The Florida evening smelled thick and layered—salt rolling in from the coast, mingling with the sweetness of cut grass and the faint chemical sting of chlorine from nearby pools. The air here clung to him differently than Texas had, more oppressive, like an invisible weight draped across his shoulders.

At the far end of a cul-de-sac, Thomas Whitlock’s house stood in quiet order. A pale stucco one-story with a red-tiled roof, the place looked ordinary at a glance, but Edward’s eyes didn’t stop at surface impressions. The yard had been trimmed with precision, hedges squared off as if measured with a carpenter’s line. The mailbox leaned at a slight angle, its paint peeling in sheets and its numbers bleached almost invisible by the sun. A carport sheltered a weary Toyota Camry, its silver paint dulled to matte by decades of Florida sun. The bumper bore a sticker so old its slogan had dissolved into unreadable ghosts of letters.

Edward didn’t approach directly. He stayed at the edge of the walk, posture loose, notebook balanced casually in his hand like he was double-checking an address. In reality, his gaze was cataloging every trace of the man who lived here.

The blinds in the front window hung crooked, pulled halfway down. Through the narrow slats, Edward caught the pulse of a television screen, blue light flickering in steady rhythms across the room. Someone was inside. Someone alone.

By the curb, a recycling bin overflowed. Glass Pellegrino bottles clinked together in the light breeze. Medical journals were stacked like refuse, their glossy covers dulled and warped by humidity—titles still legible: Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA. Thomas Whitlock might have left the wards and clinics behind, but his fingers hadn’t let go of the lifeline of medicine.

A brass wind chime swayed overhead, each strike of metal ringing too faintly to drown out the uneven cough of the air-conditioning unit on the side of the house. The thing sounded like it was on its last summer. Edward’s eyes slipped to the narrow side yard, where grass had been pressed flat in a beaten trail from driveway to gate. A habit etched into the ground by repetition. The kind of small clue most would miss but Edward always saw.

He leaned his back against the Challenger’s fender and flipped open his notebook. The pages were a ledger of his obsession, names stacked in black ink, each one marked through with hard, decisive lines. Catherine (McKennan) sat at the top, still untouched. Beneath her: Jasper—crossed. David—crossed. And Thomas, the last of the brothers, waiting for his turn.

Not yet. Not until Edward looked him in the eye. Not until he pressed and found either a trail forward or another wall.

He slid the notebook into his jacket and pulled the slim folder from the passenger seat, the paper inside whispering faintly as he tucked it beneath his arm. He was already halfway up the drive when the television glow shifted—muted, as though the volume had been killed or the set dimmed.

Showtime.

The driveway was short, shells crunching faintly beneath his shoes as he climbed the porch. The doorbell gleamed under the porch light, newly polished, a detail that struck Edward as too careful for a man supposedly retired into anonymity. He pressed the bell once. The chime carried inside, clear and hollow.

Footsteps shuffled over tile. A shadow blurred behind the curtain. The lock clicked. The door cracked open.

And Thomas Whitlock regarded him with an expression that measured more than it revealed.

Thomas Whitlock wasn’t frail, not yet. Retirement had softened him, but beneath the board shorts and t-shirt, Edward could still see the residual posture of a man who’d once commanded respect in a hospital ward. His hair was iron-gray, combed carefully over a pronounced widow’s peak. Narrow glasses caught the porch light, framing brown eyes sharp enough to assess and diagnose in a glance. A salt-and-pepper goatee marked his face, his mouth set in the tired downturn of a man accustomed to bad news.

“Can I help you?” His voice carried the steady cadence of someone who had spent decades delivering hard truths gently, a man who knew how to keep his own tone neutral even when the words cut.

Edward straightened, hands visible, badge still tucked inside his jacket. “Dr. Whitlock?”

“That’s me,” Thomas said. “Retired, though. Long retired.”

Edward inclined his head politely. “Edward Masen. Federal investigator. I was hoping for a few minutes of your time.”

Suspicion flickered across Thomas’s eyes, followed by a quick study—not of the badge, still unseen, but of Edward himself. The tailored suit. The stance too measured to belong to a salesman. The jawline tight with purpose. Finally, Thomas stepped back, the door creaking wider.

“Come in. But if this is about my license, you’re a couple decades late.”

The air inside smelled faintly of lemon polish layered over the musk of old carpet. The living room bore the look of long, quiet years: a muted golf game frozen on the television, a coffee table strewn with remotes, and shelves lined with well-thumbed medical texts side by side with paperback thrillers. The arm of the sofa sagged slightly where someone sat most evenings. On a side table, a framed photo of a young woman—Jessica, almost certainly—had been angled awkwardly, turned halfway toward the wall as though someone couldn’t quite decide if they wanted to see her face.

Thomas gestured toward the sofa, and Edward sat. The cushions sank in the middle, threatening to tip him inward. Thomas lowered himself into a recliner with a sigh, joints popping faintly, then folded his hands over his lap.

“So,” Thomas said, not mocking, not deferential. “What’s a federal investigator want with me?”

Edward leaned forward slightly, voice calm. “I’m tracing historical records connected to your father. Colonel Jasper Whitlock. His military record, his family. I’ve already spoken with your brother.”

That earned a dry snort. “Then you got stonewalled. David doesn’t talk when he doesn’t want to. Never has.”

Edward smiled faintly. “We had a brief exchange, yes.”

Thomas studied him for a moment longer, then sighed. “You already know my father wasn’t much of a talker. Especially about his first wife.”

Edward kept his voice neutral, steady. “Catherine.”

The name drew a visible flicker from Thomas—a brief tightening around the eyes, followed by resignation. “So you know it already.”

Edward gave a single nod. “I need to know what you know.”

Thomas rubbed at his chin, thumb brushing the edge of his goatee. His gaze drifted to the bookshelf, then back. “Funny thing. Dad never mentioned her when we were growing up. If we asked, he shut it down. But just before he died—” His voice softened, weighted with memory. “He said her name was Catherine. Cate. He said she was unforgettable, whether you wanted to remember her or not. She was with him during the war. And then she was gone.”

Edward’s pulse ticked faster, but his expression didn’t change. “Gone?”

“His word was ‘vanished.’ Not dead. Not missing. Vanished.” Thomas leaned forward, elbows pressing into his knees. “My father was practical. He met cancer head-on, made his peace with it. But her? Catherine?” He shook his head. “That was the one thing he never made peace with.”

Silence hung for a beat. Then Thomas stood, shuffled to a side table, and pulled open a drawer. From inside he retrieved a worn leather wallet, edges cracked, softened by decades of use. He held it out.

“This was his. I’ve kept it. Most of the photos are family—my mother, David, me. But there’s one picture that never fit. One he tucked away separate from the rest.”

Edward opened the wallet, thumbing past scraps of paper and brittle currency. Then he found it—a small black-and-white photograph curled at the edges.

The woman in it was not the woman from Memphis. This one had wavy blond hair pinned up in early 20th-century fashion, light eyes steady on the camera, her figure fuller, her expression composed but restrained.

Edward felt the momentary drop in his chest. A sudden, cold wash of disappointment. The wrong face. The wrong woman. The one thing that lined up was now broken. Not her.

“She’s beautiful,” he said softly, returning the photo to its place.

Thomas’s lips curved with quiet sorrow. “She broke him. I think he carried that ghost until the day he died.”

Edward closed the wallet carefully, handed it back, and rose. “Thank you, Dr. Whitlock. You’ve given me more than you realize.”

Thomas studied him in the half-light of the living room, his eyes narrowing. “Be careful with this, Masen. Some things stay buried for a reason.”

Edward managed a small, professional smile. “Unfortunately, digging is my job.”

The front door clicked shut behind him, leaving him in the night air again. The Florida evening pressed close, heavy with salt and rust, the cicadas humming like a pulse in the trees. His shoes crunched over shells as he walked back to the Challenger.

He’d been so sure. The files, the timelines, the threads—they had lined up too neatly. Catherine McKennan, the vanished medic. Jasper’s first wife. The perfect ghost to explain the woman in Memphis. But the photograph was proof enough: blond hair, soft eyes. Not her.

Thomas’s word still echoed: vanished. Not dead. Not lost. Vanished. A deliberate absence. It carried more weight now, retold as family lore.

Sliding into the Challenger, Edward stared at the manila envelope and the battered notebook on the passenger seat. He flipped the notebook open. The names stared back at him, dark lines drawn through Jasper. Through David. Through Thomas.

He uncapped his pen and crossed out Thomas with slow precision. One remained.

Jessica. The estranged daughter.

Edward set the notebook aside, drew the fresh, crisp file from the envelope. Jessica Henderson. Old addresses. A handful of public records. A trail scattered like breadcrumbs across decades.

He leaned back, let the engine rumble to life, headlights flooding the quiet street.

If Jasper’s sons carried only fragments, maybe the truth had skipped to Jessica. Maybe she bore the weight of secrets without knowing.

Edward shifted into gear, the Challenger’s growl splitting the humid night as he drove away.

For the first time in hours, the thread felt taut again, pulling him forward into the dark.

La Quinta Inn, Fort Lauderdale

11:36 PM

The hum of the air conditioner filled the silence, low and uneven, like a man clearing his throat every few seconds. Edward lay flat on his back, eyes open to the textured ceiling above, its plaster swirls catching the faint light that crept in from the parking lot sodium lamps outside. The curtains didn’t quite close, and a thin seam of orange light sliced across the floor, reaching toward the bed like a slow hand.

Sleep wouldn’t come.

He rolled onto his side, the springs creaking beneath him, and stared at the manila envelope on the table by the window. It looked almost harmless, the way case files always did when they weren’t in his hands. Paper, ink, photographs. Simple things. Until you knew what they contained. Until you realized how much weight they carried—whole lives whittled down to summaries and statistics.

Jessica Henderson.

The estranged daughter. The lone thread left.

Edward’s gaze shifted to the spiral notebook, half-open beside the envelope. The crossed-out names seemed darker in the thin glow from the streetlight. David. Thomas. Jasper. A graveyard written in ink. Catherine’s name hovered above them all, an accusation without a verdict.

He reached out, dragged the notebook closer across the bed, and flipped back a few pages. Notes from airports, hotel lobbies, old phone calls. Maps sketched by hand, circles drawn and erased, arrows leading nowhere. He ran his thumb over one page until the ink blurred faintly under the pressure.

The weight of futility pressed down on him.

Edward sat up abruptly, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and pressed his palms against his eyes. He could still feel the image of the elusive woman in Memphis—caught in that still frame, her face sharper in his memory than in the pixelated image itself. The way she had looked into the camera. Not surprised. Not careless. Almost intentional, like she knew someone would be watching.

It gnawed at him.

He stood, restless, and crossed to the window. The curtains parted under his hand, revealing the glow of the parking lot. His Challenger sat alone under the buzzing light, the paint reflecting a dull sheen. A family in swimwear passed through the lot, their laughter muffled through the glass as they carried bags of takeout. Normal life, just outside his reach.

Edward let the curtain fall closed and turned back to the room. His eyes landed on the bathroom door, still cracked open, steam long gone now. He moved back toward the mirror above the dresser. His reflection stared back, sharper this time, his features hard under the yellow lamp. The damp strands of hair, the tension in his jaw. For a moment, he leaned in again, as if he could see through his own face to the phantom that haunted him.

He whispered the name under his breath. Not Catherine. Not Jessica. Not any of the names he’d been given. Just the unknown one—the name he hadn’t found yet, the woman who refused to vanish from his mind.

Edward pulled away, reached for the lamp switch, and killed the light. Darkness fell heavy, pressing in against him as he returned to the bed.

He lay down again, but this time he didn’t even try to close his eyes. The envelope sat across the room like a presence, waiting. He could almost hear it whisper: keep going.

Outside, a car pulled into the lot, headlights sweeping briefly across the window seam. For a second, Edward tensed, every instinct coiled. He waited until the sound of tires faded, the car door slammed, and quiet returned. Only then did he let his muscles ease back into the mattress.

Still, his mind didn’t let go. The file. Jessica. The woman in Memphis. Threads tightening, tangling, daring him to follow.

And in the dark, when his lids finally did grow heavy, the last thing he saw wasn’t his own reflection or the ceiling above.

It was her face. Clearer than ever. Watching him.

Chapter Text

Sarasota, Florida – 8:14 AM

The Challenger rumbled down the quiet Sarasota street, glossy black against a row of sun-faded houses. Edward slowed, double-checked the address scribbled in his notebook, then pulled up beneath a drooping palm whose fronds scraped lazy arcs in the breeze. He cut the engine. Silence fell heavy, broken only by the far-off bark of a dog and the faint hiss of sprinklers somewhere down the block.

The house wasn’t much—stucco walls gone chalky with neglect, roof tiles curling at the edges, a yard surrendered to weeds and patchy grass. The blinds in the front window were crooked, half-shut against the sun. It was the kind of place that suggested life, but barely—someone who stayed only because they didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Edward shut the car door with a deliberate quiet and crossed the cracked walkway. He rang the bell once. The silence stretched long enough that he thought no one was coming—until the door creaked, opening just a hand’s width.

Jessica Henderson. Mid-thirties, thinner than the DMV photo in his file, her hair pulled into a half-hearted knot that couldn’t quite hide the strands falling loose around her face. Suspicion sharpened her expression; she looked like someone who’d been interrupted one too many times and was ready to slam the door.

“Yes?” Her voice was flat, guarded.

“Jessica? I’m Edward Masen.” He held up his ID, angled just long enough for her to glimpse it but not study the seal. “I’m working on a historical project involving your grandfather, Colonel Jasper Whitlock.”

Her grip on the door tightened until her knuckles blanched. “You came all the way out here for that? From who?”

“I’ve already spoken with your father and uncle.”

That landed. Her jaw twitched, the faintest flicker of resentment darkening her eyes. “Then you wasted a trip. I don’t talk to my family.”

Edward shifted his stance, keeping his tone even. “Maybe not. But you might know something they don’t.”

Jessica started to close the door, but Edward slid a photograph from his folder and held it out—the Memphis airport still frame: the woman with the chestnut braid, leather jacket, dark eyes that locked straight onto the camera.

The door froze mid-close.

Her pupils widened, breath catching like she’d been punched. For a long moment she just stared at the image, unmoving. Then, as if against her better judgment, she blinked hard and stepped back, opening the door wider. “Where did you get that?”

Edward didn’t answer. Silence pressed in between them, heavier than any lie he could’ve offered.

Jessica rubbed her temples, muttering to herself, “That’s not possible.” Then louder, her voice sharp with disbelief: “She looks exactly the same. Exactly.”

“Who?” Edward asked quietly.

Jessica hesitated, her gaze flicking past him to the street, the parked Challenger under the sagging palm, the neighbors’ curtained windows. Speaking the name seemed like a betrayal. At last, she forced it out: “Tanya. My grandfather… he wrote about her.”

Her eyes darted again to the neighborhood, restless, uneasy. “I’m not doing this out here.”

Edward held her gaze. “Then may I come in?”

Her fingers gripped the door’s edge again, tight as if weighing whether to slam it or let him through. “You a fed?”

“I already told you who I am.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He weighed the choice. Then, evenly: “Yes.”

Jessica let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Figures. My father always said you people were like roaches. Show up in the dark, digging through other people’s garbage.”

Edward didn’t rise to it. He waited.

The silence stretched until Jessica swore under her breath and swung the door wider. “Fine. Five minutes. Then you’re gone.”

Inside, the air was thick with mildew and the sour trace of old coffee left too long on the burner. A ceiling fan ticked overhead, its uneven blades thudding in a slow, rhythmic clack. Piles of unopened mail slouched on a side table. The furniture sagged with years of use, the fabric dulled to the same tired beige as the carpet. It wasn’t squalor—it was inertia. A house someone lived in only because leaving was harder.

Jessica crossed her arms, planting herself against the back of a couch that had lost its shape long ago. “Alright, Agent Masen. You’ve got five minutes. Tell me why a woman my grandfather knew a century ago is walking around an airport today like she hasn’t aged a damn day.”

The silence of the house pressed close, the hum of the ceiling fan filling the gaps. Edward stayed near the doorway, deliberate, not crowding her.

“You said he wrote about her,” he said at last. Not a question.

Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah. He had a journal. Why?”

“I know Jasper Whitlock was decorated for valor. I know he remarried. I know his sons erased whatever came before. Which means if you’re saying Tanya’s name out loud, you’ve seen something they haven’t.”

Jessica studied him, head tilted, arms hugging tighter around herself. “You’ve done your homework. Doesn’t mean I’m handing you mine.”

Edward slipped the photo from his folder again and set it gently on the coffee table between them. The braid. The jacket. The eyes, sharp and knowing.

Jessica looked down. The silence stretched until she spoke in a voice gone quieter, unsteady. “Where was this taken?”

“Memphis International. Two weeks ago.”

Her laugh was sharp, bitter, almost a bark. “Two weeks ago. God.” She rubbed both hands hard over her face, then began pacing across the living room’s worn carpet. “He wrote about her in 1928. ’32. ’36. Always her. My grandfather… he was obsessed. And she looks the same. Exactly the same.”

Edward didn’t move. “Show me.”

She stopped pacing. Her arms wrapped around herself, like bracing against a chill only she could feel. “You don’t understand. I tried talking to my father about this. About her. He shut me down. Told me I was imagining things, told me never to bring it up again. We haven’t spoken since.”

Edward’s voice was steady. “That tells me he was scared of what you found. Which means you found something real.”

Jessica chewed the inside of her cheek, indecision flickering across her face. Then, with a frustrated exhale that sounded like surrender, she turned down the hallway. Her voice carried back over her shoulder. “Wait here.”

Edward’s gaze lingered on the photo lying on the coffee table, the woman frozen mid-stride in grainy grayscale. Then his eyes lifted to follow Jessica as her footsteps receded down the hall, the weight of what she might bring back settling like lead in his chest.

Edward heard the scrape of a drawer long before the footfalls returned—the sound of someone rummaging through memory. When Jessica came back into the living room she carried a leather-bound journal, its strap frayed, the cover softened to a dull shine where fingers had traced it for years. She dropped it on the coffee table with a small, final thud that made the photograph tremble where it lay.

“I shouldn’t be showing you this,” she muttered. “But if she’s walking through airports now…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze slid from the journal to the still-frame and back again. “You tell me what the hell it means.”

Edward eased forward and let his hand brush the worn leather. The journal felt like a relic—heavy in the hand, the paper inside still brittle at the edges. He unclasped the strap with careful fingers and opened it to the first pages. At first it read like any old soldier’s log: dates, unit movements, terse notes on rations and billets. Jasper’s handwriting was neat, economical—until the entries after the war, when the pen began to change its mind and the lines leaned into something else.

Paris, 1928:

She calls herself Tanya. She speaks my language, yet speaks it as if she has borrowed a life. She laughs at a different tempo. I should be suspicious. Instead I am not. There are things about her that do not fit—small, impossible things. And yet I would follow her.

Edward’s eyes slowed on the way the letters crowded together, the ink impressed into the paper where Jasper had pressed too hard. A few pages on, the entries loosened into something more private.

Marseille, 1932:

There are nights I wake and she watches me breathe. I find myself feeling like a child under her steadiness. She tells me little; when I press her, she smiles and calls me foolish. I have asked about her past and received only silences folded like paper planes. She is as constant as a star.

Bastogne, 1939:

The date was underlined twice; the stroke of the pen had cut into the page.

She does not age. I have grown older; the lines at my jaw have deepened and my hair thinned. She is as the day I first saw her. I asked—why do you not change? She kissed me and said: “Worry less, Jasper.” It is not an answer.

Edward turned the next page and a photograph slid free between the sheets, feather-light from decades of being pressed flat. He caught it before it hit the table.

Chestnut hair pinned in an elegant twenties twist. Pearls at her throat. A dress that spoke of quiet money or careful taste. The smile was radiant—warm, practiced—and the eyes, when Edward leaned in, felt like the same exact set from the Memphis still. Not a mirror. Not a resemblance. The same geometry to cheekbones and mouth. The same smoldering steadiness behind the expression.

He laid the photograph on top of the Memphis frame; the two images matched like two halves of a proof.

Jessica went very still when the old photograph came free. Her breath hitched, sharp and small. Then she stepped forward despite herself, hovering over the table. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the grainy airport printout and then, for a moment, as if checking a lifeline, she tucked it against her chest.

“It’s her,” she breathed. The word was a confession.

Edward didn’t try to fill the silence. He had learned the room for silence well—how it bristled around raw things. He watched her as she let the recognition wash through her, watched the fight in her face fold under the weight of what this meant.

“You don’t get it,” she said finally, voice frayed. “I used to tell myself Grandpa made it up. Men make ghosts to keep from looking at the ones that eat them. My father—he said it was nonsense. Said Grandpa had been broken by the war and made himself a fantasy to sleep with at night. But this…” She pressed the photograph tight to her chest, smoothing its edge with both tenderness and horror. “This proves it’s not just some dying man’s memory.”

Edward thumbed the journal’s margin, where Jasper had once doodled a small star. “Did your grandfather ever say where he met her? Names? Places beyond those journal entries?”

Jessica’s eyes tracked to the page he’d been reading and back to his face. “He wrote of Paris, Marseille, letters from Verona—random places that drift with his memories. He called her Tanya. He used other names sometimes—an old name that looked like a joke in his handwriting—but he never explained. He used to write as though he were trying to pin a live thing to paper.” She swallowed. “He kept the journal locked. Said it was pilgrimage stuff. We all thought it was private grief. I thought I understood the extent—until I started finding things he’d hidden in the margins. Names, hotel receipts, a train ticket from Prague. Little things that made no sense unless someone was following a pattern.”

Edward folded his hands together on the table. The investigator’s part of him cataloged clues even as the human part felt the cold climb of something bigger. “Someone else is looking for her,” he said quietly. “And not amateur searches—masked queries, scrubbed records. Whoever’s interested has access and motive.”

Jessica’s laugh this time was a short bark. “Figures. The universe always sends the people with clearance. Lucky me.”

She sank onto the couch, the exhaustion of years showing in the slump of her shoulders. For a long beat neither of them spoke. The ceiling fan beat on, punctuating the room’s small noises.

Finally Jessica said, “I need to tell you how I even got this journal. Grandpa would lock it up and tell me not to pry. But the night he died—he left a note for me. Said ‘find what I could not finish.’ It was stupid, romantic, whatever. I found the key in the false bottom of his bedside drawer. I don’t know why he gave it to me then. Maybe he wanted someone who would remember. Maybe he thought someone else would take it from me. I don’t know.”

Edward listened and let the admission sink in. “Did you ever try to follow those leads yourself?” he asked.

“Once,” Jessica said. “I traced a train receipt to Prague and paid a lot of money to a translator who told me there was a name in the ledger that read like gibberish. My father found out and told me to stop. He called it obsession and cut me off.” Her voice narrowed, hardening with old hurt. “I’m done with family hell. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. When you showed me that still frame in the street—” She choked on a laugh that was almost a sob. “What else was I supposed to do?”

Edward touched the journal gently and looked up. “You did right by bringing it out,” he said. “If Tanya—if she’s the same woman in both pictures—then whatever we’re dealing with existed across a century and is still active now. That changes everything.”

Jessica’s face was an unreadable map of relief and fear. “So what now? You take the journal. You do your Federal magic, and you tell me when it’s safe to breathe?”

Edward allowed himself a short, rueful smile. “If it were that simple, I’d be home by morning.” He slid the journal back toward her. “I’m going to make copies. I’m going to run the photograph through everything I’ve got and push for the files I don’t have clearance for. And I need you to be honest with me about everything—every scrap, every ledger entry, every hotel receipt.”

She looked down at the opened pages, at the photograph, then back at him, deliberation moving across her features like a tide. “You realize if this is true,” she said at last, “then my grandfather wasn’t just a lonely old romantic. He was the only living person who saw what nobody else did. If anyone else finds out we have this… I don’t know. They’ll come asking ugly questions.”

Edward felt the room narrow to the two of them, and the journal between them like a detonator. “Then we move careful,” he said. “We do this without making more enemies than we have to. But we move.”

She nodded once, a small, decisive tilt of the head. “Okay. I’ll help. But I’m not letting this ruin me. Not again.”

Outside, the neighborhood lay bright and indifferent under the morning sun. Inside, between the pages of an old soldier’s obsession and the echo of a woman who refused to age, two strangers made an unsteady pact. The thread had found a hand to pull it. The knot would come later.

Edward kept his tone careful, neutral. “You said he wrote about her often.”

Jessica nodded, fingers worrying at a loose knot of hair. “Tanya is everywhere in these pages. Little things—how she smiled, the way she corrected a waiter in French, the way she seemed to know the exact street where a café would be empty. But never a last name. Never where she came from. She just appeared one day, and…” Her voice broke off; she swallowed. “And she ruined him when she left.”

Edward closed the journal with the gentlest of motions and nudged it a few inches back toward her. “If there’s more in here that could help—letters, dates, receipts—you need to give me access.”

Jessica’s eyes flicked down to the leather and then back up at him. “You expect me to just hand it over?”

“No.” He pulled a business card from his wallet and laid it on the table, the printed type small and deliberate. “I expect you to think about it. And when you realize I’m the only one taking this seriously, you’ll call me.”

He rose, movements practiced enough that they read as casual, but his heart wasn’t. He had seen too many cases slip through hands that treated the wrong thing like a trinket. He gave her one last measured look, the kind that said he’d keep his end of whatever unspoken bargain this was, then headed for the door. His footsteps were soft on the sagging carpet; the hinge gave a familiar, weary creak as he left.

Silence settled like dust. The fan overhead kept its patient rhythm. Jessica sat very still for a long moment, staring at the card as if it were an accusation. Then her hand closed around the journal, fingers curling protectively over the cracked spine as though physical contact might anchor the thing for good.

The black-and-white photograph peeked from beneath the journal’s pages—Tanya smiling, all concentric calm and ancient mischief. Jessica’s throat worked. “What the hell were you, Tanya?” she whispered to the empty room, as if the woman could answer through paper and ink.

Outside, Edward eased the Challenger back onto the road. The coastal highway opened up, palms and neon and the late-night hum of a city that didn’t stop complaining. One hand remained on the wheel; the other rested on the slim folder in the passenger seat where he’d tucked the Memphis still and his hurried notes. Not having the journal with him prickled like a burr under his skin. He’d left with a promise rather than a possession—and that was a calculated risk he hated taking.

The city lights smeared past in long, orange streaks. The humid air pressed against the car windows, smelling of salt and warm tar and exhaust. He drove without music, letting the engine’s steady growl and his own thoughts take up the space. Jessica’s hands had trembled when she held the airport print; the way she’d smoothed the old photograph had been almost reverent. That reaction mattered. Emotional corroboration wasn’t evidence, but it was a map—a set of coordinates pointing to where the story might continue.

He thought of Jasper Whitlock hunched over the same pages decades earlier, an old soldier trying to pin something alive to paper. He thought of the word vanished, of family silence and the sharp edge of secrets left to rot in drawers. The pattern wasn’t neat. It wasn’t supposed to be. It was threaded through time, appearing in scraps—train tickets, hotel receipts, mentions of Prague and Paris—and now, impossibly, in grainy airport footage two weeks old.

Edward let out a slow breath and tightened his grip on the wheel. His boss would call this a dead end: another myth dressed up as evidence. His colleagues would tell him to close the file, put it back in the stack of beautiful obsessions nobody with tenure bothered to chase. He didn’t care what they called it. The photograph and the journal sitting across from Jessica—those two things together were a hinge.

“We move careful,” he murmured to himself, more a promise than a plan. He would make copies, run the image through the systems he had access to, press for those files that were locked behind other people’s clearances. He’d start with the easy stuff—exhaust the public leads, the 2015 Atlanta utility ping Jessica had denied, then push outward to the old receipts and the handful of Prague references she’d discovered. He’d call in favors, nudge the right analysts, and keep the journal protected where it was.

The highway ate miles. The night broadened overhead. For the first time in days the thread felt taut instead of frayed, and it was pulling him forward with a force he could no longer pretend was merely curiosity. Tanya wasn’t a story Jasper told to soothe himself. She was a living problem, crossing borders of time and names, turning up in century-old ink and CCTV pixels with the same face.

Edward sped on, resolution cooling into method. He had a card on a table, a reluctant ally, and a photograph that refused to be explained away. That would have to do for now.

The hotel room smelled like bleach and stale air. The blackout curtains swallowed the city light until the room became a soft, private dark. Edward dropped his keys on the dresser, pulled the curtains tighter with a small, practiced tug, and set the Whitlock folder on the desk as if it were hot.

A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the nightstand; its cap had come loose sometime the night before. He poured two quick fingers into a plastic cup and downed half in a single, harsh swallow. The burn steadied his hands enough to flip the folder open.

Files fanned across the desk: Jasper’s service records in neat typed pages, a brittle photocopy of Catherine’s faded photograph, marriage certificates ringed with official stamps, obituaries clipped from newspapers browned at the edges. He smoothed them flat, then fished his notebook from the case and began to write in a cramped, urgent hand.

CATHERINE → disappeared 1916.

JASPER remarried 1935 → RENEE.

ANGELA → appears 1920s–30s. NO LAST NAME.

JESSICA: JOURNAL = corroboration.

MEMPHIS WOMAN = IDENTICAL.

He circled IDENTICAL three times until the ink pressed the paper thin. He drank the rest of the whiskey. His hands weren't shaking now; they were steady and surgical. He wrote one last line in the margin, pressing the pen down hard: SHE DOESN’T AGE.

The words sat on the paper, half-insane and half-evidence. He had no language for them in procedural manuals, no box to tick on the standard-issue forms. They read like a witness statement from another world.

The whiskey’s warmth slid up into his chest. He leaned back, the cheap desk chair creaking under the shift of weight, and stared at the ceiling until the hum of the air-conditioning became a rhythm he could count on. He paced the narrow strip of carpet—two steps, turn, two steps—like pacing could dislodge answers lodged behind someone else’s teeth.

He poured another shot of whiskey and let the liquid steady the restlessness that had been vibrating in his limbs since Jessica handed over the journal.

He shut the folder with exaggerated care, like a man closing a coffin that might yet breathe. Fully dressed, he fell back onto the bed but the mattress was thin and the covers smelled faintly of someone else’s cologne and the residue of a hundred transient nights. Sleep came in fragments—small, angry images of Jasper’s cramped handwriting, Jessica’s trembling fingers, the Memphis still blinking pixel-perfect—then fled.

The motel walls were mercifully thin. The television in the next room thumped low bass through drywall, pipes sighed in the plumbing like distant voices. Normally those small echoes faded to wallpaper. Tonight they were acid in his ears.

Edward’s laptop glowed faintly, the Memphis still pinned in a window he kept returning to. He had frozen the frame at the angle where her face read clearest—nose, mouth, the ghost of that smile—and he kept zooming in until the digital pixels bled together and then zooming back out until the face re-resolved. The image never betrayed him. It only demanded more.

He reached for the bourbon, lifted the glass, tasted the flat, familiar burn until the flavor thinned into background. Habit, ritual—anything to keep his hands from shaking. The phone was within reach; Jessica’s number sat there, ready, unsent. He wanted—no, needed—to call and ask for the receipts, the ticket stubs, the names in the margins. But there was a protocol in place for people like Jessica: maintain distance, preserve chain of custody, get authority. He tore at those rules with his eyes and found them paper-thin.

The clock on the nightstand rolled past two. The hotel’s dim hallway light bled in a seam under the door. He rubbed both hands over his face until his skin prickled.

This was not going to be solved by margins and late-night scribbles. Not if Tanya, whatever she was, moved through time like a current through a wire.

The Memphis still glowed on the laptop again, patient and implacable. Edward found himself circling back to it, as if the photograph had gravity. He said the obvious out loud because silence had stopped answering him.

“She’s out there.”

The words hung in the room. Saying them made them truer and more dangerous.

He drained the bourbon down to the last bitter mouthful and set the glass down with a dull thud. The cursor blinked on the laptop, a tiny metronome begging him to decide. He typed the first words of a search query—Memphis International surveillance—then hesitated. There were portals he didn’t have clearance for, archives he wasn’t supposed to touch, access levels that might set off alarms. His thumb hovered over the trackpad.

The line between procedure and compulsion narrowed until it vanished. He pressed the key.

The screen changed. Logins that had once been barriers suddenly opened like doors. He felt the tiny, illicit thrill—like moving through a library after hours, the stacks all to himself. Each click sent a tiny rush through him: a server here, an archived frame there, a timestamp suddenly visible where it had yesterday been smeared with redaction.

He didn’t pretend it was sanctioned. He didn’t tell himself he had the right. He only told himself the truth he allowed in private: whatever Tanya was, someone else already knew to look. Someone with access had been querying Jessica’s name, had been scraping utility records and pinging old addresses. He was running to catch up.

Outside the curtains the city slept or pretended to. Inside, the screen’s gray light painted the Whitlock folder in cold tones. He copied the Memphis still, extracted meta-data, compiled it in a temp folder. He started a list of likely search terms, then circled names and dates, mapping a route he would follow in the morning—Atlanta utility hits, Prague train receipts, the hotel chain in Marseille, the list he could not yet get to without stepping on more red flags.

The bourbon glass caught the lamp’s weak glow and turned it to an unblinking eye. He closed the laptop with a soft snap and pushed it aside, but not before saving the temp folder to two encrypted locations. Paranoia, he knew clinically, was useful. Habits saved lives.

He stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders until the tightness in his neck eased a fraction. The room felt smaller when he moved through it, as if the walls wanted to push him toward the bed and the pillow and the merciful blankness of sleep. He slid his pen into the notebook one last time and wrote, in big, certain letters across the bottom of the page:

NO CLEARANCE. MOVE CAREFUL. CALL IN FAVORS.

Beneath it, smaller, almost a whisper: FIND HER.

He turned off the lamp and lay down fully clothed. The cheap mattress swallowed him. The thin hum of the air-conditioning became a steady background noise, and for a moment—fleeting and ridiculous—he thought of his father: of the old man’s surgical patience, the way he’d taught Edward to read the smallest detail and to wait until it spelled its own truth.

Tonight the truth was a face in a photograph and a soldier’s slow, obsessive handwriting. It was a woman who refused to fit into the tidy timelines the world offered.

He closed his eyes and let the images come: Jasper hunched over a candle, Tanya’s smile in sepia, Jessica’s hand smoothing a corner of old paper, the Memphis still blinking with static. He let the images collect at the back of his skull like smoldering coals.

When sleep took him at last, it was the kind of shallow, watchful sleep that wouldn’t pretend ignorance. He dreamed of a crowd at an airport—faces like a tide—and one woman who stepped forward, looked straight into a lens, and held his gaze as if she were daring him to follow.

Chapter Text

Prague — Two Weeks Later

Prague wore its centuries like armor. Spires pierced the sky, black against a late afternoon haze, their gothic tips etched with soot and memory. The Charles Bridge swelled with life—painters hunched over canvases, violinists coaxed haunting notes from worn strings, and couples pressed close for photographs, leaning against statues smoothed by generations of hands.

The cobblestones, slick from a morning rain, glistened faintly. The air carried the sharp burn of roasted coffee beans drifting from cafés, mingling with the sweet smoke of trdelník pastries spinning over coals. Streetcars rattled past, their bells clanging like impatient reminders that time moved, unrelenting, whether the city wanted it to or not.

In the middle of that churn walked a woman.

Her chestnut hair tumbled in loose curls down her back, catching the light in fleeting bursts. Her pale skin glowed against the pink summer slip dotted with tiny white flowers, the ankle-length fabric swaying with her deliberate step. Strappy white wedges lifted her just enough to give her presence a quiet elevation, but it was the way she carried herself—unhurried, exact, like a metronome among chaos—that made her impossible to miss. A sense of awareness trailed her, subtle but sharp, as though the city itself bent slightly to her movement.

At the crosswalk, she slowed, letting the tide of pedestrians carry her. Across the street, a red Maserati glinted under the late sun, low and sleek. The door swung open, and a man unfolded with the kind of casual confidence that made the world pause just a fraction longer.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, filling space without trying. White button-down open at the throat, black slacks pressed and polished. His eyes caught hers immediately, dark and steady, and the city seemed to hold its breath as the distance closed.

She met him halfway, their fingers finding each other as though they had always known the path. When he bent close and murmured into her ear, her blush was sudden and real, an unguarded pulse.

The kiss that followed was deliberate, lingering, grounding the chaos of the city around them. Her arms threaded over his neck, his hand settled lightly on her back, and for a moment, time felt like it paused to accommodate them. When they broke apart, her head rested against his shoulder with quiet intimacy, and together they moved into the crowd, two figures swallowed by Prague’s rhythm yet somehow distinct from it.

Even as the crowd pushed past them, there was an edge—a subtle sense that she noticed everything, that nothing went unseen. The way she turned her head to glance at a distant spire, the way her eyes traced a shadow that didn’t belong to her—small movements, almost imperceptible, that whispered she was not simply another tourist lost in the city.

And Edward, watching from a distance, would have noticed it too, if he were here.

The video collapsed back into the corner of his email. The subject line was stark in the inbox:

Your Mystery Woman?

Edward leaned forward, elbows braced on the desk, nose inches from the laptop’s glow. He froze the frame at the one clear glimpse—a sliver of profile, nose and lips framed by chestnut curls. Barely anything. A shadow of her.

And yet, his gut knotted tight. It was her. It had to be.

He replayed the footage again. And again. Each time the answer swung between certainty and doubt, a pendulum in his skull, until his temples throbbed.

Opening the video in a separate window, he scrubbed backward, tracing her path with meticulous patience. The camera followed as she stepped off the curb, drifted half a block back, weaving through the crowd like a thread pulled taut. He froze it again as she emerged from a shop, a white bag in one hand. The signage above the storefront was Czech, letters half-obscured by the sun’s glare.

Edward frowned. There was no footage of her going in.

He toggled back through earlier frames, scanning faces as the shopfront repeated in view. Hundreds of people. Faces blurred and unique. But not hers. No chestnut curls. No pink dress. The current passed her by, and still she wasn’t there.

Until suddenly—she was. Not entering. Just… emerging.

Edward swore under his breath. He switched feeds, desperate for another angle: side cameras, traffic cams, anything. Dead end after dead end. The digital corridors slammed shut in his face.

Back to the clip again. Rewind. Play. Pause.

His notebook lay open beside the laptop, margins crowded with scribbles and crossed-out leads. He dragged a pen along the edge, noting: Prague. Shop? Maserati. Unknown male.

The frozen frame of her profile loomed on the screen, pixels fracturing as he zoomed closer. Chestnut curls. Nose. Lips. His chest tightened.

He couldn’t prove it. Not yet. But the gnawing in his gut roared louder than any evidence, louder than logic.

Edward shoved back from the desk, raking a hand through his hair. Sitting here staring at pixels wasn’t enough. He needed angles. More footage.

He keyed into the surveillance backend with his credentials, fingers flying. The Prague traffic grid wasn’t his jurisdiction, but he knew the loopholes—exploits he’d used before, carefully, sparingly. Tonight, restraint wasn’t on the table.

Satellite timestamps, municipal feeds, private CCTV caches along Wenceslas Square—all accessed in careful, calculated bursts. Nothing yielded a clean second look. The Maserati appeared once, glinting red, plates reflecting too much sun to read.

“Damn it,” he swore, slamming his palm against the desk.

He isolated the frame, ran it through plate-recognition software. Dozens of false positives. Angle wrong. Light fractured. And yet, buried in the digital noise, one sequence of characters lined up with a Czech registry. He cross-checked.

The car wasn’t Czech.

Leased in Germany. Under a shell company.

A slow grin tugged at his lips. Shell companies left fingerprints if you knew where to press. Within minutes, Edward had unraveled the dummy LLC, peeling the paper trail through a tangle of offshore accounts and burned addresses. One thread circled back to a name that made his pulse spike.

Emmett McCarty.

He opened the file, expecting a wall of redactions. Instead, it sprawled before him: pages of criminal history spanning two continents.

Born in London. Single mother, Pamela McCarty. Childhood of subsistence-level poverty. Juvenile record: shoplifting, petty theft, assault. Adulthood: the training wheels came off. Grand larceny. Money laundering. Arms trafficking. Domestic charges scattered, dismissed. And one word froze Edward’s eyes in place—Sedition.

Wanted in multiple jurisdictions. Interpol. Europol. Half a dozen national agencies. None could pin him down.

Edward leaned back, staring at the CCTV freeze-frame where McCarty emerged from the Maserati. His face lit with recognition. The woman had walked straight into his orbit.

Adrenaline surged again.

If this man had her…

Edward scrawled McCarty in his notebook, underlined it twice. Beside it, a single word in all caps:

WHY.

Because the crimes made no sense. Arms deals and laundering, yes. But sedition? What in God’s name had McCarty gotten himself into?

Edward drummed his fingers against the edge of the laptop. The path forward was clear, even if the answers weren’t. Forget the Maserati. Forget the shop with the missing entrance footage. The key was McCarty. And through him—her.

A glass sat beside the laptop, a two-finger pour of scotch that had gone untouched long enough for the ice to melt into pale amber water. Edward didn’t drink much—rarely, until recently—but tonight he’d poured it without thinking, a muscle memory that wasn’t his own. He picked it up once, tilted the liquid, watched the way it clung to the sides before setting it back down. His hand left a faint print on the wood, damp and ghostly.

The smell drifted sharp in the air, peat and smoke, an accusation he couldn’t ignore. He told himself he’d poured it for clarity, a nightcap to quiet the static. But the glass sat there, untouched, heavy with its own meaning.

His eyes burned from the screen glow. The same frozen image stared back at him—chestnut curls, the curve of a nose half-obscured, a phantom caught between frames. He reached for the glass again. This time he drank. The scotch bit his tongue, burned down his throat, left a fire in his chest that wasn’t enough to drown the rest.

He set it down harder than he meant to, amber sloshing against the rim. His reflection warped in the liquid—hollow, distorted, barely recognizable.

Edward dragged the notebook closer, forcing the pen across the page as if the act of writing could anchor him. McCarty. Prague. Maserati. Shopfront. He circled the words until they blurred into black spirals. The glass sat at his elbow, half-empty now. A reminder. A warning. He ignored both.

Edward’s cursor hovered over the classified gateway like a hand over a hot stove. He knew better. His clearance wasn’t nearly high enough to justify what he was about to attempt, but that old gnawing voice—the one that had driven him this far—was louder than protocol. He keyed in the first exploit. Then the second. Within minutes, he was staring at something that should have been well above his pay grade: a joint Interpol/MI5 dossier stamped with a bright red CLASSIFIED – CROSS-BORDER PRIORITY.

McCarty’s name was printed across the top.

Edward skimmed fast, eyes catching on phrases: Unofficial leader of the Sovereignty Front. Instigated large-scale unrest surrounding the Brexit referendum, prior to formal exit. Orchestrated multiple direct action campaigns targeting critical UK infrastructure. At least three confirmed assassination attempts against sitting MPs. Firebombings at Bristol Federal Building, Birmingham Registry, and a Whitehall annex.

One line made him pause: Primary architect, designated sedition charge. Escaped prosecution. Status: At large.

Edward sat back hard, chair wheels squeaking against the hotel carpet. So it wasn’t just petty theft and black-market rackets. McCarty had gone toe-to-toe with the British state and come out breathing. That made him more than just another ghost on Interpol’s board. It made him dangerous in a way Edward hadn’t yet accounted for.

He was back at the notebook, pen scratching across the page: Emmett McCarty. Maserati → Prague, German shell company lease. Woman = ??? Sedition = Sovereignty Front? Anti-Brexit insurgency? Why is he still free?

If he could pin this guy—bring him in—it would mean more than chasing a phantom woman across databases and CCTV reels. It would mean putting himself on the map. Rookie or not, he’d be the one who delivered the man half of Europe couldn’t catch.

Edward pulled the laptop closer again, rifling deeper through the file, noting every contact, every burned ID, every whisper of McCarty’s operations that hadn’t yet gone cold. A handful of safe houses. Associates in Berlin, Warsaw, Athens. All thin threads, all frayed, but they were something.

But the image he couldn’t stop coming back to was the blurred profile of the woman at McCarty’s side.

If she was his, what the hell was she doing with a man like this?

~~~~~~~~

By the time he was in his office, half the blue notebook was filled with scrawled leads, cross-referenced sightings, and notes on McCarty’s network. Every safe house tagged, every alias logged, every shell company scraped from the files.

He spent the morning shaping it into a package: stapled reports, a one-page summary, a neat cover sheet with his initials in the corner. Solid. Professional. Something Harlan couldn’t dismiss with a glance.

When he finally stepped into Director Harlan’s office, he set the manila folder down with the weight of someone delivering evidence, not speculation.

Harlan didn’t even glance at it at first. He leaned back in his leather chair, rolling a toothpick between his teeth. Only when Edward cleared his throat did the man flip the cover open and skim.

“McCarty?” Harlan drawled. “Christ, son, do you know how many times I’ve seen that name land on my desk?” He flicked the toothpick aside, tapping the folder with one blunt finger. “Interpol. MI5. Even the bloody CIA had a swing at him. You think you’re gonna waltz in here with a printout from Google Translate and crack what half the free world couldn’t?”

Edward stiffened, jaw tight. “Sir, I—”

Harlan cut him off with a short, sharp laugh. “Leave this for the big boys, Masen. You want to make a name for yourself, start with something that doesn’t have five different agencies already red-faced.” He shoved the folder back across the desk. “Chase your phantoms on your own time, not mine.”

The words landed like a slap, but Edward forced his expression blank, scooping up the file without another word. His ears burned as he turned for the door.

By the time it clicked shut behind him, his pulse was hammering. Harlan thought this was a joke. Thought Edward was still a rookie playing detective.

Good. Let him.

It would make proving him wrong that much sweeter.

Back at his desk, Edward rubbed at his eyes, the screen a blur of code and half-legible dossiers. His reflection stared back faintly in the dark glass—hollow eyes, jaw locked tight, a stranger wearing his face.

For a heartbeat, the truth pressed in hard: this wasn’t work anymore. Not duty. Something else had him chasing shadows across continents. Something hungrier.

The thought clawed at his ribs, sharp and undeniable. You’re slipping.

Edward snapped the laptop shut, the noise echoing in the quiet office. Silence swallowed the room. He dragged a hand down his face, forcing the knot of panic back into the pit of his stomach.

No. He couldn’t think like that. Couldn’t afford it. He had the thread, and if he pulled hard enough, it would lead him to her.

He picked up the pen again, wrote McCARTY in block letters across the page, underlined it until the paper nearly tore. Proof. Leads. Work. That was all this was. Nothing else.

The elevator ride down felt endless, steel walls pressing in as Edward clutched the rejected file under his arm. Harlan’s laugh echoed in his head—the dismissal, the toothpick, the phrase that hit harder than it should have. Leave this for the big boys.

By the time the doors slid open into the parking garage, embarrassment had calcified into anger. He didn’t sit in his Challenger immediately. He stood beside it, staring at his own reflection in the glossy black paint, forcing his breathing to slow.

If he dropped this, then Harlan was right. He was just another rookie who couldn’t cut it. But if he was right—if the woman in Prague was her—then none of it would matter.

He slid into the driver’s seat and pulled out his phone. No hesitation. Flights, Prague. One-way ticket. Earliest departure.

When the confirmation email hit his inbox, Edward leaned back against the headrest. The sting in his chest eased, replaced by something sharper, more dangerous: resolve.

If no one else was going to chase McCarty—or the woman—then he would.

Edward’s apartment didn’t look like home so much as a place someone rented by the week. White walls, no artwork. A couch that still creaked like it had come straight off the showroom floor. Kitchen counters bare except for a lone coffee maker and a stack of unopened mail. The air even smelled sterile, like the building’s hallways—cleaning solution and dust.

He tossed his keys into a bowl by the door, the clatter echoing too loud in the silence. For a moment, he just stood there, staring at the darkened windows. His reflection caught him: tired eyes, a jaw pulled tight, the gnawing weight behind them.

The carry-on leaned against the bedroom wall, half-packed with two shirts, slacks, a tie he probably wouldn’t wear, his laptop, and the blue spiral notebook. Always the notebook.

He set it on the bed, flipping it open instinctively. Page after page of scratched-out names stared back: Morgan. Vera. Catherine. He tapped the pen against the margin, circling the same questions until they blurred into something feverish.

The Memphis screen cap. The Prague footage. Her curls hiding everything but that profile. Both burned into his brain.

Who are you? What game are you playing?

He shoved another shirt into the bag, too forcefully, then yanked the zipper shut. His supervisor’s words echoed in his mind—leave this for the big boys. If he let it go, if he let her slip away again, what was left? Reports. Dead-end investigations. Mediocrity.

His eyes drifted to the manila envelope on the table. The files inside suddenly felt small, almost irrelevant. McCarty, sedition, laundering—it was all noise compared to the single fact he couldn’t outrun. She was out there. Moving, smiling, living.

The obsession was no longer creeping; it had its claws in him.

Edward slung the carry-on over his shoulder, grabbed his passport from the drawer, and killed the lights. The apartment slipped back into darkness, as if no one had ever been there at all.

The stairwell stank of old paint, mildew, and scorched food from some other apartment down the hall. His footsteps echoed down each flight, the weight of the carry on almost nonexistent against the tightness in his chest. The whole place felt stale, claustrophobic.

He dug his phone out of his pocket, thumb hovering a moment before he tapped Rosalie’s number. She picked up on the second ring.

“Edward? It’s nearly midnight. What’s going on?”

“I’m heading out of town.” His voice was steady, almost clinical, as he pushed through the side door into the parking garage, the cool air humming under fluorescent lights. “Don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Couple days, maybe longer.”

Silence, then a sharp breath. “For work?”

He walked until the black Challenger came into view, the glossy surface reflecting the harsh light. “Something like that.”

“‘Something like that’?” Her disbelief cut through him. “Edward, what the hell does that mean? Where are you going?”

“I need you to pick up my car from the airport. Keys behind the driver’s side wheel well.”

“No. Uh-uh. Don’t do this to me.” Her voice hardened, that familiar edge she always carried when he tried to sidestep her. “You pull this disappearing act, and I’m supposed to just…cover for you? Pretend it’s fine?”

“Rosie.” He leaned back against the hood, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You know I can’t explain everything.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

The question hung heavy. He said nothing. The hum of the garage lights filled the silence.

“Both,” he finally admitted.

On the line, her exhale was sharp, frustrated. “You sound…wrong. Not like yourself. Ever since you started chasing this, you’ve been different. Obsessive. Distracted. You barely talk to me anymore unless I drag it out. You think I don’t notice?”

He closed his eyes. She wasn’t wrong. Even now, his thoughts kept circling back to that grainy CCTV still—the curve of a nose, the shadow of lips half-obscured by curls. Prague. Memphis. Her. Always her.

“Rosie, I promise I’ll call when I can.” His voice was rougher than he meant. “Just…trust me.”

“Trust you?” Her laugh was humorless. “Edward, you sound like a man standing on the edge of a cliff saying it’s fine. You won’t fall. You don’t hear yourself, do you? You sound consumed.”

“Because I am,” he muttered before he could stop himself.

There was a long, brittle pause. Then her voice, small but sharp: “Whatever this is…please don’t let it chew you up and spit you out. I don’t want to lose you. Not like this.”

He pushed off the car, tightening his grip on the carry-on. “You won’t.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Rosie.” He forced calm into his tone, though his pulse drummed in his throat. “I’ll be fine. I have to go.”

Another beat of silence. Then: “You’re impossible. Always have been.”

A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth. “I know.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” she whispered, almost breaking, before hanging up.

Edward let the phone drop into his pocket, but her voice lingered, threading through the quiet garage louder than the fluorescent buzz overhead. You sound consumed. Don’t let it chew you up and spit you out.

He dragged a hand through his hair, fingers clenching tight at the roots. She wasn’t wrong. The gnawing current pulling him deeper was relentless, hollowing him out. Every step he took was one step further into something he couldn’t explain, couldn’t justify.

The Challenger loomed sleek and black under the garage lights, its glossy surface reflecting him back in fragments—hollow eyes, pale skin, the man Rosalie thought she knew nowhere to be found. He pressed a hand against the hood, tracing the curve as if it could anchor him, but it only reflected the truth he couldn’t deny. Not the man she expected. Not the man he used to be.

He tried to picture her face—Rosalie, his twin, his anchor, the one person who had always read him better than he could read himself. Her worry tightened around his chest, sharp and accusing. She was right to worry. Every lie, every omission, pressed heavier than the cool steel beneath his fingers. He hated himself for dragging her into this, even in thought.

But when he closed his eyes, it wasn’t her face that rose first.

It was the blurred curve of a woman’s profile, chestnut curls spilling over her shoulder as she crossed a street in Prague. The fleeting capture in Memphis. The same face, always framed by shadows, always slipping just beyond reach.

The guilt twisted inside him, burning in his chest, thick and scorching. He was lying to Rosalie. He was risking his career, his credibility, maybe even his life. For what? For a shadow on a grainy video, a whisper of motion captured on a city camera?

His hand trembled against the handle of his bag, brief, betraying the churn inside him. Then he straightened, jaw locking into place, shoulders squared against the pull of his conscience. The guilt was a luxury he could not afford—not when the questions clawed at him, relentless, insistent, screaming that she was out there, real and waiting.

Sliding into the driver’s seat of the Challenger, he gripped the wheel like it was the only solid thing left in the world.

The engine purred low, a steady, consuming rumble that threaded into his veins, chasing the hollow weight of guilt back into the shadows. This was the only road left.

At the airport, he didn’t glance back at the keys tucked behind the wheel well, didn’t allow himself the vision of Rosalie finding them and understanding, all at once, the magnitude of what he was doing and what he had already sacrificed.

The Challenger disappeared behind him, swallowed by the airport lot, but the weight of it lingered in his chest. Every reflection in its glossy black surface seemed to follow him as he navigated the pedestrian ramp. The hum of fluorescent lights overhead pressed into him, a low, insistent reminder that time was passing while he chased shadows.

By the time he reached the terminal, the roar of travelers failed to ground him. Rolling suitcases clacked across tile floors, children darted between adults, phones buzzed and screens glowed—but Edward’s focus tunneled. The Memphis screen cap, the fleeting Prague profile, every image of her stitched itself into the corners of his mind until they were the only colors left. He told himself it was work, the first lead that might carve a name out of the shadow of his father. But deeper, harder to acknowledge, was something closer to obsession, a tether he couldn’t cut even if he tried.

Adjusting the strap of his carry-on, he wove through the security line, each step mechanical. He had already started to erode the edges of the man he used to be, trading caution for the pulse of something wild and unrelenting.

He shoved the thought down, forcing it beneath layers of rationality and need. There was a flight to catch. Leads to follow. A trail that only he seemed to see, winding across continents, stitched together by blurred profiles and stolen glimpses.

And yet, even as he moved, a small, fragile part of him ached for the twin he was leaving behind—Rosalie, tethered to a brother who might already be too far gone to save himself.

Obsession or duty. Desire or reason. He had no choice but to walk the line between them.

Travelers swirled around him in a blur: parents juggling children, businesspeople with rolling suitcases, tourists staring at maps and phones, oblivious. Their movement should have distracted him, grounded him. Instead, every passing face, every flicker of a wrist or tilt of a head reminded him of her.

His knuckles whitened as he scrolled through the images on his phone, frozen frames looping in his mind with a persistence that made the air in the terminal feel thick. He told himself this was about duty, about leads, about McCarty, about proving he could step out from under his father’s shadow. But deep in the pit of his stomach, beneath the rationalizations, it was something far simpler—and far more dangerous. Obsession.

He wanted to tell Rose she was wrong. That he could compartmentalize, that he could chase a ghost and still come home the same man he had always been. But he knew the truth.

Every step, every heartbeat, every thought was tethered to the woman who had wormed her way into the corners of his mind and refused to leave.

Through security, he moved with efficiency born of repetition. Shoes off, laptop out, liquids set aside. The scanner beeped and he stepped through, the belt sliding around his waist, and still, he couldn’t shake her from his mind. Each beep, each automated command of the scanners, echoed alongside the blurred click of the Prague footage, the ghost of Memphis pressing him forward.

He kept his phone in hand, scrolling again, pausing on details that had no meaning outside of obsession. The curl of hair over her shoulder. The angle of the street in Prague. The way she stepped from the shop as if she had always been meant to be seen there, yet had never entered. A phantom threading through the city, threading through his life.

Edward’s eyes flicked to the flight display, gate numbers shifting under fluorescent light. He could have lost himself in the mass of movement, but the images of her demanded attention, demanded action. He swallowed hard, a dry, brittle sound in his own ears.

He wasn’t just chasing a lead anymore. He was chasing her.

A mother hustled past with a stroller, two small children underfoot, and for a moment, Edward imagined her there—her face glimpsed through the press of strangers, disappearing before he could reach out. A pang of frustration and something heavier, something he wasn’t ready to name, stabbed at him.

The boarding call for his flight came over the intercom, a sharp intrusion, but he barely registered it. He adjusted his carry-on strap again, checking the gate, the flight number, the time. Everything was procedural, methodical, but the pull beneath it all, that gnawing current, was anything but.

He had already let it consume him. Every rational step he took, every calculation of logistics or timing, was colored by the ghost of her profile. And yet he couldn’t stop—not now.

His eyes were already on the gate, on the promise of motion, on the need to catch a shadow and see it, finally, in the flesh.

And so he moved forward, alone in the press of travelers, the weight of obsession heavier than the carry-on at his side. He was walking a line only he could see, and she—the mystery woman—was waiting at the end of it.

Edward stepped onto the jet bridge, the hum of the air conditioning and the press of travelers folding around him. The narrow corridor smelled faintly of recycled air and coffee, and his own pulse thrummed in time with the mechanical whoosh of the plane outside. He felt the carry-on’s weight in his hand, though it was nothing compared to the gravity pressing in behind his ribs.

The cabin was quiet but for the low murmur of passengers finding their seats. He let his gaze skim the rows, catching brief flashes of faces—the indifferent, the tired, the oblivious—and tried to anchor himself there. But the images of her chased him between the seats, twisting through his vision like a shadow tethered to every movement. Chestnut curls. Pink dress. The sliver of profile frozen on the Prague streets.

He slid into his assigned seat, the leather cold beneath him. The window was dark, the city lights shrinking behind him as the plane taxied. He kept his bag between his knees, fingers brushing the handle, grounding himself in the tactile. But no grip, no weight, no physicality could chase away the memory of her face.

The engines roared to life, a vibrating certainty beneath him, and Edward leaned back, forcing the safety belt to click with a precision that mirrored the tautness in his chest. Every push of air, every metallic shift of the plane beneath him, echoed the rhythm of Prague, Memphis, the click of the laptop keys, the scrape of his pen across pages marked with McCarty’s name.

He let himself close his eyes briefly. It should have been grounding—motion, repetition—but instead it conjured her. Her figure in the sun flare, her hair catching the light, the soft defiance in her stance as if the world had bent itself around her presence.

Edward’s hands fisted over the carry-on strap, knuckles white, a low groan escaping him before he could stop it. He could feel her everywhere, in every turn of thought, every calculation of coordinates and safe houses, every line of surveillance footage he had traced a dozen times over. And still, there was nothing concrete. Nothing but the ache of recognition and the gnawing certainty that she existed somewhere out there, waiting—or leading him into danger.

Beside him, a young man was tapping on his tablet, oblivious. Across the aisle, a woman adjusted her headphones, the faint hum of music blending with the engines. Everyone was mundane. Ordinary. And yet Edward couldn’t feel a part of it. Not really. The world around him was a blur, a canvas upon which her image kept painting itself.

He reached for his phone, thumb hovering over Rosalie’s number. The thought of telling her anything more than the barest truth tightened his chest. She was worried; she would try to pull him back. And he couldn’t stop—not now. Not when he was so close to tracing her across continents, even if “close” was measured in pixels, shadows, and half-legible CCTV feeds.

The plane lifted from the tarmac, climbing into the night sky, the city lights below fading into constellations of memory and obsession. Edward exhaled slowly, letting the engines’ vibrations soak into his bones, steadying him only enough to open his notebook again. Scribbled words blurred into one another.

He traced the lines with his pen absentmindedly, staring out the window into darkness, letting the altitude sharpen the edges of his fixation. She had wormed her way into him so completely that even the hum of the plane, the routine of departure, and the anonymous passengers surrounding him could not break her hold.

Edward closed his notebook briefly, resting his forehead against the cold window. Somewhere below, the city still lived, oblivious to the chase above it. Somewhere ahead, in another city, she walked, unaware of the man in a plane whose every thought, every heartbeat, was her.

And Edward knew, with the sharp, undeniable clarity that had been growing for weeks, that there was no turning back.

The flight stretched on, engines humming, the cabin a cocoon of shared but separate lives, and Edward let himself sink into the motion, a predator in a nest of humanity, tracking a ghost he could no longer separate from his own pulse.

Chapter Text

The air in Prague carried a peculiar calm that morning, touched with the hum of passing trams and the soft murmur of tourists gathering near Charles Bridge. She sat on a weathered bench at the edge of a park, sunlight sifting through the trees in scattered patches across the grass and gravel path. Her book lay open in her lap, though her gaze lingered somewhere beyond the page, lost to a quiet reverie.

She looked effortless, though not unremarkable—blue sundress brushing her knees, black gladiator sandals laced neatly up her calves, a soft white shawl draped across her shoulders. Chestnut hair pulled into a loose ponytail let tendrils escape, catching the light like sparks. A floppy sunhat, ribboned in the same blue as her dress, shaded her face. For anyone passing, she could have been simply a woman enjoying a morning in the park.

But she felt him before she saw him.

A shadow fell across her page. The low groan of the bench announced another presence. He settled beside her, silent, deliberate. Black from head to toe—faded jeans, scuffed boots, a fitted T-shirt stretched across wiry muscle. Pale skin, almost translucent in the sun. Angular features framed by close-cropped dark hair. His eyes flicked briefly toward hers, then away, scanning the park as though cataloguing the world.

Neither spoke. Minutes passed. Birds sang in the trees, a dog barked somewhere beyond, and the world carried on around them as if the tension coiled between them were invisible.

Finally, he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, voice low enough that only she could hear.

“It’s time.”

Her lips curved, though her eyes didn’t leave the page. “I knew you were going to say that.”

Silence stretched. She waited, two beats, three. Finally, she lifted her gaze.

“You’re quiet today.”

He turned his head, studying her the way one might study a weapon left out in the rain—assessing for damage, for sharpness. “You notice everything,” he said. “That’s what makes you dangerous.”

Her mouth curved faintly. “You always did have a flair for dramatics.”

He rose, brushing the dust from his palms. “And you always did pretend not to care.”

Then, without another word, he turned and walked away, his boots grinding softly over the gravel.

She stayed seated a moment longer, letting her eyes linger on his retreating form. Then she snapped the book shut, a quiet sound that seemed to punctuate her satisfaction, and tucked it into the woven bag slung across her shoulder. The hat shaded her face as she rose, lifting herself with deliberate grace.

Prague unfolded around her in full color and texture: soft pastel facades of baroque townhouses, wrought-iron balconies draped with flowers, the distant toll of bells from some hidden steeple. Cobblestones warmed underfoot, uneven, stitched together by centuries of passage.

She slowed as she neared a small vendor cart at the square’s corner. A red-and-white striped canopy fluttered lazily above. The air carried the scent of fried dough and sugar, cutting through the roast of nearby cafés. The vendor turned a long wooden stick over an open grill, rotating a cylinder of golden pastry until its surface blistered and caramelized. Rows of trdelník—Czech chimney cakes—vented steam from their hollow centers.

Her lips curved instinctively as she ordered one. The pastry was warm, crisp, and sweet, the vanilla ice cream pooling at its heart. Cinnamon dusted the air, mingling with the sugary cream, and she took her first bite delicately, savoring the clash of textures. Sugar clung to her fingers, and she licked it away quickly, reluctant to waste even that small indulgence.

She wandered into the flow of the crowd, savoring the moment, allowing herself the rare taste of something untainted by duty or danger. For a heartbeat, Prague existed simply—light, color, warmth, sweetness.

When the pastry was gone, she crumpled the wax paper into her bag and raised a hand to flag down a passing taxi. The yellow car screeched slightly to a halt. She slipped into the back seat, folding her skirt neatly beneath her.

The driver glanced at her in the rearview. She leaned forward slightly, her voice calm, precise, measured. “Na Závisti 1184.”

A brief nod. The car merged into traffic, and the city began to recede.

She rested her cheek against the window, cool glass against skin, the streets narrowing and the buildings giving way to leafy outskirts. The address she had given would lead her not to some crowded quarter or tucked-away apartment, but to the gates of a private villa—Emmett McCarty’s villa.

Her fingers played with the ribbon on her hat, twisting it until it bit into her skin.

No smile. Not tonight.

Two years blurred together—his voice, his touch, the way he’d looked at her like she was real.

She drew in a breath, steady and practiced, until the ache dulled.

It was time.

The taxi rolled up the curved drive, gravel crunching beneath its tires before coming to a stop at the wrought-iron gates. Beyond them, the villa rose in pale stucco, the red-tiled roof glowing softly in the evening sun. She leaned forward, slipping a few bills into the driver’s hand, lingering just long enough to watch him nod before she opened the door.

Her sandals clicked against the stone walkway as she stepped out. The driveway stretched wide and empty—no flash of the red Maserati. A small breath escaped her chest. Good. She had time.

At the front door, her hand dove into her bag. The key slid free, smooth and cool against her fingers, and she fitted it into the lock with practiced ease. The villa opened around her, large and imposing, but not cold. Dark beams arched overhead, and the walls carried tapestries so rich they almost swallowed the space—but the wide windows let in enough light to balance it. Leather chairs, deep rugs, warm woods: wealth tempered with care. And scattered hints of her life: a stack of well-thumbed books, a faded throw draped over the couch. Small anchors, grounding touches in a world that was otherwise borrowed.

She set her bag neatly on a hook by the door, a gesture more domestic than she had intended. Her steps carried her through the hall and up the stairs, fingers grazing the carved banister, toes tracing the familiar rhythm of floorboards. She moved with quiet ownership, but each movement was threaded with an unspoken tension—this was her life here, but it was never fully hers.

In the master bath, she let the hot water wash the city from her skin, letting the steam curl around her in gentle swirls. When she emerged, a white silk robe clung to her frame, the belt loosely tied, damp hair hanging free down her back.

Barefoot, she crossed to the walk-in closet. Silks and linens brushed her arms as she passed, soft textures that contrasted sharply with the hardness of the world outside. At the very back, she crouched and pulled free a suitcase—the same one from Memphis.

Unzipping it, she found it empty. She pressed her palm to the lining, then lifted the false bottom with care. Beneath it: a matte-black 9mm, its weight familiar and steady. A stack of passports, each with a different name. Wads of currency—euros, dollars, pounds, yen. And a small, unremarkable makeup bag.

She unzipped the bag. Inside, cushioned in fabric, rested a tiny vial. She held it between two fingers, letting the light refract through the clear liquid. For a heartbeat, she simply stared, expression unreadable. Duty. Necessity. The lines had blurred here long ago. Yet beneath the precision and training, there lingered a twinge she couldn’t fully name—an echo of unease, a whisper of reluctance.

Her gaze drifted to the windows, to the empty courtyard outside. She thought of him—Emmett—and the careful mask she had worn for two years. Posing as his lover, learning his rhythms, enduring his presence… part of her recoiled at the thought of the intimacy forced into pretense. Another part—quiet, insistent—acknowledged that she had felt something, somewhere, along the way. She shoved it down. She had a mission. He was the mission.

Finally, she slipped the vial into the pocket of her robe. She restored the remaining contents—the money, the passports, the weapon—with painstaking care, pressing the false bottom back into place with exacting precision. The suitcase returned to its spot, hidden from sight, yet somehow heavier now, burdened with everything she carried, everything she had become, and everything she could never fully surrender.

She paused in the doorway for a heartbeat, hand brushing against the polished wood. Somewhere deep, beneath the carefully measured motions and quiet control, the tug of her own conflicted emotions lingered—an uninvited companion she couldn’t shake. Then she stepped away, moving forward because that was all she could do. Duty first. Everything else could wait.

She padded barefoot across the polished floors, the silk of her robe whispering at her thighs. The kitchen, like the rest of the villa, was expansive—dark marble counters, copper pots suspended overhead, and a view of the city glittering in the distance through tall glass doors. The air smelled faintly of citrus and smoke from the open-air grill on the terrace.

She opened the refrigerator with deliberate calm, pulling out fresh produce, herbs, and cuts of meat wrapped in butcher’s paper. Her movements were precise, unhurried. A chef’s knife sang against the cutting board as she worked, slicing peppers into ribbons, garlic into paper-thin shards. Oil hissed in the pan, the fragrance of basil and saffron rising into the room, blending with the warmth of the marble beneath her palms.

By the time the sun had sunk behind the rooftops, the kitchen glowed with warmth, and the layered scents of Moroccan lamb, charred vegetables, and cardamom-laced rice filled the space. She moved as though she’d done this a hundred times before, glass of wine untouched on the counter beside her.

The night was still, the villa suspended in calm, until the low growl of an engine cut through it. Tires crunched on the gravel drive. She paused mid-slice, knife poised, head tilting toward the sound. A Maserati—low, sleek, unmistakable—rolled to a stop outside.

She set the blade down, letting her hands rest on the counter, and allowed a faint, smile to curl her lips.

He was home.

The front door opened with the heavy click of a key, followed by the muted thud of polished shoes across marble. The slam of the door carried through the villa, then the rustle of his jacket being shrugged off.

“Something smells incredible,” his voice boomed, warm and edged with amusement. “What’ve you done to my kitchen this time?”

She didn’t answer, keeping her back to him as she spooned sauce over the lamb with deliberate ease. She felt his presence before he touched her—the way the air seemed to bend around him.

Then he was there, turning her to face him.

Emmett’s hands framed her face, large and steady, tilting her toward him before she had a chance to inhale. His mouth covered hers in a kiss that was both commanding and intimate, heated and familiar. Her lips parted instinctively, body responding with practiced ease. Her hands slid up his chest, fingers curling against the crisp fabric of his shirt, drawing him closer.

The kiss broke only when he pulled back slightly, thumb brushing along her jaw with a tenderness that softened the edges of his intensity. “God, I missed this,” he murmured, eyes searching hers, seeking connection, reassurance, and grounding all at once.

Before she could answer, he scooped her up, placing her on the counter with a practiced strength, lips finding hers again, hungrier this time. She moaned softly, hands tangling in his shirt as the belt of her robe gave way under his fingers.

“You know I could fuck you right here on this counter,” he whispered, his lips against her jaw. A gentle gasp escaped her lips when his fingers found her sensitive flesh and began to explore. He smiled against her skin. “I love that sound.”

She took his face in her hands, and pulled him in for a desperate kiss as two fingers slipped inside her, stroking gently.

He broke the kiss just long enough to say, “I fucking love you, Irina.”

She lingered on the counter, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath her palms, his weight against her, the steady press of his fingers inside her. His lips on her neck.

He knew her body well, and it didn’t take long to coax her toward release. Her head fell back as she came undone, and he stroked her through it until she fell against him.

He drew his hand away to lift her chin, a triumphant smile on his lips. “That’s my girl.” He kissed her softly, then leaned in, his breath hot against her ear. “But I’m not done with you.”

All she could manage was, “Oh shit.”

He chuckled softly, kissing her again, before touching his forehead to hers.

Her smile was faint but real, slipping seamlessly back into her role as though the storm behind her calm eyes could be contained. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said softly, voice even despite the tension she carried.

His gaze, warm and unjudging, stayed locked on hers. Love and trust wrapped around the quiet, unspoken truths of her night, and for a moment, the villa felt safe, ordinary—even hers.

But even as she leaned into him, part of her mind ticked over the details she couldn’t leave behind. The vial in her robe pocket, small and innocuous to anyone else, pressed against her thoughts like a silent warning. Two years posing as his lover had demanded she fold herself into his life, mirror his routines, laugh at his jokes, let him touch her without fear. And yet the truth—the work she carried—was always there, shadowing her every movement, a phantom she could never fully put aside.

Emmett hummed softly, tilting her chin up, brushing a finger across her cheek. “You’ve outdone yourself tonight,” he said, eyes warm, searching. “You look… happy. Relaxed.”

She forced the same faint smile she always wore with him, letting it hide the taut line beneath her skin. “I’m fine,” she said softly, though her voice betrayed the slightest hesitation.

“Only fine?” His brows arched, half-mock, half-concern. “I think you’re lying to me.”

A ripple of guilt passed through her, quick and hot. She wasn’t lying to him, exactly—not about herself, about her affection. But she was lying about everything else. The truth of the mission, the danger, the choices she would have to make—he could never know. And for the first time in two years, that weight felt heavier than the act of being his partner ever had.

“I—” she began, then caught herself. Words would unravel the careful construction she had built. Instead, she let her hands rest lightly on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, letting herself savor this small, fleeting moment where danger and duty could be paused.

Emmett leaned in again, lips brushing hers, softer this time, patient. “Whatever it is, we face it together,” he murmured, and for a heartbeat, she allowed herself to believe him. Allowed herself to imagine a life where there wasn’t always another layer of deception between them.

But the vial pressed at her side, the city hummed beyond the villa walls, and the mission waited.

Even in his arms, she knew she was running toward something she couldn’t let him follow.

The lamb came out tender, the sauce thick and fragrant, steam curling up from the plates as Irina set them on the polished oak dining table. Emmett poured two glasses of deep red Bordeaux, his grin wide as he slid into his seat across from her.

“You should’ve seen their faces,” he said between bites, already halfway through his portion. His eyes gleamed with boyish pride as he leaned back, wineglass dangling from his fingers. “Idiots thought they could haggle me down. Walked out with twice the take I expected. A goddamn fortune, Irina. I swear, I could buy a new villa just to keep the cars in.”

She gave a soft laugh, folding her napkin across her lap. “I’m sure the Maserati would enjoy the company.”

“Damn right it would,” he shot back with a wink, raising his glass. “To easy money and expensive toys.”

She clinked hers against his, smiling like she belonged there, like she was proud. The wine touched her lips, smooth and warm, but her thoughts stayed locked tight, hidden behind the curve of her smile.

When he pressed her about her day, Irina’s tone was light, casual. “Uneventful, really. A book in the park, a little shopping. Picked up something sweet from a cart near Charles Bridge.” She shrugged, playful. “The usual tourist indulgences.”

Emmett chuckled, shaking his head. “You, blending in with the tourists. I can’t picture it.”

“Maybe that’s why it works,” she teased.

Dinner carried on with warmth—his laughter filling the villa, her voice soft and steady as they traded stories. He boasted, she listened. She teased, he grinned. For anyone looking in, it might have been mistaken for love.

But underneath the warmth, the vial weighed heavy against her robe pocket. Every clink of silverware against china, every sip of wine, reminded her of the other side of this life: the thread of danger she carried, the mission that hadn’t ended, the truth she could never share.

Her eyes flicked to the window, where the city glittered faintly in the distance. In that glow, she traced the contours of what she had built with Emmett—trust, intimacy, routine—but the edge of her mind remained alert, calculating. A memory of grainy surveillance footage in Prague, the sliver of a profile she couldn’t shake, nudged against her consciousness, a silent reminder of the choices she had made to get here.

She smiled again at Emmett’s next joke, soft and warm, letting it mask the tension coiling in her chest. Love, real or feigned, threaded through her motions—but duty, a heavier, darker weight, pressed against her from the inside. The night hummed with comfort and threat simultaneously, and Irina moved through both with practiced ease, savoring the ordinary moments while the extraordinary waited just beyond the villa walls.

The meal ended with laughter and wine-stained fingers, and she rose to clear the plates, slipping the vial slightly deeper into her robe pocket as she passed. She let herself feel the warmth of Emmett’s hand brushing her shoulder, the quiet pull of connection—but even as she did, she counted the seconds until she could return to the planning, to the threads of the case that had carried her across continents.

Even in his arms, in his home, with the wine and the lamb and the soft glow of evening, she knew she was never entirely hers.

The villa glowed in low light, golden lamps casting soft halos across the living room. Dinner plates sat abandoned on the counter, the lingering scent of wine and spiced lamb hanging in the air. Emmett had sprawled back into the corner of the couch, broad shoulders relaxed, his shirt unbuttoned another notch since the meal. Irina curled against him, legs tucked beneath her, glass in hand.

“You were gone too long,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the crown of her hair. “One week felt like a damn year.”

Irina tilted her head into his warmth, swirling the wine lazily. “You’re ridiculous. I barely had time to unpack before I was on my way back.”

“Yeah, well,” he tipped his glass, draining it in one swallow. “Don’t leave me like that again. Not when I’ve got deals rolling like this. I need my good luck charm here.”

She laughed softly, leaning up to kiss his jaw. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you’d miss me.”

“Oh, I missed you,” he said, voice thick with promise. His hand traced the line of her thigh, curling possessively.

Her breath hitched as she straddled his hips, sliding into his lap. “I missed you too,” she whispered, lips meeting his in a deep, practiced kiss. Her fingers threaded into his hair, tugging just enough to draw a soft groan from him.

He returned her intensity, hands roaming beneath the fabric of her robe, lips traveling down her jaw to the curve of her neck. She felt the weight of his attention—the warmth, the strength, the love—but a tiny fissure of guilt ran beneath it.

He pulled back slightly, thumb brushing her cheek. “Let’s go upstairs,” he whispered, low and intimate.

She rose slowly, letting the robe fall slightly from her shoulders. When he reached for the wine bottle, her smile never faltered. Smoothly, she took the bottle, pouring a refill with elegant precision, her fingers brushing against the hidden vial tucked into her pocket. He never noticed.

Together, they moved upstairs. She led the way, carrying herself with grace, wine balanced in her hand, her pulse thrumming with the quiet tension of what had to come. The door clicked closed behind them, and he leaned against it, taking his glass from her.

“To not going anywhere ever again,” he murmured, lifting the wine in a mock toast.

“To us,” she countered, sipping hers, the taste of the deep red wine both comforting and bitter against the edge of her awareness.

The drug was subtle, gentle, designed to coax the body into rest rather than force it down. Hours, perhaps less, before sleep would turn lethal. Her hand lingered near the vial, hidden, as she let the distance between them shrink again.

She kissed him with a ferocity that made her knees buckle, surrendering to the magnetic pull of his embrace. His hands roamed her body with a familiarity that ignited every nerve ending, the silk of her dress slipping from her shoulders like a whispered secret. Her fingers, deft and purposeful, worked at the buttons of his shirt, each movement a promise of what was to come.

As the fabric fell away, revealing the hard lines of his body, her mind remained crystal clear, a sharp contrast to the haze of desire clouding her vision. She let him love her with an abandon that bordered on reckless, his touch a symphony of need and longing. He explored her body with a reverence that made her ache, his lips tracing paths of fire across her skin.

She met his intensity with her own, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she arched into his touch. Her hands roamed his body, memorizing every ridge and plane, each caress a silent vow. The room spun around them, a whirlwind of passion and desire, but her focus never wavered. In that moment, she was his, completely, without reservation, without fear.

His hands cupped her breasts, thumbs circling her nipples until they hardened beneath his touch. She gasped, her head falling back as waves of pleasure coursed through her. He trailed kisses down her neck, his teeth nipping at her collarbone, sending shivers down her spine.

She pushed him gently onto the bed, her body straddling his as she leaned down to kiss him deeply. Her hips ground against him, feeling the hard length of his desire. He groaned, his hands gripping her hips, urging her on. She moved against him, her body aching with need, her breath coming in short, desperate pants.

He flipped her onto her back, his body covering hers, his weight pressing her into the mattress. His fingers found her center, slipping inside with ease, her body already slick with desire. She cried out, her hips bucking against his hand, seeking more, needing more.

He positioned himself at her entrance, his eyes locked on hers, a question in his gaze. She nodded, her legs wrapping around his waist, urging him closer. He slid into her with a single, fluid motion, filling her completely. She moaned, her body stretching to accommodate him, her nails digging into his back.

They moved together, their bodies slick with sweat. He drove into her with a steady rhythm, each thrust sending her higher, closer to the edge.

She felt the pressure building, her body coiling tight, ready to snap. When he reached between them, his fingers found her clit. She cried out, her body convulsing as waves of pleasure crashed over her, her inner muscles clenching around him.

He followed her over the edge, his body shuddering as he spilled into her, her name a whispered prayer on his lips. They lay there, entwined, their bodies still joined, lost in the aftermath of their passion.

She let out a trembling breath, her lips meeting his.

He broke the kiss, softening, thumb brushing her cheek. “I want to ask you something,” he said, voice heavy with sincerity.

“What is it?” she asked, stroking his jaw, voice careful, even.

He placed a small box between her breasts. Her brow furrowed, fingers trembling as they touched it.

Inside, a diamond—square, radiant, set in white gold with three smaller stones flanking each side.

“Emmett?” Her voice caught, soft and fragile.

His lips curved into a sheepish, almost boyish smile. “I’ve never loved anyone like I love you, Irina. I want to make an honest woman of you.”

Her chest tightened, heartbeat sharp in her ears. The drug already waited, coursing through his veins. Hours—maybe less. And yet here he was, trusting her entirely.

Her eyes met his. Without fully realizing it, the word slipped free: “Yes.”

He exhaled, a mix of relief and joy, and slid the ring onto her finger. He kissed her fiercely, entirely, a man giving himself to the woman he adored. She kissed him back with equal care, letting the warmth and passion wash over her, all the while her mind remained clear, the underlying purpose unshaken.

When he made love to her this time, it was a slow, deliberate dance, each movement a testament to his devotion. His hands traced her body with reverence, his lips brushing against her skin like a whispered vow. He took his time, savoring every inch of her, his touch both gentle and commanding, a man loving his fiancée as if she were his most precious treasure.

Beneath the surface, a storm raged within Irina. With each caress, each tender kiss, her heart fractured a little more, the shards of her emotions clashing with the weight of her duty. She felt the heat of his body, the softness of his touch, and yet, it was laced with an undercurrent of tension that threatened to consume her. Her heart ached with the burden of love and obligation, a silent battle that played out in the depths of her soul.

Despite the turmoil, she masked her pain with a perfect facade, her touches measured and her whispers soft. She gave herself to him completely, her body responding to his with a fervor that belied the chaos within. Each movement was a careful balance, a delicate dance between desire and duty, between the woman she was and the role she was destined to play.

As they moved together, their breaths mingling, their hearts beating as one, Irina held on to the illusion of perfection. She let him love her, let him believe in the promise of their future, all the while carrying the weight of her silent struggle. In the heat of their passion, she found a moment of respite, a brief escape from the reality that awaited her beyond their embrace. But even in the depths of their connection, the fracture in her heart remained, a constant reminder of the love and duty that would forever be at odds.

She curled into him afterward, head pressed against his chest, and for a single heartbeat allowed herself to feel the life they could have had. Then reality pressed back—the mission, the vial, the path she had chosen—sharp, unyielding.

Even in his arms, even in this warmth and trust, she was alone.

Irina let Emmett’s slow, even breathing fill the room. The drugs had done their work; his body sank deeper into the mattress with each exhale, oblivious to the world. She waited a long moment, ensuring he was fully under, before slipping from the bed.

Her silk robe whispered across the polished floor as she padded back to the walk-in closet. The suitcase she had left neatly at the back of the shelves waited patiently. Irina opened it, methodical and unhurried, selecting a few pieces of clothing—simple, practical, easy to move in. She folded them neatly, placed them inside, and added a few other essentials: passports, currency, and a small black case for tools and electronics.

Once packed, she pulled a soft gray turtleneck over her head, tugged on black slacks, and laced her boots. The outfit was unremarkable, designed for movement and anonymity. She smoothed her hair back, checking her reflection briefly, before closing the suitcase and placing it by the door.

Quiet as a shadow, she returned to the bedroom. The bedside drawer creaked open only slightly as she lifted the 9mm into her hand, the cold metal weight familiar and precise. She slipped it into the holster at her back, pulling her shirt over it.

She leaned over the bed, checking his pulse. There was none. Her chest tightened, a sting she hadn’t anticipated. Her eyes drifted to the ring he had placed on her finger—still shining, still warm from the imprint of his skin. She kept it there. Let it remind her, let it anchor the fragment of what this had been. He hadn’t deserved this.

A single tear traced down her cheek, but she swallowed hard, pushing the emotion down. “Forgive me,” she whispered, brushing her fingers over his face.

Stepping back, she breathed deliberately, letting her mind shift to the next steps: departure, disappearance, the careful erasure of the trail she would leave behind. The villa was quiet, the night pressing in through tall windows. And for the first time since arriving, Irina felt her heart fracture just a little.

She flexed her hand, the ring cold but solid against her palm. Time to go.

The front door clicked shut behind her, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the still night. Cool air pressed against her face, sharp with the scent of stone, faint exhaust, and a trace of sugar drifting from some distant bakery. She drew the hood of her jacket over her head, pulling herself into the shadows along the villa’s grounds. Gravel crunched softly beneath her boots, the sound muted by the careful rhythm of her steps, the suitcase rolling silently alongside her.

At the edge of the property, she paused, scanning the street. A lone streetlamp flickered in the distance, sending long, wavering shadows between the trees. No headlights. No movement. Perfect.

She melted into the darkness, slipping onto the narrow side streets of Prague with the ease of someone who had done this countless times. Her pace was steady, deliberate—each step measured, each sound accounted for. Tourists and locals drifted past, heads bent over phones, laughter spilling into the night, oblivious to the figure passing between them. The city’s pulse wrapped around her like a shield.

A narrow alley yawned ahead, walls close and shadowed. She ducked inside, the suitcase bouncing lightly, the wheels whispering against worn cobblestones. Her eyes swept rooftops and balconies, noting every vantage point, every potential observer. Nothing. Safe—for now.

Her phone buzzed against her hip. She ignored it. Every second counted, every distraction was a risk.

At the alley’s end, she reached the tram line, slipping aboard a waiting vehicle. The doors hissed closed behind her, sealing her into a corner seat. She let the motion rock her slightly, eyes scanning the streets through fogged glass. The villa, the staged scene, the danger—all of it receding behind her, locked away for now.

Prague unfurled in streaks of light and shadow, the city’s heartbeat a steady, reassuring rhythm. Irina allowed herself a single, slow breath, controlled and even, before letting her mind advance ahead, calculating routes, contingencies, and escape paths. McCarty was gone. Evidence lingered, fragmented, traceable, but he would not see her coming.

The tram rattled onward, and she pressed a gloved hand to the suitcase handle, fingers tightening briefly before loosening again. The night was far from over, and neither was she.

By the time she reached the outskirts, the streets had emptied. Shadows stretched long beneath flickering lamps, punctuated by the occasional headlights of a late car cutting through the darkness. Irina moved with care, folding herself into alleyways, pausing at corners to watch and listen. Every sense was alive—each footstep measured, each distant bark or whisper of wind cataloged. The city was an intricate chessboard, and she was already five moves ahead.

The ring on her finger was heavy, a silent reminder of what she had chosen to preserve. Not for love, not for sentiment, but because some pieces, even in a game of shadows and lies, deserved to remain untouchable.

At the main road out of Prague, she slowed, keeping to the shadows. The taxi she had arranged waited—a black sedan, engine humming softly, the driver’s eyes hidden behind tinted windows. She slid inside without a word, the door closing with a muted click. The engine purred as they merged onto the highway.

Irina kept her head low, eyes flicking over the road ahead as the city lights faded behind her. Prague glittered in the rearview like a trap she had narrowly escaped. Somewhere in its heart, danger lingered, invisible and patient, but for now she was untouchable.

The highway stretched before them, empty except for the distant glow of trucks and the occasional neon sign. She allowed herself a single, quiet exhale, but the coil of tension in her chest remained taut. Every second, every mile, could be the one that changed everything.

Her fingers brushed the handle of her suitcase, checking the contents with a practiced glance: passports, cash, weapon, vial—all accounted for. The weight of it grounded her, more reliable than the seatbelt ever could.

As the sedan moved deeper into the outskirts, shadows lengthened along the road, folding the landscape into dark shapes that might conceal a tail or a lookout. Every turn, every abandoned farmhouse, every stretch of empty highway could hide eyes she couldn’t see.

The first checkpoint she had arranged appeared: a lone guard, half-asleep in a booth, barely noticing the black sedan glide past. A small nod, a flash of credentials, and they were through.

For the first time since leaving the villa, Irina allowed her shoulders to relax, though she didn’t close her eyes. Too many unknowns remained. Too many invisible watchers.

She leaned back into the seat, suitcase anchored against her leg, the familiar weight a small comfort. Passports, cash, weapon, vial—all intact, all ready. Her reflection stared back from the tinted window: calm, composed, perfect. But beneath the mask, her pulse betrayed her.

She curled her fingers over the suitcase handle, breathing slow and deliberate. Finally, she exhaled, thin and sharp, a quiet declaration.

This wasn’t the end. Not even close.

Chapter Text

Edward’s plane touched down in Prague just after dawn. The city stretched out beneath him in muted gray and gold, its spires slicing against the soft morning haze. Streets coiled like ribbons, rooftops dappled with the first light, and somewhere beyond the river, the Old Town awaited, quiet and unknowable. He’d told no one where he was going, no one what he was chasing. The Whitlock files, his own scrawled notes, and a jacket heavy enough for Eastern Europe in spring were all he’d brought.

The call came before he’d even left the airport.

“Do you want to explain why I’m tracking your phone in Prague?” The Director’s voice was calm, measured—but Edward had learned not to mistake calm for mercy.

He kept walking, duffel slung over his shoulder, passport still warm from the checkpoint. “I didn’t think an explanation would be necessary.”

“Try me.”

Edward paused at the sliding glass doors, eyes scanning the curb. Taxis idled, drivers leaning back in their seats, cigarette smoke curling in lazy spirals. His own reflection stared back: pale, sharp-jawed, eyes rimmed with fatigue that had nothing to do with travel. “I’m chasing a lead.”

“You’re chasing a ghost,” the Director snapped. “And while you’re out there freelancing, Emmett McCarty just turned up dead in his villa. Cause of death: unknown. You risked your career on a dead man, Cullen. Get back here.”

Edward’s grip on the duffel tightened until the leather creaked beneath his knuckles. “The woman I’m tracking was seen with McCarty in Prague just days ago. This is linked. I will be investigating the scene.”

The line went silent, the kind of silence that demanded action. Edward let it stretch, jaw set. “Send me the police report. You want this tied up, I’m the only one here.”

“You’ll have them in your inbox by the time you reach your hotel,” the Director said, and for a heartbeat the line held, heavy and expectant. “And Edward—this is your last leash. Don’t hang yourself with it.”

The click of disconnection echoed faintly in his ear.

Edward slipped the phone into his pocket, letting the weight of it settle there. Outside, the Prague morning pressed against him: stone and river mist, the faint hum of early trams, the city waking as it always did, indifferent. He stepped forward, duffel in hand, each stride a measure closer to the lead he couldn’t ignore—and the truth he had to uncover.

Edward raised a hand, signaling one of the idling taxis. The driver—a broad-shouldered man with a heavy brow, a cigarette smoldering lazily between his fingers—stubbed it out against the curb before sliding into the street. Edward tossed his duffel into the backseat and eased in after it, the leather creaking under his weight.

“Hotel BoHo,” he said, clipped, precise. The driver nodded once and merged into the gentle chaos of the morning traffic.

Edward sank against the seat, phone already in hand. The inbox pinged almost instantly—files from the Director, the first police report on McCarty’s death. Sparse, hurried, half in Czech, half in translation. Male, mid-thirties. Dead in his sleep. No signs of forced entry.

His jaw flexed, tight. This couldn’t be random. Not with McCarty’s profile, not with the timing. Every instinct screamed the word “planned.” But how?

The taxi rattled over the cobblestones, Old Town unfolding in a riot of pastel facades and spires clawing toward the sky. Tourists wandered sleepily, cameras dangling from their necks, muttering at maps. Locals hurried past, coffees in hand, absorbed in their own mornings. The city pulsed around him, alive and oblivious.

Edward’s knee bounced against the seat. He wanted to skip the hotel entirely, go straight to the villa, to the scene, to anything but a check-in desk and a keycard. But even he knew the necessity of a base of operations, a place from which to plan, a neutral ground where no one could ambush him while he worked. Still, the pull of urgency coiled tight in his chest.

The taxi slowed at the curb. Edward shoved bills into the driver’s hand, grabbed his duffel, and stepped onto the narrow street. The hotel rose before him—clean, modern, its steel and glass almost glaring against the centuries-old stone that framed it. Too pristine. Too sterile. But it would do.

He crossed the lobby quickly, eyes flicking over the velvet chairs, the carefully curated art. He barely registered the scent of polished wood and citrus that hung in the air.

“Reservation for Masen,” he said, passport out and ready.

The receptionist looked up, professional warmth on her face. She tapped the keyboard deliberately, nails clicking against the keys. “Yes, Mr. Masen. Five nights, superior suite.”

“That’s right,” Edward said, voice flat.

Her smile never faltered. “We’ll just need a credit card for incidentals.”

Edward slid his card across the counter, jaw tight. She typed, slow, deliberate, almost painfully careful—as if each keystroke might shatter something delicate. Edward’s knee bounced once, then stilled. He caught himself, letting his pulse settle.

Her gaze flicked from the passport photo to him, assessing. “First time in Prague?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s a beautiful city,” she continued, handing back his card. “If you’d like recommendations—”

“I won’t need any,” Edward cut in, sharper than intended. The faint flicker of her smile wavered, but she said nothing, handing him the keycard silently.

“Room 412. Elevators to the left.”

Edward nodded once, snatched the card, and moved. His duffel thudded against his leg as he strode toward the elevators. The city outside blurred past the windows, but it held none of his attention. He needed privacy. Space. Answers.

The elevator doors slid closed, enclosing him in mirrored walls. The hum of cables and mechanics filled the small space, punctuating the stillness. Edward stared at his reflection—a man stretched too thin, barely forty days into the job, already chasing ghosts across Europe.

But this ghost had just killed a man.

And Edward intended to find out why.

The keycard beeped green, and Edward pushed the door open. The room met him with the sterile hush of hotel transience—detergent, carpet glue, a faint trace of bleach hidden under air freshener. Curtains drawn, corners sharp. A space meant to look like home but never feel like it.

He dropped his duffel on the bed, the weight bouncing once against the mattress, and went straight to the desk. Laptop out, charger in, Wi-Fi connected. The ritual grounded him—hands moving faster than thought—until the files appeared on-screen.

McCarty’s case report blinked back at him, thin and clinical. Death at 02:17 hours. Male, thirty years old. No signs of foul play. No forced entry. No witnesses. A line at the bottom, unconvincing in its finality: preliminary cause of death—natural.

Edward swore under his breath. Too neat. Too clean.

He tugged a legal pad from his bag, flipped it open, and started scrawling. Notes, arrows, fragments that might cohere later into something resembling order. The handwriting was cramped, impatient, but the motion helped slow his racing thoughts. He sketched a timeline, possible points of contact, a column of questions with no answers. McCarty’s movements. Known associates. Last verified sighting.

The minibar tugged his eye. He stood, pulled it open, and let the cold air sting his hand before plucking out a miniature bourbon. The cap twisted free with a faint crack. He tipped it back, the burn sharp and fast, a reminder that he was still tethered to something physical. The bottle clinked against the desk as he set it down and reached for a second.

But the files didn’t vanish.

The photo Jessica had slid across the table in D.C. rose unbidden in his mind. Angela. The same face, unchanged across decades. Prague. Memphis. A grainy CCTV still from a train station in Berlin. Always there. Always watching. Always out of reach.

Edward braced both palms against the desk, leaning forward until his breath fogged the laptop screen. Staring down at the words like he could force them to yield some hidden code.

This wasn’t supposed to matter. A thread to pull, busywork to quiet his doubts. Something to keep him occupied.

But McCarty was dead. And the ghost was here.

He lifted the second glass and drank, slower this time. Let the silence of the room settle in—too heavy, pressing against the windows, the walls, his own chest—until the vibration on the desk cut through.

His phone.

He froze, eyes narrowing on the screen. An unknown number. Prague country code.

The call kept ringing.

Edward’s thumb hovered. He didn’t like unknowns. Unknowns got people killed. But letting it go unanswered felt worse, like ceding ground he hadn’t meant to give.

He answered. “Masen.”

A pause stretched long on the other end. Then a voice—low, deliberate, unmistakably American. “You’re a long way from home.”

Edward straightened, every nerve awake. “Who is this?”

Silence again, except for the scratch of a match. He pictured the man leaning back somewhere, cigarette dangling between his fingers, letting quiet do the work.

“You’ve been asking questions,” the voice said at last. Calm. Measured. “About things you don’t understand.”

Edward’s grip tightened on the phone. “Then explain it to me.”

A laugh, short and humorless, drifted down the line. “Not my job.”

Edward’s jaw locked. “You know about McCarty.”

“I know enough.” A faint exhale of smoke, audible even across continents. “I also know you’re chasing a woman who doesn’t want to be found. For your own sake, leave it there.”

“Not an option.” His voice was flat, steel buried under control.

The pause that followed was different—longer, heavier, like the weight of a chess piece being held before it was placed. Then the man spoke again. “You sound just like your father.”

Edward’s body went rigid, every muscle wired tight. “What did you say?”

The line went dead.

He lowered the phone slowly, staring at the blank black glass until his own reflection stared back. The bourbon sat untouched beside the files now, the room suddenly too small, the air too thin.

Whoever that was, they knew things no one should. Things he hadn’t told anyone.

McCarty’s death was no longer the only mystery in Prague.

Charlie Swan sat in the dark, the curtains drawn tight against the city’s neon glow. A half-burned cigarette smoldered in the ashtray, smoke curling toward the ceiling, the stale tang of old habits clinging to the room.

On the table in front of him lay a folder older than the agent down the hall. MKULTRA PROJECT: S-17. Every page was his handwriting. Every thick black bar of redaction was his doing.

He flipped a photo loose with a yellowed fingertip. Memphis, last month. The same face he’d seen across decades. The same face he’d watched die under controlled conditions—watched her chest still, pulse flatten, eyes close. The same face that opened its eyes hours later, lungs pulling air like nothing had happened.

He had been the only one in that room. The only one who saw the impossible. Everyone else got the report he wrote: Subject expired during protocol. Termination confirmed.

He lied for her. And then he tried to own her.

Charlie rubbed the bridge of his nose, guilt and obsession carving deeper lines into his face. That was when she ran. She saw what he was building, the cages he was making in her image. She slipped out and left him with nothing but a lifetime of questions and the bitter taste of failure.

Now she was here again. Prague. He didn’t need facial recognition to tell him. He knew her. He’d always know her.

A knock echoed faintly down the hall. Charlie didn’t move. He just lifted the receiver of the burner phone on the table and dialed a number he knew by muscle memory. It rang once before connecting.

“Masen.” The young agent’s voice—wary, unseasoned.

Charlie let the silence hang, then said, “You’re a long way from home.”

He could almost hear the kid stiffen. He pictured the bourbon glass on the rookie’s desk, the stubborn set of his jaw. He sounded green, but there was steel under it. That worried Charlie.

“You’ve been asking questions about things you don’t understand,” Charlie said, voice low, gravelled, tired.

When the kid pressed him, Charlie almost laughed. Not yet. Not him. Not now.

He took a drag from his cigarette, exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. “For your own sake, leave it there.”

The rookie pushed back. Of course he did. They always did.

Charlie hesitated, then played the card he shouldn’t. “You sound just like your father.”

The silence on the other end was sharp, dangerous.

Charlie hung up before the kid could answer. He ground out the cigarette, hands trembling.

Edward Masen. Forty days in the agency and already chasing her ghost. The odds of that weren’t coincidence.

Which meant time was running short.

The streets of Prague gleamed with last night’s rain, lamplight fractured across slick cobblestones. Charlie Swan moved with the kind of silence earned over decades—coat collar turned up, steps measured, posture loose enough to look unremarkable but sharp enough to vanish if he had to.

Ahead of him, Edward Masen cut a clean figure through the square. Too young, too green, carrying himself like a man with something to prove. Charlie watched him flag down a cab, every movement catalogued, every detail logged.

“Just like your old man,” Charlie muttered under his breath, lips barely moving.

The resemblance was uncanny. Not just the face—though that carried the same angular sharpness he remembered—but the way he looked at the world, scanning, restless, like everything was a clue waiting to be turned over.

Edward Sr. had been like that too. Back when he was still running quiet ops in Berlin, chasing leads he shouldn’t have seen. Back when he’d caught sight of her.

Charlie remembered the report—handwritten, edges worn from being folded and refolded. A woman. Seen at three separate operations, unchanged across five years. Same face, same eyes. He’d laughed when he read it, not because it was wrong, but because it was too right. Edward Sr. had stumbled onto her trail, the same ghost Charlie had been keeping locked under glass for a decade.

He’d called him in, sat across from him in some smoke-choked briefing room, told him to let it go. You don’t want to spend your life chasing phantoms, Masen. Redacted the files, shuffled him onto safer assignments. By the time the dust settled, Edward Sr. had convinced himself it was a trick of memory. A woman who looked familiar. Nothing more.

But Charlie never forgot.

And now here was his son—forty years later—walking blind into the same snare. Another Masen orbiting her.

Charlie stayed well back, slipping into the shadows of a stone arcade as the cab rolled to a stop at the villa gates. The rain-slick street reflected the pale glow of the lamps, turning every puddle into a shard of light. He watched Edward step out, tall frame sharp against the dark, duffel slung over his shoulder like he knew exactly where he was going.

The kid moved with purpose—too much purpose. No hesitation, no wasted glance. Just like his father.

Charlie drew on his cigarette, cupping the ember in his palm, and exhaled smoke through his nose. The taste was bitter, clinging, but it steadied him. He let his eyes narrow, tracking the way Edward scanned the villa’s perimeter before walking in, every gesture betraying that restless Masen intensity.

“Your father chased her too,” he muttered to the night, voice low enough to drown in the hiss of passing tires.

He dropped the cigarette into a puddle and ground it out with his heel. The ember died, leaving only smoke curling upward like memory. Charlie pulled his coat collar higher and stayed put in the shadows, a watcher in the rain. Edward didn’t know he was being followed—not yet. And Charlie intended to keep it that way.

Inside, the villa smelled faintly of polish and stone dust, the air heavy in the way of houses left too quiet for too long.

Edward stepped carefully, each move deliberate, cataloguing as he went. Wide foyer, marble floors, staircase cutting clean lines to the second story. No broken glass, no overturned furniture, no splintered wood. The official story fit the neatness of the scene.

Still, his eyes worked like a lens, adjusting, focusing, scanning for what didn’t belong.

Kitchen spotless—plates stacked to dry, counters wiped down, a single mug resting upside down on the rack. Dining table reset, chairs tucked in, no trace of last night’s meal. Too tidy. Not lived in.

Upstairs, the master bedroom waited like a stage between acts. Sheets still creased from a body, the faint indentation on the pillow recent enough to hold shape. Someone had been here long after McCarty stopped breathing.

Edward slipped gloves from his pocket and snapped them on. He moved through the room in concentric circles—dresser, nightstand, closet—patient, methodical.

The closet looked like a magazine spread. Rows of pressed shirts, tailored suits, Italian shoes polished to mirrors. Nothing touched. Nothing shifted.

Until—

At the end of the rack, a garment bag sagged against the wall. The plastic cover crackled faintly under his hand. Edward unzipped it, the soft swish of plastic loud in the silence.

A flash of color. Pink.

A sundress, light fabric, the exact shade he remembered from the Prague still frame. The image seared into his mind now bled into reality—tangible, undeniable.

The fabric still smelled faintly of starch and soap. Fresh.

Edward’s throat tightened. He told himself it was just evidence, something to note and log. But his fingers lingered on the material longer than they should have, brushing texture, searching for an answer stitched into the seams.

You’re slipping, a voice in his head whispered.

He zipped the bag shut, sharp and final, and forced himself back a step. But the image wouldn’t leave—the woman in pink, sunlight spilling over her shoulder, the ghost made flesh.

He pulled a notebook from his pocket and scrawled with cramped impatience:

Pink dress. Garment bag. Hers.

Procedure, he told himself. But the truth pressed heavier.

Edward moved back toward the bed. The body was gone, carted off hours ago, but the imprint of the scene lingered, like an echo. He crouched low, running his gloved hand along the floorboards, under the nightstand, beneath the bed frame.

 His gloved hand brushed against something wedged in the shadows, square and solid.

Edward drew it out carefully—a small velvet ring box, scuffed on one corner as though it had been dropped, kicked aside, forgotten. Empty.

His chest pulled tight.

He stared at it longer than he should have, the silence of the room pressing heavier with each second. The box was nothing. Just another detail. But paired with the sundress, it was too much to write off as coincidence.

Edward tucked the box into an evidence bag and continued his examination. And then he found something else. A single chestnut-brown hair. Long. Female.

Edward pinched it carefully into a specimen envelope, his jaw tightening as he sealed it. Too clean, too neat. And yet—this.

He stood slowly, eyes sweeping again. The dresser top was spare—cufflinks, loose change, watch, a half-drained glass of wine. He lifted it, sniffed. Red, floral on the finish, but not just the grape tannins. Perfume. A faint trace of something sweet clinging beneath the alcohol, the kind that lingers on skin and transfers to glass.

His gaze shifted to the bathroom. Counter bare—razor, toothbrush, cologne. No lipstick tube, no compact, no trace of a woman’s hand. Nothing feminine.

Except the dress, the hair, the box. The perfume ghosting over wine.

He braced his palms against the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Hollow eyes. Jaw set.

You’re not here for her, he reminded himself. You’re here for McCarty.

But when he closed his eyes, he saw only the garment bag, pink fabric swaying faintly in memory. The woman turning her face toward the camera, knowing. Always knowing.

He snapped his notebook open, the pen scratching in fast, tight lines. Empty ring box. Wine glass laced with perfume. A single strand of brown hair. The pink dress—hers.

The words steadied him. Ink on paper. Facts. Evidence. Something to hold against the pull of memory.

Still, when he closed the notebook, his hand hovered on the cover, unwilling to put it away. As though shutting it meant admitting that he was already in too deep.

The villa’s silence pressed in again, deeper now, heavier. He stepped back into the hall, glancing once more toward the closet. For a moment, he almost turned back—almost unzipped the bag again, just to prove it was real.

Instead, he forced himself to the door. Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he stepped outside. The night air cooled his skin, but the heat inside him didn’t fade. Somewhere between procedure and obsession, he had crossed a line. And he knew he wasn’t going back.

He reached the gate, fishing for his phone to call in, when the hairs along his neck rose.

The villa was quiet behind him. Too quiet.

He turned, scanning the hedge that bordered the property. Nothing moved, but the silence wasn’t empty—it was weighted, as if the night itself were holding its breath.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the faintest glow—like the dying ember of a cigarette—wink out in the dark.

Edward froze, pulse thudding once, hard.

Then nothing. Just wind through the leaves, and the gravel shifting under his own boots.

He stayed there a beat longer, gaze locked on the hedge. But the silence never gave anything back.

Finally, he forced himself to turn away, jaw set, and walked into the waiting dark.

The hotel room was anonymous in the way only chain hotels could manage—cream walls, cheap art, a desk that smelled faintly of polish. Edward tossed his bag onto the chair and sat heavily on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on his knees.

The city hummed faintly outside the double-paned window. A different continent, a different timezone, but the same gnawing weight in his chest.

He pulled his notebook out again, flipped to a clean page, and scrawled the word ANOMALIES across the top. Beneath it, he forced himself to write the details from the villa one more time, his handwriting hard, angular, as if pressure alone could make the facts yield meaning.

Pink dress.

He stared at it longer than the rest.

The hotel’s desk lamp cast a muted glow, yellow against the pale cream walls, but it didn’t reach the corners of his mind. On the desk, the glass of water—half-filled courtesy of the room—caught the light like a prism. Edward slid open the minibar, fingers brushing past a neat row of tiny bottles, and pulled out a whiskey. The amber liquid poured slowly, thick against the edges of the glass, and he held it up, watching the city’s morning light fracture through it, turning buildings into molten streaks.

He didn’t drink. Couldn’t. Not yet. The whiskey slid back onto the desk, nudged an inch away, a small act of self-discipline against the pull of exhaustion and obsession.

The phone lay silent beside his notebook. No messages. No instructions. No reprieve. Just the unyielding quiet that pressed against him harder than the walls around the room.

He leaned back, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, trying to force each tension into neat compartments: McCarty. Suicide or homicide. Anomalies. Procedure. Each label felt like it might hold, like it could separate fact from the gnawing dread, but his mind refused compliance. Every angle, every detail, every line of evidence collapsed into a single, unyielding image: her turning toward the camera, eyes unwavering, as if she’d known he was watching all along, waiting for him to notice.

A hand dragged down his face, jaw tight, teeth clenched. He cursed under his breath, snapping the notebook shut like he could slam the thought away.

He wasn’t sleeping tonight. The city outside carried on, oblivious, but inside him, the case, the ghost, the pink dress, all throbbed with relentless insistence. Every shadow of Prague felt alive, whispering, watching, keeping time with the pulse hammering in his temples.

He pushed away from the table, the chair scraping against the floor, the sound too loud in the silence. The air felt stale, heavy with the weight of thoughts he couldn’t shake. He needed a reset. A shower. Something to strip the noise out of his head.

The bathroom light flickered on, sterile and white. Steam began to curl up as he twisted the handle all the way to hot. The pipes groaned like the building itself resented the hour. He braced both hands on the sink, staring at his reflection through the fogged mirror. Hollow eyes. Tight jaw. A man unraveling.

He stripped off his shirt and let it fall where it landed. The rest followed, until he stood bare under the harsh light, skin goose-pricked against the rising heat. He stepped into the shower, the water striking him hard, almost punishing. It should’ve grounded him—the sensation, the heat, the sound—but it didn’t.

Instead, her face cut through the steam. Not clearly, never clearly. Always half-shadow, half-memory. Chestnut half shrouding her face, the faint shimmer of a smile she wasn’t supposed to have. The pink dress. The turn of her shoulder just before she disappeared from view.

He pressed his palms flat to the tile, water cascading down his back, breath shallow. “Stop,” he muttered to himself, but the word dissolved into the hiss of the shower. The harder he tried to force her out, the sharper the image became. The tilt of her head. The way she moved through Prague like she already knew how people would follow her with their eyes.

He squeezed his eyes shut, tilting his face into the water, letting it burn. It wasn’t attraction—at least, that’s what he told himself. It was fixation. Obsession. A thread that wouldn’t break. The pink dress wasn’t about her—it was about the case, the mystery, the thing gnawing at the edge of his sanity. That’s what he wanted to believe.

But when he finally stepped out, dripping and raw, towel slung low on his hips, he caught himself glancing toward the bedroom window. Toward the city. Toward where she might be.

The water still ran behind him, pounding the tiles like a heartbeat he couldn’t quiet.

Chapter Text

The safe house breathed around her, narrow and suffocating in its simplicity. The walls carried the scent of the bakery below—yeast and woodsmoke mingling with something faintly sweet, a reminder that life outside still went on. Irina perched on the narrow bed, damp hair clinging to her neck, legs folded beneath her. The suitcase sat open at her feet, a careless scatter of silks, linens, and false passports that demanded attention she didn’t have the will to give.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, but the memory refused to dull. Emmett’s laugh—easy, warm, infuriatingly genuine—echoed in her mind. The way his hands had lingered on her hips, the heat of his body when he drew her close, the subtle brush of his lips against her temple. Two years of closeness, of laughter and quiet mornings in tangled sheets, snuffed out in the space of a breath, a single motion. The ease with which it had happened, the precision of it, made her stomach churn.

Not the act itself—it had been nothing she hadn’t done before—but the deception, the performance. How effortlessly she had let him believe she cared. How completely she had become the partner, the lover, the confidante. And worse—how much of it hadn’t been acting at all.

Her gaze fell on the ring, still glinting faintly on her finger, a tiny emblem of his devotion. She remembered the light in his eyes when she said yes, the care with which he touched her, the reverence with which he moved through the moments that followed. Every gesture had been pure, honest, human.

Irina pressed herself back against the headboard, staring at the cracked plaster above. Centuries pressed down on her in waves, pulling memories from the dark corners of her life. The first kill—French Revolution, a field tent, blood hot on her hands, and vomit until dawn. By the Civil War, she had stopped retching. Korea, Vietnam—she had stopped counting, stopped feeling the weight of each life taken, each consequence buried beneath her own discipline.

Faces crowded her thoughts, ragged and insistent: the Union soldier who kissed her before Antietam and never returned; the French doctor who whispered secrets in the catacombs; the Vietnamese girl she couldn’t save when flames swallowed the village. Names blurred, voices tangled, all of them pressed forward into this night, into this quiet apartment. And now, Emmett.

A sound slipped from her throat—half-laugh, half-sob. Men like him deserved worse. Smugglers, liars, arms dealers—the world was full of them. But his eyes as the drug took hold—wide, uncomprehending, betrayed—clung to her, etched into memory. Another ghost layered atop the growing pile she carried with her, each one a reminder of the cost of control, the cost of survival.

She rolled onto her side, pulling the thin blanket over her shoulder. Sleep would not come, yet she let her eyes close, letting darkness blur the edges of the room. Eventually, she would rise again. Another name, another face, another layer of camouflage. Each day the same, each night a rehearsal for the next.

The flat was too quiet. Too safe. And she hated it. The stillness pressed against her like a warning: out there, the world moved. Out there, danger waited. And she would move, always, because the line she walked had no end. It never would.

~~~~~~

Dawn crawled pale and thin across the rooftops. Irina sat cross-legged on the narrow bed, blanket pulled tight against her shoulders, and watched the city wake in slow, reluctant breaths. She hadn’t slept—only nodded, eyes closing against the parade of ghosts that never left: Emmett’s laugh, Jasper’s smile, a French lullaby hummed under blackout curtains. Time folded strange around her, decades collapsing into the thin walls of a two-room flat above a bakery.

She had told herself she’d move tomorrow. Burn the name, torch the life, be someone else by dusk. But a small, poisonous truth had lodged in her chest the night before: maybe she hadn’t looked at that Memphis camera by accident. Maybe, for the first time in centuries, she had wanted to be seen.

The phone cut the silence like a blade.

She let it ring once. Twice. A third time before she lifted it, fingers suddenly clumsy on the plastic. She didn’t speak.

“Jane,” the voice drawled, slow and almost amused. “It’s been a long time.”

The name landed like an accusation. Her grip on the receiver tightened. “Don’t call me that.”

Charlie Swan’s chuckle came soft and dry. “Ah, but that’s who you were when I knew you. Jane Whitmore. My finest subject.”

Her stomach churned. “You didn’t know me. You dissected me.”

“Semantics,” he said. “Don’t sound ungrateful. You’re still walking around, aren’t you? None of the others survived half as long under protocol. You— you thrived.”

She closed her eyes, forced a breath through teeth. “What do you want, Charlie?”

“Just checking in.” His tone lifted like a man catching up with an old friend. “Though I have to say—you’ve gotten sloppy. McCarty was a loud man; his silence is louder. You’ve left ripples.”

Her nails dug crescents into her palm until she tasted metal.

“And your admirer,” Charlie went on. “A rookie—green as spring grass—chasing your shadow across Europe. Memphis. That camera. You let him see you, didn’t you? You wanted to be found.”

“I don’t care what you think,” she said, voice flat.

“Oh, I don’t need you to care. Just thought you’d like to know—he’s tenacious. Reminds me of someone.” He paused, like a man savoring the knife’s twist. “Reminds me of you.

“Stay out of my way.”

Charlie’s laugh was soft and dangerous. “Darling, I never was in your way. I built the road you’re still running on.”

The line clicked dead.

For a moment she simply listened to the silence on the other end—then the room erupted. Irina slammed the receiver down so hard the bell inside clattered, bright and obscene in the small flat. The sound hung, too loud, an accusation of its own.

She stood, breath ragged, legs trembling. The rage that Charlie aroused was not new; it sat in her like a muscle, taut and ready. But this—this suggestion that she had been seen on purpose—opened something raw and dangerous. She wanted to tear at it, to rip it out and show the wound.

Her hands moved before thought. The glass lamp perched on the nightstand went first—grasped, hurled, and it exploded against the far wall in a spray of glittering shards. The lamp’s ceramic base bounced and skidded, the bulb cracked in a spiderweb and died. She didn’t stop. The next thing she found was a wooden chair; she shoved it, drove it into the plaster. Wood splintered with a hard, sanitizing crack. The room filled with noise—shards, thuds, the smaller, sweeter sound of things unmade.

When the violence bled out, the apartment looked like the aftermath of a storm. Glass lay scattered, edges catching morning light like teeth. The lamp’s broken shade lay like a pale, useless moon. Her breath came ragged. Her heart hammered at tempo with the ringing silence left behind.

She crouched and picked up a shard of glass from the floor, its edge catching the low light. Fury moved through her before thought could form. She dragged it hard along the inside of her forearm, a single, clean line. The sting was sharp and honest. Blood welled up fast, dark and hot, spilling over skin that had forgotten how to bruise.

For a heartbeat, she felt human. The pain, the warmth, the mess of it — it was something real, something earned.

Then the wound began to close. The blood thinned, the skin pulled tight, the red faded back to pale. Within minutes, there was nothing left. No mark. No proof. Just smooth, unbroken skin.

Her chest tightened with something darker than grief. She stared at her arm, at the place where the cut had been, waiting for it to ache. It didn’t. The body refused to hold the pain, refused to remember it.

A bitter laugh caught in her throat and died there. What was the point of breaking things, of breaking herself, when the world — her world — refused to stay broken? She pressed her hand over the healed skin, feeling nothing but the ghost of heat. The fury returned, colder now, heavier.

Even her wounds abandoned her.

Then—reflex, fury, something between disgust and self-loathing—she yanked Emmett’s ring from her finger. The band slipped off with a cool whisper and she flung it with all the force in her arm. It skittered across the floor and clinked against a fragment of ceramic, spinning once, twice, and came to rest under the dresser, unseen in the shadow.

She stood, chest pounding, and faced the darkened window. Her reflection stared back at her, hair loose, tears tracing tired rivers down her cheeks, eyes wide and hard. The face in the glass was a stranger—something kept too long in a museum, polished and brittle. For a second pure and terrible disgust flared—at herself, at the ease with which she’d cared for him, and at the monstrous, efficient motion that had ended him.

She let out a sound—half-scream, half-laugh—that tore out of her like a ripped curtain. It sounded small in the room, ridiculous and lonely. She pressed both palms to the glass until the cold bled into her skin and found herself, for the first time in a long while, unable to be entirely certain whose face she saw.

She should have walked then. Bag half-packed, passports within reach, cash stacked like the neat lies she carried. She could have run fifteen minutes and disappeared into Warsaw fog, into anonymity. It would have been easy. Clean.

Instead, she bent and fumbled under the dresser. Her fingers found the ring where it had landed, warm from the night and slightly scuffed. She held it a moment, the weight a very private, dangerous thing, and slid it back onto the finger that had known his touch.

She did not slip it on because she fancied a future with the man she’d just killed. She slid it on because it was honest in one small way: Emmett had been real in his care. He had not been monstrous in his private life. Keeping the ring—keeping this tiny, absurd token—was a choice to carry a shard of that truth with her, to mark that she kept certain lines even as she crossed others.

Irina straightened. The room around her was a ruin of her own making, glass glittering like frost. Her hand trembled, not from the pain that had sealed itself away, but from the exhaustion and the strange, slick grief that never had a shape.

She stood in the wreckage and listened to the city breathing under the bakery’s steady clatter. Charlie’s voice—old and peeling—hung in her ears. Sloppy, he’d said. Maybe he was right. Maybe she had wanted to be seen. Maybe she had been tired enough to let the world poke holes in the armor.

She picked up the suitcase, shoved in clothes with a tired, mechanical thoroughness, not because she intended to flee but because movement was habitual and the act of packing kept her from thinking too hard. The little flat smelled of yeast and smoke and shattered things.

She paused by the doorway, hand on the suitcase, and looked back one last time at the small chaos she had made. The broken glass still glittered in the gray light creeping through the blinds, sharp little reminders of her loss of control. The overturned chair leaned against the wall like a warning she’d scrawled in her own hand. For a moment, she nearly turned back—nearly decided to clean it up, to erase the evidence that she had cracked. But the impulse passed, and she closed the door softly behind her, sealing the wreckage inside.

Prague was awake. Trucks jostled over cobblestones, spilling diesel fumes into the morning air. A tram bell clanged faintly at the end of the street, its wires humming overhead. The scent of yeast and butter floated from the bakery downstairs, a cruelly domestic note beneath the ragged pulse of her thoughts. Irina shifted the suitcase higher on her hip and walked quickly, her boots clicking in time with her heartbeat. To the neighbors opening shutters, to the shopkeeper sweeping his stoop, she was nobody. Just another tenant leaving early, maybe for the train station, maybe for good. They didn’t look twice.

She walked until her legs ached with a restlessness she couldn’t empty out. Each street she crossed seemed narrower, pressed with shadows; each turn pulled her deeper into the city’s veins. At last she ducked into a café tucked between a pawnshop and a printmaker’s, the kind of place where tourists rarely lingered. The door chimed, brass and dull, as she slipped inside.

The café smelled of strong tea and burnt sugar. Its windows were fogged from kettles steaming on the counter, condensation dripping down to meet the chalked menu taped to the glass. Only a handful of tables were taken—an old man with a crossword, two girls sharing a pastry, a courier nursing coffee between deliveries. None of them looked up as she crossed the room.

She chose the farthest table, where the wall outlet hung crooked and the light fixture buzzed faintly above. The suitcase she left at her feet; the laptop she slid onto the scarred wooden surface. Its casing still glittered with glass flecks from the night before, tiny reminders clinging like burrs. She brushed them off absently and opened the machine. The screen’s glow caught the planes of her face, bleaching her eyes to pale silver.

Her fingers fell into motion before her mind caught up. Code spilled across the screen, command after command, slicing through firewalls like silk unraveling. Systems opened one by one, their defenses old, brittle, familiar. She tunneled deeper, teeth clenched, until the access log bloomed to life: a graveyard of accounts, long dormant. Dead names. Ghosts she had abandoned years ago.

~~~~~~

The timestamp pulsed fresh. Logged in less than an hour ago.

Her lips curved into something sharp, not quite a smile. She scrawled the username on the back of the café’s receipt, underlined it twice, and slipped the paper beneath her saucer. Whoever it was, they were moving where she moved, chasing the same corridors of silence.

She tunneled deeper. The satellite network resisted, slower than the rest, but it yielded. The map unfurled across the screen, pulling focus east. Prague to the villa she’d left behind. Static sharpened into lines of roof tile, courtyard gravel, pale stucco washed with sunlight.

At first glance, empty. Then—movement.

A man. Tall, lean, cutting across the courtyard with the calm precision of someone who knew exactly what he was looking for. His clothes were dark, unmarked. No badge. No hesitation. He didn’t move like press or police. He moved like a knife wrapped in cloth, every step measured, every pause deliberate.

She leaned closer, her breath fogging the laptop screen. The feed caught him lingering at the terrace rail—her terrace rail—where she’d stood with Emmett’s glass in her hand, the memory still bitter. He was still, head tilted, as if weighing the air for what it remembered. He was reading her, and worse, he understood.

Her pulse quickened. Not fear—recognition.

The café clattered on around her, spoons scraping, chairs dragging, water hissing into kettles. But the world narrowed to the screen and the figure crossing her shadow.

She closed the laptop slowly, like shuttering a window against a storm. The light winked out, leaving only the hum of the fixture overhead and the taste of iron on her tongue.

The tea beside her had gone cold. The receipt under its saucer was already curling at the edges, ink bleeding faintly where moisture had touched.

Irina sat back, hands clasped tight in her lap, and stared at nothing.

The city outside spun as it always had—oblivious, alive, indifferent. But she knew. The game had shifted. They had found her.

~~~~~~

The room was dark except for the glow of the laptop screen. Edward hunched forward, elbows braced on his knees, exhaustion clawing at him but held at bay by the sharper pull of anticipation. The satellite feed blinked to life, grainy at first, then sharpening as the archive loaded. Exterior angles only. No interiors. No sound. Enough to watch, enough to know.

He fast-forwarded through hours of nothing: empty courtyards, restless shadows crossing the stucco walls. Then—movement.

A figure approached the villa. A woman.

Edward froze the frame and dragged it closer. The details were muted but unmistakable: slim build, a blue dress that swayed just enough to catch the eye, purposeful stride, every step measured. Not a housekeeper, not a tourist—someone who belonged nowhere but here.

His pulse hammered against his ribs.

An hour later, Emmett McCarty appeared—swaggering, unguarded, the villa swallowing him whole. Edward skipped ahead, the seconds bleeding into hours, until the woman emerged again, suitcase in hand, leaving without a backward glance.

The timestamp burned into his mind. That night. McCarty’s mysterious death. But Edward had seen the villa. The faint impressions in the sheets, the careful stacking of dinner plates, the wine glasses with traces of perfume he hadn’t expected. S

He scrubbed the video back to the beginning, frame by frame, replaying the sequence until his eyes burned. Arrival. McCarty. Her exit with the suitcase. Each replay added urgency, each pause a silent demand: who were you, and what had you taken?

He pulled a legal pad closer, scribbling notes:

Memphis—airport CCTV, 11:42 PM.

Prague—villa, 02:13 arrival / 04:57 departure.

Alias? Ghost?

His pen tapped the timestamp like a hammer. The timing was too precise. Too clean. She had left with a secret, and Edward suspected he knew what it was.

The feed cycled to static. He sat back, staring at his reflection in the darkened screen. The half-empty glass of scotch beside him waited, but he didn’t drink. The adrenaline and tension were enough.

He keyed in every traceable avenue: flight logs out of Prague, rental cars within a ten-mile radius, hotel registries cross-checked against passports. Each click, each search, revealed nothing—she had been careful. Too careful.

Edward rubbed at his jaw, forcing his eyes back to the footage. Rewind. Pause. Zoom. Her silhouette sliding out of the side gate, suitcase rolling behind her. The body still in the bed. Cause unknown, they said. He knew better.

Still frames were pulled, cropped, labeled. He froze on her shadow in the courtyard—the tilt of her head toward the cameras, as if she had known someone would be watching. A flicker of recognition ran cold across his skin.

He scribbled another note: McCarty = murder? Poison? Subject present at time of death. Premeditated? Long-term infiltration?

His hand tightened around the pen. The notebook closed with a sharp snap, as though the motion alone could lock the truth inside. But it wouldn’t stay caged.

He ran the satellite feed again, slower this time, frame by frame, until he caught it: a cab waiting at the curb, reflected in the boutique glass across the street. A silhouette ducked inside, the suitcase following. The wheel shifted, exposing a partial plate number. Enough.

Edward froze it, enlarged the frame until the numbers bled into grain, then typed it into every accessible database. Ten minutes later, a registered cab out of Prague Central appeared. Route logs confirmed: villa to city center. No other fares. Drop-off at Prague hlavní nádraží.

He dove into the station’s records: departures, ticket manifests, hundreds of names. He narrowed the window, searching for anomalies. Then: Leah Black. Paid in cash. Passport clean. Destination: Warsaw.

Edward exhaled sharply. She hadn’t vanished. She hadn’t become another ghost lost to smoke and shadows. She had left a trail, and now he had a name, a city, a path to follow.

He whispered it, tasting the syllables: Leah Black.

The legal pad waited, empty pages eager for more. He leaned forward, fingers poised, pulling every thread he could on Warsaw. The hunt had just begun.

Edward tucked the last of the station manifests into his jacket pocket, each folded sheet a breadcrumb leading toward her. The cab had dropped him on the far side of the terminal, far enough to avoid idle curiosity but close enough to feel the hum of human motion—the rolling luggage, the clack of heels on stone, the faint whistle of departure bells.

He didn’t pause to take it in. Each step toward the platform carried the weight of purpose. He moved through the crowd with measured attention, scanning faces without seeing them, cataloging the rhythm of the station, the cadence of routine, while every fiber of his being pulsed with a single question: where is she now?

The train waited, diesel-scented and humming quietly, its polished carriages gleaming under the harsh overhead lights. Edward slung his bag over one shoulder, feeling its familiar weight—the notebooks, the laptop, the pen that had scrawled her name so obsessively through the night. He traced the edge of the carriage door with a gloved hand before stepping inside.

The interior smelled faintly of polish and old upholstery. Leather seats creaked under pressure. Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzzed softly. He chose a window seat, close to the aisle, where he could see who entered and who left, where he could track shadows and movement as easily as a hawk on the wing.

As the train lurched forward, Edward pressed his forehead against the cool glass, eyes scanning the darkened rails and the station receding behind him. The city lights blurred into smears of gold and white, mirrored in the reflection of his own bloodshot eyes.

He opened the laptop again, though the screen offered nothing new. The manifest, the cab route, the timestamps—each digit etched into his memory. He tapped the keys almost absentmindedly, a rhythm to steady the pulse that threatened to fracture into obsession.

Outside, the countryside rolled past in muted swaths of shadow and light. Edward’s mind refused to rest, replaying her movements: the suitcase gliding across the villa’s courtyard, the tilt of her head toward the camera, the slow, precise step into the waiting cab. Each motion, each decision, a clue layered with intent.

He reached for the notebook, turning to a fresh page. The pen hovered, then moved in sharp, angular strokes:

Train → Warsaw. Leah Black. Passport clean. Cash only. Timeline critical. Intercept possible.

He paused, chest tightening. For the first time since the feed had loaded, he allowed himself a cold, precise calculation. She wasn’t running blindly. Every step was deliberate, each move covering multiple contingencies. She’d anticipated pursuit. She had always anticipated pursuit.

The carriage rattled on its rails, and Edward leaned back, eyes narrowing. He traced a route across the map of Warsaw, noting station exits, streets likely to be monitored, hotels within a short radius. Each possibility narrowed the circle, each guess a step closer to interception.

The sun had not yet risen when the first pale light crept over the horizon, brushing the dark fields with the faint promise of morning. Edward’s hand did not waver. He did not close the laptop. He did not relax. He watched the city approach like a predator sizing its prey.

Somewhere ahead, she waited. Somewhere ahead, Warsaw held the next chapter of the chase. And Edward knew one immutable truth: she had not intended to be caught, and yet, somehow, she had left herself open to him.

The train hummed, wheels clicking against rails, carrying him closer to the unknown. And Edward Masen—exhausted, restless, and impossibly alive with anticipation—could not look away.

Chapter Text

Charlie Swan sat hunched over the desk, the harsh glare of the microscope bleaching his skin to a brittle parchment. His fingers, thin and knuckled, trembled as they adjusted the lens, the twitch of frustration coming automatically—years of precision now betrayed by a body that insisted on decay. Each click of the focusing knob was measured, careful, almost ritualistic. Every joint protested, cracking like fragile glass, a reminder that time, even for someone who had stolen it, remained undefeated. He had outlived peers, rivals, and every handler who had once doubted him. He had been proven right, yes—but at a cost written deep in every aching bone, every trembling hand, every faint scar the years refused to erase.

The vial beside him caught the light, pulsing faintly red as though it had a heartbeat of its own. Her blood. Jane Whitmore, as she had been then—his first subject, his obsession, the anomaly that had survived everything. Fifty years had passed since he had stolen that sample, yet it still called to him, whispered in the dark corners of his mind with the same siren insistence.

He uncapped a syringe, fingers surprisingly steady despite their age, and drew the tiniest amount from the vial. Without hesitation, he pressed it into the vein of his forearm. Fire ignited in the tissue, threading through veins too frail to contain it, burning, alive. His teeth clenched against the familiar jolt, waiting for the clarity that always followed—the fog of age peeling back, thoughts aligning like gears turning with perfect synchronization. The world sharpened. Every detail snapped into focus. Precision returned, at least for a moment, to a mind long habituated to calculation and control.

The burn receded, but the reminder of mortality lingered. His heart stuttered, a cruel echo that all the stolen vitality in the world could not erase. The serum had bought him decades, but decades were never enough. Even as he felt the familiar euphoria of heightened thought, he knew—every pulse, every ache, every tremor—that the scaffolding of his stolen life was crumbling beneath him.

Charlie turned slowly toward the corkboard that dominated the wall behind him, a chaotic constellation of photographs, red string, and yellowed files. Dead center, pinned with precise cruelty, was the most recent image: Prague, yesterday or the day before. A woman stepping out of a cab, head turned just enough to reveal the curve of her profile. Her face was unmistakable, haunting in its permanence. Not a line, not a shadow of age. The same face he had studied under stark laboratory lights decades ago. The same face that had survived death on his table.

He inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. She hadn’t aged. Not a day.

A sneer curled the corners of his mouth, catching in a thin line that might once have been a smile. “You thought you could run forever, Jane,” he rasped, the voice low, cracked, a rasp that carried both threat and dark amusement. “But you left a trail.”

Charlie sank back into his chair, the weight settling with deliberate care. The ache in his chest receded, replaced by something colder, something precise: satisfaction. Careless now. She had left her tracks, her fingerprints on the world, and he would follow them. The chase thrilled him in a way only a lifetime of obsession could: she would not escape. Not this time. Not from him.

His gaze drifted to the bank of lab monitors humming behind him, the steady pulse of machines syncing with his own. Each screen, each flicker of light, seemed to echo the heartbeat of a life he would claim. He pushed to his feet, muscles groaning in protest, and gripped the edge of the desk until the tremor in his legs steadied. The screens blinked and shifted under his practiced hands, grids of data and surveillance feeds opening like doors to places she could not hide. Every piece of technology at his disposal was an extension of his will, a net tightening, drawing her closer whether she knew it or not.

Charlie’s eyes burned with the thrill of the hunt, the certainty that centuries of preparation, of study, of obsession, had led to this moment. She had been careless. And now, finally, he had the tools to punish that carelessness, to reclaim what had always belonged to him. The lab hummed around him, alive with the pulse of life he had stolen and manipulated for decades, and Charlie Swan stepped fully into that hunger, letting it consume the space between thought and action.

The pursuit was beginning again—and this time, there would be no escape.

On one screen, the grainy satellite feed of Emmett McCarty’s villa looped silently. On another, Edward Masen hunched over his hotel desk in Prague, bent over a chaos of files, the glow from his laptop sharpening his features into hard edges.

Charlie adjusted the dial, zooming closer. The likeness struck him—not in the face, though the bone structure had its echoes, but in the manner. The stubborn set of the jaw, the restless hands, the way he lingered too long on details that didn’t matter until suddenly they did.

Just like his father.

Edward Masen, Senior. Charlie remembered him vividly: too curious for his own good, too clever to leave certain stones unturned. Charlie had steered him away more than once—redirecting reports, burying files, closing doors before they could open. He’d been careful, patient, shaping the elder Masen’s career like a craftsman filing sharp edges dull. But hunger had always burned behind his eyes, a hunger that mirrored what Charlie saw now in the son.

The younger Masen hadn’t inherited his father’s years, but he had inherited that hunger. And hunger was dangerous.

“You should’ve stayed in Washington, boy,” Charlie rasped at the screen, voice low, half amusement, half warning. “Ghost cases are meant to stay closed.”

He tapped a key. Another window flared to life: live surveillance from Prague Central. Edward moved with a quiet vigilance—checking his surroundings, cataloging exits, scanning faces without seeming to. He wasn’t polished yet, not instinctive the way veterans were, but he was learning. His focus was sharp, his steps deliberate.

Useful.

Charlie’s lips thinned. The boy was closer than he realized. Following her. Following him.

A faint chuckle broke from Charlie’s chest, dry and rasping. Fate had delivered him another Masen, green and reckless, yes—but a pawn worth moving across the board. Not a threat, not yet. But a tool. And if played right, a wedge to pry her out of hiding.

He saved the footage, encrypted it, then switched feeds again. This time the morning light spilled across the Warsaw-bound train, the camera catching Edward as he slipped into a second-class car. Even in grain, Charlie could see the tension in his shoulders, the calculated awareness of someone who knew he was chasing more than paperwork.

Charlie leaned forward, fingers gliding across the keys. A minor adjustment: a false maintenance warning in the onboard system, nothing more than a hairline crack in the data. On Edward’s tablet, the glitch appeared. He paused mid-step, frowning, recalculating, irritated but alert.

“Good,” Charlie murmured. “Learn to doubt what you see.”

He tapped again, rerouting a conductor’s feed, creating a blind spot near the rear exit. From Edward’s vantage, it would read as nothing—a gap he might miss or misinterpret. Charlie sat back, watching closely as the boy noticed, hesitated, adjusted.

He drummed his fingers against the desk, eyes narrowed, studying the controlled frustration in Edward’s face, the way his jaw flexed under pressure. Still raw, still far from the level of the father. But persistent. And persistence was useful.

“Don’t get too clever too fast,” Charlie whispered at the screens. “I’ll set the rhythm. You just keep dancing.”

The hum of the control room filled the silence as Charlie leaned back, steepling his hands. Edward was in motion, chasing shadows without knowing whose hand had placed them. And somewhere beyond the reach of these feeds, Leah Black was moving too—the same face, the same blood, the same impossible girl who had haunted him for half a century.

Charlie’s smile was cold, thin, without joy. Edward would flush her out. He would follow the scent until it led to her door. And when it did, Charlie would be waiting.

The carriage rocked with a soft, habitual lurch as the train ate another mile of darkness. Edward sat rigid in his seat, laptop balanced on his knee, the steady hum beneath him a metronome for a mind that wouldn’t find rest. His notes were a mess of half-formed thoughts and clipped observations—aliases crossed out, leads circled, a single name fenced in ink: Leah Black. He kept coming back to it, as if the repetition might burn the letters into something truer.

He refreshed the feed again. Most of the camera mesh was low-grade: fisheye lenses and timestamped metadata that fuzzed at the edges. He scrolled, rewound, scrubbed until the video juddered. Hours passed in gray frames—empty corridors, the same fluorescent light droning on—until a flicker caught him like a pinprick of light in a blind field.

Rear exit, car six. The feed blinked once, twice. Then a blank of darkness: a clean, absolute blind spot.

He straightened, felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand, and scanned the compartment as if the answer might be sitting opposite him. A man slept with his mouth open against the glass, a woman fanned herself with a Polish tabloid, a conductor moved through the cars with the slow economy of someone who had done this route a thousand times. To them, the world was ordinary. To Edward, every ordinary thing might be a seam to pry open.

He replayed the clip. The dark slit held a suggestion more than an image—just a sliver of motion against black, a shape that might have been a hand, a suitcase, a shadow passing. Someone, somewhere, had obscured that angle. Were they clumsy or careful? Glitch or intention?

He typed a short note into his tablet—Rear exit—possible activity? Glitch?—and then tried to steady his breathing. Facts first. Trackable leads. Leah Black: paid in cash, train to Warsaw. That was a beginning, and beginnings were everything.

Still, the blanked frame scratched at the edge of his focus, an itch he could not reach. He forced himself into routine—run the feed through noise filters, cross-check feed health with the operator logs, ping base nodes for packet loss. The diagnostics returned ordinary errors: power blips, compressed bandwidth, line noise. All mundane. All capable of being manufactured.

When the train slowed for the next stop, a dull clanging announced arrivals and departures. Edward pressed his forehead to the cool window and watched the platform yaw open: umbrellas, bulky coats, an elderly couple deliberating over a map. Nothing remarkable. He allowed himself one scan too many, the sort of peripheral glance that had become instinct.

And then—blue. A flash of pale fabric, a sundress catching sodium light at the far end of the platform. It was a motion no camera had properly captured, a human note against the monotony, gone before the eye could summon a second blink. For a stupid second his chest lifted with the hope of proof.

He slammed the tablet awake, fumbled to load an external camera angle, but car six remained a black hole. He toggled to adjacent feeds, to station cams, boutique reflections—his fingers moving fast enough that they trembled. The boutique glass offered nothing useful, just a smear of movement and a reflection that bent numbers into nonsense. The blind spot was still blind.

“Keep it tight,” he told himself, the voice small. He could feel the trap snap inward if he moved too soon. If this blue dress was real and not the trick his brain wanted to play, jumping off at the next station could mean scattering the trail. If it was a plant—a lure—then getting off might be the moment the net closed.

The doors sighed; the platform emptied and filled. Bodies ebbed and flowed. Edward rose halfway, then sank back, knuckles white where they gripped the seat. His jaw ached from the tension.

The train pulled away, the platform shrinking, the blue flash swallowed by distance. He felt the pull of disappointment quick and sharp, closer to anger than regret. He had let his instincts run ahead of his discipline. He told himself that would not happen again.

He did not yet know that the dark spot had been engineered. That somewhere in a room of stale coffee and humming monitors a man with an old hunger had nudged a feed, the faintest of digital lies slipped between frames to make a hunter doubt. Charlie Swan watched Edward’s reflex like a man watching a moth circle a lamp—predictable, pretty, useful—and smiled without warmth.

In Edward’s compartment, the hum of the carriage swallowed the last echoes of the platform. He reopened the laptop and logged the blind spot, timestamp and node ID neatly appended. He tightened his list, adding contingency: local CCTV at the next three stops; taxi logs within thirty minutes of arrival; hotel check-ins paid in cash. He felt the familiar, brittle pull that had followed him from file to file since Memphis—the sense that a trail existed and that if he kept at it, it would not hold out forever.

Outside, fields blurred into a smudge of night. Inside, his screen glowed, a cold pool of light in which he drowned and resurfaced. Somewhere up ahead, Warsaw waited. Somewhere up ahead, Leah Black was a name he could almost touch. He typed it again, slower this time: Leah. Black. He underlined it, then leaned back and let the train carry him toward whatever came next.

From his vantage, Charlie didn’t need the pale spill of the train car’s dim light to see Edward unraveling; the monitors did the work for him. Grainy pixels betrayed every twitch of the boy’s jaw, every restless, habitual motion of his hands as he scrolled, annotated, and rewound—little spasms of insistence that read on Charlie’s screens like a confession.

Like father, like son.

Charlie settled deeper into the leather chair, letting the feed’s glow carve hollows into his face. Around him the room hummed: servers breathed, hard drives thudded, and an orchestra of old and illicit tech stitched together a net that reached into cities and sleeping rooms. He had eyes everywhere now—even across a train cutting through the Polish black—because he had made them. He had always made things.

Edward Masen Jr. tried, in the way boys of good lineage learned to try, to wear that Masen steel—tight jaw, careful posture, the practiced professionalism of someone newly made brave by credentials. But the cracks showed through the polish. The haunted tilt in his reflection, the impatient speed of his metadata scrubbing, the way he let hope bloom at the sight of a blue dress—Charlie had watched that hunger before in a younger man with the same name. He had watched it burn bright, and then he had redirected it. He had closed doors quietly, buried files, rerouted curiosity into safer channels. He had taught the Bureau what it was sometimes too polite to admit: not all fires must be fanned.

A thin smile tightened Charlie’s mouth. Time had whetted his appetite, not softened it. He tapped a fingertip absently against the armrest, the sound nearly lost beneath the machine’s hum. He could feed the boy breadcrumbs—small, credible nudges that kept him in motion without letting him touch the thing at the center. The art was in the measure: too much and the boy might sense the hand; too little and the boy might stall and spoil the hunt.

The beauty, Charlie thought, was that the Bureau believed it held the reins. They didn’t see the wires threaded inside the leather. They didn’t know about the gentle, surgical redirections he could make with a keystroke. He saw. He always had. He saw the architecture of a chase, could name every beam and bolt by heart.

His gaze dropped to the corkboard by his elbow, to a neat line of his own handwriting—Sr.—too close. Redirect successful. Beneath it he wrote another line with the same slow deliberation: Jr.—pattern repeating. Pressure applied.

He let the ink dry, then turned his attention back to the screen where Edward’s reflection leaned too near the glass, the train’s motion making the image stutter. The boy’s shoulders hunched as if the screen itself might offer an answer. Charlie watched him breathe, the small, human rhythm under the digital siege. The urge to interfere pressed at his ribs—an old, familiar muscle—but patience was its own weapon.

“Spiral, boy,” he whispered, not unkindly. “Spiral all the way to her.”

He allowed the feed to run a little longer, letting the camera show the young agent’s fidget, his note-taking, the tiny adjustments that meant a mind was both working and fraying. When the stream gave into static, Charlie did not move at once. He sat with the dark like a man savoring an aftertaste. The servers’ red LEDs pulsed at his feet, slow and sure—the heartbeat of a machine that had heard every secret and kept every promise.

The years weighed on him in ways the serum could not entirely mask. The injection gave cogency to his thought, temporary scaffolding to a body that complained with each deliberate movement. Each dose bought him hours of lucidity and a sharper eye for pattern; each dose also reminded him how finite his lease on time was. A whisper of mortality underwrote everything now. It made the stakes clearer. It tuned his patience into something honed and terrible.

He stood and moved to the bank of monitors, fingers trailing over keyboards with a tenderness reserved for tools that had served him well. The image of Jane—Bella—stepped across his mind like a litany. Fifty years of study, of failure, of stolen samples and hushed transfers; her face under his scope; her blood in a vial he kept like contraband. The memory pulled at him now like a furnace flame: she had always been the thing he could not hold, the experiment that slipped and made him ask more dangerous questions. She had woken on his table once, and he had lied that she died. For her he had rewritten reports, greased the cogs of careers, and burned away anything that might have followed her trail away from him.

Now she had the temerity—after centuries—to be careless: Prague, the villa, a suitcase in a camera frame. She had left her footprint and someone had peered into the mud.

Charlie’s lips curved into something that was not quite a smile. He closed his eyes for a breath, letting the memory of the syringe’s burn flicker behind his lids. He had extended the reach of his life by theft and science. He had stretched minutes into decades. The serum had been a loan from fate, and fate expected interest.

“You can’t hide from me forever, Jane,” he said softly, the words more for his own steadiness than for anyone who might hear them. He imagined her as she’d been in the lab—defiant, infuriatingly intact—and tasted the old hunger that always rose with that image. “Not from me.”

A brittle laugh scraped loose, sharp as broken glass. He tapped a final command into the console, shelving the feeds and setting traps like netting along the probable routes Edward would take. He would not be lazy. He would not be hurried. He would orchestrate, patient as rot, until the boy finished what he had started.

“You were made for me,” he murmured into the low light, a vow without mercy. “You always were.”

The servers answered in their steady, obedient pulse. In the dark, Charlie Swan let the words hang, a promise and a threat braided into one. He had waited decades for a thread that could be pulled taut enough to show him where she hid. The thread was taut now. The boy chased. The machines watched. And Charlie, who had taught himself to steal time from death, would make sure the endgame was his alone.

Chapter Text

Irina’s eyelids fluttered beneath the thin blanket, the low hum of the Warsaw street outside filtering through the cracked window. The safe house was quiet, sterile, the kind of place meant only to exist in passing, but her mind had other plans. Sleep had never been merciful, and tonight it plunged her into the oldest wound she carried.

The dream began in darkness, broken only by the flicker of candlelight. She knew the room instantly: rough-hewn beams, the scent of woodsmoke, the small table she had scrubbed each morning until it shone. Her sanctuary. Her home. And there—by the hearth—sat the boy. Eight years old, small hands working a wooden toy, hair falling into his eyes. He was laughing, that sound she had once thought she could live on forever. The son she had raised though he was never hers by blood, the child whose heartbeat had once been the anchor of her immortal years.

Her chest swelled as she reached for him, but the warmth broke like glass. The door slammed open. The air shifted.

The man came.

He was older than she remembered, weathered by time, but the cruelty in his expression was untouched. A soldier’s bulk filled the doorway, shadow stretching across the walls. His boots struck the floor like hammer blows, each one jarring, each one vibrating through her bones. The candlelight trembled as if recoiling from him.

“You think you can protect him?” His voice was coarse, laced with the same mocking cadence she had heard that night, the one that still rotted her dreams centuries later. He dragged his fingers across the table, nails scraping, until it rattled against the plaster wall. “Little baby. Little boy. Little mortal. All of it—ashes.”

Irina tried to move, tried to place herself between him and the child, but her body betrayed her. Her limbs were heavy, frozen by the weight of the dream. Her throat strained but no sound came. She was forced to stand there as he prowled closer, each step pressing into her like a blade through her chest.

The boy looked up, wide-eyed. His breath caught. The toy slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.

“You’ve loved him, haven’t you?” the man sneered, crouching low, his breath foul and hot in the dim room. “Clutching that tiny heart against your chest, thinking you mattered. Pathetic.”

The boy screamed. The sound tore through the dream, a sound so sharp it seemed to rip at Irina’s immortal heart. She lunged, straining against invisible chains, every fiber of her being screaming to reach him. But the man’s hand closed like iron around the child’s fragile body. The scream broke into silence.

The world tilted. The warmth fled.

Irina collapsed to her knees, fingers brushing the rough planks of the floor where the boy had stood. Candlelight flickered weakly against her hands, mocking her with its fragility. She could not breathe. Her vision blurred as the soldier’s laughter echoed—low, cruel, triumphant—carving itself into her marrow. All her centuries of strength, all her skill, all her endurance—useless. She had been helpless once, and in her dreams she was helpless still.

She woke with a jolt, gasping. The gray light of Warsaw seeped through the curtains, pale and cold, pressing against the windows like a reminder that the world outside still moved, indifferent to her torment. Tears streamed hot down her cheeks, soaking into the blanket. Her chest heaved. Her fingers curled tight into the fabric as if she could claw the boy back through the weave.

The silence of the safe house mocked her.

Even now, centuries later, the memory lived inside her like an infection that never healed. She could still hear the boy’s laughter. Still hear his scream. Still feel the emptiness that followed. It had forged her. It had taught her that nothing was safe, nothing was sacred, that cruelty would always find the innocent unless someone stood against it.

Her phone chimed, breaking the stillness. The sound was harsh, clinical. She wiped her face with the heel of her hand and reached for it. The screen glowed with a single message, encrypted and direct from the firm.

Target: Alec Shaw. Location: Minsk, Belarus. Specialty: sex trafficking. Immediate action recommended.

Her stomach twisted at the name, at the details that followed. Another predator. Another man who thought his power could shield him from consequence. The dream lingered like smoke, and with it came the sharp, cold clarity she knew too well.

She rose, the blanket sliding from her body, and crossed to the counter where her laptop waited. Her hands shook once before she steadied them on the keys. She worked quickly, efficiently, piercing through Shaw’s digital armor—transactions, burner phones, falsified passports. A map unfolded across her screen, Belarus lit with pins marking routes and border crossings. One payment stood out: a wire to a guard at the frontier. Confirmation. He was still moving girls. Still feeding his empire of cruelty.

Irina’s jaw tightened until it hurt.

Her suitcase was already half-packed in the corner. She dragged it out, snapping items into place: weapons, cash, forged documents, blades in hidden sheaths. Each item was laid with precision, ritualistic in its familiarity. By the time the sun rose above Warsaw’s skyline, the safe house was empty again. It was as if she had never been there.

On the train to Minsk, she sat in the back corner, hood drawn low, sunglasses reflecting the blur of birch trees rushing past. The rhythm of the wheels beat too loud against her skull, syncing with the hollow echo of the nightmare. A duffel rested at her feet, a satchel across her chest. Within arm’s reach: pistol, lockpicks, cash, IDs. None of them bore her name.

The laptop hummed on her knees, tethered to the train’s weak signal. She followed Shaw’s digital trail in real time, every ping and transaction drawing a tighter circle around him. He was careful, yes—but she knew careful. Careful left patterns, and patterns left cracks.

Her reflection stared back at her from the dark screen when she let it dim. The face of a woman unchanged by centuries, a mask that hid the fire beneath. A face Shaw would see before the end.

The train slowed, brakes shrieking as Minsk rose in the distance, gray blocks of concrete softened by church spires and morning haze. She closed the laptop, tucked it away, and stood before the carriage had stopped moving. No one looked twice. Just another passenger. That was the point.

On the platform, the air bit cold. Her burner phone buzzed again, dropping one last location into her inbox: a nightclub on the north side, Shaw’s current haunt. Guards would be thick. Music would cover the screams. It would not matter.

She hailed a cab, slid into the back seat, and watched the city unfold through the glass. Minsk looked like every city did—ordinary, unaware, a place where people lived their lives thinking monsters only existed in stories.

Irina knew better.

Somewhere in that sprawl, Alec Shaw was laughing, believing himself untouchable. Believing he could keep doing what he did.

Irina pressed her palm against the satchel, feeling the cool shape of steel beneath the fabric. Her lips thinned.

He would learn. Some monsters deserved no second chance.

Irina flexed her hands in her lap, feeling the phantom sting of the wound that had already healed. No one was untouchable. Not him. Not anyone.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Bureau’s Warsaw field office smelled of dust and burnt coffee, the radiator clanking like it was dying a slow death. A crooked flag drooped on the wall as if it, too, had given up. Edward sat hunched over the only functioning terminal, its fan whining under the strain of his queries. His eyes burned from hours of combing through records, but he kept scrolling, kept filtering.

The train manifest glowed on the screen: Leah Black. The alias was flawless. No traceable background, no trail of sloppiness, nothing for him to pry loose. It should have been a dead end.

He leaned back, pressed his palms against his eyes until the dark spots danced, then forced himself forward again. Start over. Different angle.

Customs databases. Cargo logs. Cross-border paperwork scraped by the Bureau’s bots and dumped into servers nobody bothered to touch. Edward touched it. He lived in the junk data, in the noise others ignored.

He narrowed by date, by route: Warsaw to Brest. Then again, tighter: passengers registered within twelve hours of Leah Black’s crossing. Names filled the screen in a blur, most meaningless—students, tourists, businessmen with tidy cover stories.

One name froze him. Alec Shaw.

Listed blandly as a “consultant.” But Edward knew that name. Buried deep in his memory was a Europol memo most agents had dismissed as speculation: allegations of trafficking cover, a network shielded by layers of shell corporations. A ghost of a case no one wanted to touch.

Edward straightened, pulse hammering.

He pulled up the manifests side by side. Same day. Same corridor. Leah Black and Shaw had crossed within hours of each other, through the same inspection point. No evidence they’d spoken, no hard link—but his gut coiled tight. He didn’t need evidence. He saw the pattern.

He reopened the Europol file, let his eyes run over the lines he already knew: flagged shipments, unexplained transfers, whispers about girls moved across borders like freight. Shaw wasn’t some irrelevant bureaucrat. He was rot in a suit.

And if Leah Black had brushed against him—by design or by accident—that meant something.

Edward saved the file into a secure partition, tagging both names. He sat back, staring at the glowing screen until the letters blurred. Leah Black. Alec Shaw. The Bureau would call it coincidence. Hundreds crossed that border every day. But Edward’s instincts screamed otherwise, and instincts had carried him farther than the rules ever had.

He opened a new case folder. Typed Shaw, Alec into the header. Began pulling threads. Passenger records, corporate filings, property titles buried under false names, shell companies, burner accounts. A lattice of connections started to sketch itself in front of him.

If Leah Black was as deliberate as she had been in Prague, she wouldn’t have crossed near Shaw by mistake. She had marked him. Which meant Shaw wasn’t just a lead—he was her prey.

Edward’s jaw locked.

He encrypted the folder twice, scrubbed the queries from the Bureau system, and shut the terminal down. The room plunged into silence but for the clank of the radiator and the hum in his chest that felt like momentum.

He slid the laptop into his bag, stood, adjusted the holster under his jacket. His reflection in the dusty window looked hollow-eyed, restless, but alive in a way it hadn’t since Prague.

The Warsaw night stretched out beyond the glass, heavy with traffic noise and neon glow. For days he had been running blind, chasing smoke. Now he had a line.

Whatever Leah Black was planning, whatever Shaw represented—he would find out.

For the first time in weeks, it wasn’t chaos. It was pursuit.

~~~~~~~~~~

The safe house in Minsk was nothing more than a rented flat off an unlit side street, the kind of place no landlord cared to keep clean. The walls were stained yellow with old smoke, the furniture worn and cheap, and yet the air smelled sharply of disinfectant, as if someone had tried and failed to scrub out its history. Irina locked the door behind her and dropped her bag on the scarred table, her movements precise, ritualistic.

The screen lit her face with its pale glow. Shaw. His name scrawled across reports, his photographs smuggled out of Belarusian intelligence. She studied him again, though she didn’t need to. The suits, the watches, the smile. Men like him wore their rot like perfume, so obvious it was insulting. He liked to collect people. Not companions, not lovers—possessions. Women, children, anyone he could bend to his will.

Irina lingered on his face longer than she should have, not for recognition but for resolve. Each photo was a reminder of why she was here, why she hadn’t laid her head down to rest in centuries. The work was endless, but so was the need. For every monster cut down, another sprouted in its place. Shaw was just one more in the line, but tonight he was hers.

She rose, moving through the flat in silence. It was barely furnished—one bed, one dresser, a cracked mirror leaning against the wall. She unzipped her garment bag and laid its contents out like surgical tools: a dress, heels, makeup carefully chosen for imperfection. Leah Black was no longer useful. Tonight, she would become someone Shaw wanted to claim.

Her reflection stared back at her from the broken mirror. Not the healer who had once cradled a child in fever. Not the girl who once prayed for peace. What she saw now was the woman centuries of blood had made her: beauty sharpened into a weapon, patience carved into steel. She touched her own face lightly, as if confirming that the mask still fit.

Her thoughts darkened as she applied the final touches. This wasn’t just about Shaw’s cruelty. It was about every Emmett, every life she’d taken because the world allowed men like Shaw to exist. Killing him wouldn’t bring any of it back—but it would stop him. And sometimes, that was enough.

The bass hit her chest like a second heartbeat as she stepped into the club. Minsk’s wealthy prowled the room, draped in dark suits and glittering gowns. Perfume mixed with vodka, laughter with the metallic scent of desperation.

Irina slid into the noise, every step measured. The dress clung softly, her shoulders bare, her expression unsteady. She moved like someone already overwhelmed, already out of place. A lamb straying too close to wolves.

At the bar she perched on a stool, fingers fumbling with the clasp of her purse. She let the bartender lean in, then shook her head, a nervous smile flickering before vanishing. No drink, no anchor—just a trembling girl alone in the crowd.

And then she felt it: the weight of eyes. Shaw.

The mirror behind the bar gave her what she needed. He lounged in a velvet booth, guards flanking him, his body language carved with ownership. His smile was thin, hungry, the kind of smile men wore when they’d already decided you belonged to them.

She lowered her gaze quickly, heart steady, mask flawless. Vulnerability was bait, and Shaw was biting.

Three minutes passed. One of his guards drifted closer, lingering just behind her shoulder, testing her stillness.

Five minutes. Shaw rose. He cut through the press of bodies like water parting, tall, confident, predator written in his stride.

Irina pretended not to notice until his shadow fell over her. She flinched—subtle, convincing—then glanced up through her lashes.

“You look a little lost,” Shaw said smoothly, his accent brushing the words.

Her lips parted. Her voice came out small, trembling against the thrum of music. “First time here.”

Shaw’s smile deepened. His hand brushed her arm, practiced and casual, steering her toward the booth without seeming to. “Then let me show you how it works.”

She let her shoulders slope, her steps falter, every movement the picture of hesitation. The guards shifted to make space as Shaw guided her into the seat across from him.

“Drink?” he asked, gesturing at the scattered glasses.

She shook her head too quickly, then forced an awkward smile. “I don’t… usually.”

“Good,” Shaw murmured, pouring vodka for himself. “Means you can be taught.”

Her fingers toyed with the hem of her dress. “That’s what my sister used to say.” The line was fiction, but the ache in her voice was real, sharpened by memories of family long gone.

Shaw studied her, intrigued. “You’re not like the others here.”

Her eyes lowered, voice hesitant. “Is that… bad?”

His laugh was low, pleased. “No. That’s very good.”

A guard muttered something in Russian. Shaw ignored it, leaning closer. “You came alone?”

“Yes.” The word was fragile, quiet, calculated to sound like a confession. Inside, every instinct screamed for her to rip his throat out. But her mask never cracked.

He reached to brush a strand of hair from her face. She tilted her head slightly, yielding.

The hook was in.

“You’re not going back,” Shaw said, settling back with the ease of a man convinced he already owned her. “Not ever.”

Irina let her lip tremble, then nodded slowly. Her eyes stayed downcast, but the reflection in the glass on the table caught the faintest, fleeting glint of steel.

Shaw never saw it. And she let him believe he had won.

The night air hit her like a curtain, damp and heavy with exhaust, as the club doors swung closed behind them. The bass still throbbed faintly through the walls, but here the city felt quieter, hungrier. Shaw’s hand brushed hers as they crossed the pavement toward the valet. His touch was light, practiced, proprietary. Irina let him think the warmth of her skin meant trust. It didn’t.

The car waited at the curb: black, sleek, a predator disguised in steel and glass. Tinted windows swallowed the interior whole. Two guards lounged nearby, cigarettes glowing orange in the dark, their laughter low and private. Shaw gave them a nod, the kind that spoke of routine, of confidence that the world bent itself to his rhythms.

“Get in,” he said, casual, like an order disguised as a courtesy.

Irina slid into the leather interior, careful to keep her movements small, hesitant. Shaw followed, settling beside her with the satisfaction of a man who thought he’d already won. The smell inside was sharp: leather, cologne, the faint sting of spilled vodka.

Shaw gave a clipped command in Russian. The guards answered quickly, their tone professional, deferential. Irina caught every syllable. She tucked the translation away like a coin slipped into her pocket. They were told to watch her, but not too closely. Shaw wanted slack in the leash—he liked to believe his charm had already done most of the work.

She turned her gaze to the window, wide-eyed, feigning distraction. In truth, she catalogued the cabin the way she would a weapon: buttons, levers, the faint scratch at the corner of the dashboard, the tilt of the rearview mirror. Every detail became part of the map she carried in her head.

“You’re quiet,” Shaw said, eyes on her instead of the road. “Always this quiet with men?”

Her lips curved faintly, carefully. “Depends on the company.”

He laughed, leaning back, satisfied. He wanted pliancy, not fire. Vulnerability was the performance; calculation was the truth.

The city blurred past, neon bleeding into black as they drifted east. The noise of Minsk fell away, replaced by the skeletal silence of warehouses and half-abandoned lots. Sodium lamps flickered above empty crossroads, throwing their shadows long.

“Ever been out this far before?” Shaw asked, watching her through the glass reflection. His voice was smooth, but there was testing in it.

She shook her head, small and uncertain. “Not often.”

Her fingers brushed the edge of her purse, where the weight of steel lay hidden. A faint shiver passed through her—manufactured, deliberate. Fear, but only on the surface.

The guards muttered in Russian, low and careless, words meant for each other. She caught them all. The instructions, the assumptions. Shaw was confident, certain this would play out like every other night.

That arrogance was her opening.

The knife slid into her hand as naturally as breath. One stroke—a clean, decisive line—drew red across the throat of the guard to her left before he even registered the glint of steel. The second had just enough time to widen his eyes before she buried the blade between his ribs. The driver jerked forward, a strangled cry forming, but Irina’s hand snapped his head back, silencing him against the leather before he could make a sound.

The car rolled to a slow crawl, momentum dying as his foot slipped from the pedal. Irina leaned forward, her body calm, controlled, and eased the wheel toward the shoulder. The vehicle stopped with the soft sigh of rubber against gravel.

Only then did she turn.

Shaw stared, his mask of charm cracked by something rawer. Not fear—not yet. Confusion. He wasn’t used to the script being torn out of his hands.

Irina tilted her head, the faintest smile cutting across her lips. “I’m not what you think I am,” she said softly, voice edged with promise.

The warehouse district loomed ahead, black mouths of abandoned buildings yawning open. Perfect.

She opened the door and stepped into the night, the knife glinting once before she sheathed it again. Shaw followed, not because he trusted her anymore, but because she’d given him no choice.

Inside, the warehouse swallowed them whole. Concrete echoed beneath their steps. Rusted machinery hunched like skeletons in the corners. The air tasted of oil and dust.

Every predator has a moment when he realizes he’s been prey all along.

Irina watched for that moment in Shaw’s eyes as the shadows closed in.

Inside the warehouse, the shadows swallowed them, and Shaw’s smirk returned—thin, forced, like a mask stretched too far. He straightened his jacket, tapping the sleeves as if to realign his composure, to remind himself he was still in control.

“You know who I am?” His voice was low, dangerous, rolling through the cavernous space.

Irina tilted her head, letting her braid fall over one shoulder. She measured him in silence, tasting the arrogance he exuded. “I know enough,” she said, calm, almost teasing.

He stepped closer, the sharp tang of expensive cologne mixing with the metallic sweat of his body. “Then you know what happens to little girls who play dangerous games with me.” His hand brushed hers, light, testing, claiming.

She let it linger, a shadow of compliance. Let him think the game was his. Her body stayed loose, pliant, echoing the posture of prey. “Maybe I like dangerous games,” she whispered, soft, pliable, venom hidden beneath the gentleness.

Shaw chuckled, the sound hollow in the empty warehouse, confidence flickering like a candle in a storm. “Then you’re mine tonight,” he said, sharp, predatory.

The moment stretched, taut, electric. He leaned in, whispering promises meant to intimidate and excite, his arrogance thick in every syllable. She let him, letting the mask of compliance fool him entirely.

And then she flipped the switch.

Her movement was a blur, precise and merciless. His arm twisted behind his back before he could even draw a breath, a gasp strangled in his throat. The knife pressed to the hollow of his neck, steel cold and unyielding.

“No. Tonight you belong to me,” she said, voice dropping low, steady, untouched by fear.

For a heartbeat, disbelief froze him. Shaw, the hunter, had mistaken himself for the prey.

Irina tightened her grip, eyes dark, centuries of purpose blazing behind her calm exterior. “This is for every child you stole.”

He squirmed, struggled, tried to twist, but her control was absolute. One clean, fluid motion—blade slicing through the air, a whisper of inevitability—and his body buckled, a gurgling breath caught and died in his throat. Silence followed, complete and uncompromising.

She let him collapse to the concrete, no ceremony, no hesitation. Another vile man erased from the world, one less predator lurking in the shadows.

Irina stood over him, steady, her knife gleaming faintly under the overhead lights. She wiped the edge on his jacket, slid it back into her belt, and walked out without a backward glance. Her boots clicked on the floor, each step deliberate, controlled.

The warehouse was empty again. No applause. No relief. Just the faint echo of a predator undone and the weight of centuries pressing lightly on her shoulders.

Another name crossed off. Another ghost added to the ledger she carried, invisible yet indelible. And somewhere beneath the quiet hum of the city, the world continued, oblivious to the reckoning that had just passed through its streets.

The warehouse doors swung shut behind her with a hollow clang, leaving the city night to swallow the sound. Outside, the streets of Minsk were slick with a faint mist, neon signs reflected in the wet asphalt. The hum of distant traffic and the occasional shout of a passerby reminded her that the world went on, unaware of the predator she had just undone.

Irina breathed in slowly, letting the cold air clear the heat of exertion from her lungs. Her pulse was steady, measured, the rhythm of centuries of practice guiding her movements. Yet beneath the control, a familiar edge of satisfaction threaded through her chest—a quiet acknowledgment that justice had been delivered, that the ledger had shifted slightly toward balance.

She let her gaze sweep the darkened streets, each shadow cataloged, each corner considered. Alec Shaw had been dangerous, cunning, and cruel—but predictable in ways that made him vulnerable. That was the pattern she hunted: the arrogance that painted itself too clearly on the face of predators. And tonight, she had been patient enough, precise enough, to exploit it.

Her thoughts flicked to the children she couldn’t save, to the faces she still carried in memory, echoes of the life stolen from them. That grief never dulled, never softened. It sharpened her, focused her. Shaw was a name crossed off the list, but the work—the endless work—was far from done.

She adjusted the strap of her satchel, feeling the familiar weight of tools, knives, and devices pressed against her side. Each item was a promise, a plan waiting to be executed. Each step she took through the slick streets was measured, deliberate, silent. The hunt never paused, and neither could she.

For a long moment, she allowed herself the smallest private smile, one that didn’t reach her eyes. The predator had believed he held the upper hand. He hadn’t. And no one—not Shaw, not any of them—would mistake her for prey again.

Her mind turned immediately to the next target, the next trail, the next thread of cruelty she could unravel. Somewhere out there, another predator thought themselves untouchable. Another name awaited the ledger. And she would find them. Always.

The night embraced her as she melted into it, a ghost among the living, relentless, precise, and unseen. Irina—or whatever name she bore tonight—moved through Minsk with a single thought pulsing through her veins: justice, exacted without hesitation, without mercy, without fail.

The hunt continued.

Chapter Text

Edward’s train hissed into the Minsk station just after dawn, brakes screaming against the tracks. He was off before the carriage fully stopped, duffel slung over his shoulder, eyes sweeping the thinning crowd.

Hours. That was all he’d missed her by. Hours.

The intel had been sloppy—an unmarked taxi traced to the border, a cash ticket east, the alias Leah Black whispering like a ghost through scattered records. But it was enough to bring him here.

And now Shaw was dead.

The report had come through while the countryside blurred past his window: Alec Shaw, Belarusian national, found in an abandoned warehouse outside the city. Cause of death “under review,” but Edward didn’t need a coroner’s notes to know. He saw the pattern. The timing. She had been here.

He tightened his grip on the strap of his bag, jaw clenched. Every step she took, he was right behind her—too late to stop her, too close to turn back. But this time, Edward promised himself, he wouldn’t let her slip away.

The warehouse still reeked of cordite and copper when Edward slipped past the last strip of police tape. The uniforms guarding the perimeter were barely more than kids, their attention wandering between cigarettes and glowing screens. A flash of his old Bureau credentials, a sharp look, and they waved him through.

Inside, the scene was stripped bare. Forensics had taken their photos, bagged samples, and cataloged evidence, but the outlines remained. Shaw’s body had been dragged across cracked concrete, leaving a smear of blood ending in a neat sprawl near the rusted support beams. No signs of struggle, no prolonged chaos. Just efficiency. Her efficiency.

Edward crouched, fingertips brushing the dark stain where Shaw’s head had landed. Cold. Hours gone. He closed his eyes, letting the silence of the place settle over him. He could almost see her here—the calm patience, the surgical precision. No mess, no wasted movement. She hadn’t just killed Shaw. She had sent a message.

He rose, scanning the high windows where pale light bled through broken panes. His pulse ticked in his throat. He was right behind her, breathing the same stale air she’d breathed less than half a day ago. The thought both sickened and electrified him.

Outside, the city throbbed with indifference—traffic, vendors, stray dogs nosing through trash. Edward pulled his coat tighter, already running the next step in his head. Shaw had been a monster, but he wasn’t the endgame. Just a breadcrumb. A signal flare.

And Leah, or whatever name she wore now, was still moving. He needed to catch her pace. Needed to see where she would go next.

Edward lit a cigarette he didn’t want, smoke harsh in his lungs, bitter and grounding. “Almost,” he muttered under his breath, watching the tendrils curl and dissipate. “I’ve almost got you.”

He scanned the walls again, slower this time. Not for blood, not for prints. For intention. She wouldn’t leave anything obvious.

He circled back toward the loading dock where Shaw’s men had smoked their last cigarettes, boot scuffs ground into the dust. A metal support beam caught his eye—dull gray, mottled with rust. Except for one patch, faintly smudged as if someone had brushed it clean.

Edward leaned in. At first glance, nothing. Then he caught it: the faintest etching, shallow enough to be overlooked by forensics in their rush. A series of numbers carved with something sharp, almost invisible in the poor light. Coordinates.

He jotted them into his notebook, heart thrumming as he checked them against the mental map he kept running. Belarusian borderlands. Remote. Sparse traffic. A place to disappear—or a place to draw someone in.

He stared at the numbers, cigarette burning down between his fingers unnoticed. She wanted him to find this.

The realization hit cold, then hot. She wasn’t just staying ahead of him—she was baiting him, pulling him into her orbit, daring him to see how far he’d go.

Edward flicked the cigarette away, watching the ember flare and die against the concrete. His jaw tightened. “Fine,” he muttered, slipping the notebook back into his coat. “Let’s see where you want this to go.”

Hours later, the forest thickened around him. Wind tugged at branches overhead, gravel popped beneath his boots. The land was silent, pressing against his eardrums, broken only by occasional snaps of twigs underfoot.

For a while he feared she’d sent him chasing shadows. A cruel joke—numbers meant to waste him. But then the trees thinned.

Chain-link fencing rose from the brush like the skeleton of some dead animal, stretching wide, barbed coils glinting faintly in the dawn. Beyond it, floodlights crowned the corners of a squat concrete building. Dark windows, shuttered doors. Too fortified for a farmhouse. Too hidden for anything legitimate.

Edward paused at the edge of the clearing, boots sinking slightly into the damp earth. This was her safe house. He could feel it—the subtle markers of human presence: a faint path pressed into the grass, a discarded wrapper flattened by careless feet, the lingering scent of fire and bleach mixing with the damp pine.

He crouched, heart steady, scanning each detail. Every shadow, every angle, every exit point. She was here, inside, waiting or moving. He could almost hear her, footsteps measured, silent, predator’s rhythm.

Edward tightened his grip on his bag, drawing a slow breath. The hunt had changed. No longer was he following; now he was closing the net.

And he wouldn’t let her slip away again.

Edward crouched low, heart hammering, every muscle coiled. He eased closer, steps deliberate, silent. From the perimeter, the compound seemed abandoned—no guards at the fence, no movement in the towers, just the faint hum of early morning wind rattling loose siding. But as he pressed his back to the cold steel of the chain-link, a sound reached him: muffled laughter, then a sharp cry cut off too quickly.

His stomach dropped. Not a trap. Not a ghost. Shaw.

The realization hit with a sick twist. She hadn’t just killed him—she’d left a doorway into Shaw’s entire operation. A breadcrumb trail, yes, but deliberate. Calculated. And with it, a choice.

He could call it in. Let the Bureau descend in force, sweep the site clean, cordon it off, catalogue everything. Or he could follow her trail, deeper, into whatever game she wanted him to play.

Edward’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the fence.

His phone was in his hand before he realized it. He dialed in—flat, clipped, professional. Suspected trafficking compound, possible movement on site. Backup ETA fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes.

Edward pocketed the phone, eyes scanning. He crossed the fence in one smooth motion, boots landing softly on the damp earth. The compound loomed closer: windows black, doors chained from the outside, except for one side door gaping open, the chain swinging loose, the lock cut clean.

The hair on the back of his neck lifted. He drew his weapon.

The first sound hit him immediately: the wet drag of something heavy across concrete. A chair toppled. Then silence.

Edward moved slow, gun raised, breath measured. A narrow hallway stretched ahead, walls streaked with age, mildew, and rust. He rounded a corner—and nearly stumbled over a body.

One of Shaw’s men, throat opened clean. No struggle. Just a body, already cooling in a dark, spreading stain. Edward’s pulse spiked. He pressed forward.

Another hallway. Another body. Folded over a table, head at an impossible angle, eyes wide and lifeless. Efficient. Silent. Professional. He wasn’t the first one here.

The deeper he went, the air changed. Humid. Heavy. Carrying the faint metallic tang of sweat, the acrid scent of fear. Then voices: not English. Russian. A woman crying, others murmuring, coaxing her gently. Edward edged closer, senses sharp.

The hallway opened into a cavernous storage bay, concrete floor scarred with oil and rust. And there—against the far wall—cages. Not one, not two, but rows upon rows. Two dozen women, maybe more, thin, hollow-eyed, wrists shackled.

And in front of them, the figure.

At first, only a silhouette: dressed head-to-toe in black, lean, deliberate. A knife glinted briefly in her hand before vanishing back into its sheath. She moved cage to cage, slicing chains one after another with a bolt cutter. Women tumbled free, some clutching each other, some weeping, some silent with disbelief.

Edward’s weapon came up automatically, trained on her back.

“Stop,” he said, voice low but firm.

The figure stilled. Slowly, she turned her head. Their eyes met. Those eyes. Too calm. Too knowing.The corner of her gaze crinkled, almost amused.

“You’re late,” she said softly, accent clear, Russian lilt threading the words.

Edward tightened his grip. “Step away. Now.”

She tilted her head, studying him as though he were the one confined. “Do you even know what you’ve walked into?”

“Don’t move.”

She ignored him. Turned back, cut another lock. The chain fell, women tumbling free.

Edward stepped forward, fury coiling in his chest. “I said—”

Sirens shattered the moment, red and blue flashing through broken windows. Boots pounded, shouts in Russian, rifles chambering. Law enforcement converged, spilling into the bay.

Edward’s eyes flicked toward the door for just a fraction of a second. That was enough.

When he looked back, she was gone. A shadow among shadows, slipping between cages. Women cried out as she brushed past, then she vanished into the maze of hallways.

“Stop!” he roared, lunging, footsteps echoing on concrete. Gun slicing through the dark, but she was gone.

What remained were cages swinging open, broken chains scattered on the floor, women sobbing, shivering, clinging to each other. Police streamed in behind him, shouting orders, sweeping the compound, scanning Shaw’s men in the hallways.

Edward lowered his weapon, chest heaving. She had been right there. Close enough to touch.

And now—she was gone again.

The chaos of sirens, shouting, the flash of flashlights filled the room, but Edward only heard one sound: the echo of her voice.

You’re late.

He froze, taking a step back, heart pounding. Chains rattled, women whispered prayers to themselves, police moved past, busy with the aftermath.

Edward forced himself to holster the gun. He should’ve been helping, clearing the compound, coordinating. But a small itch, insistent and impossible to ignore, tugged at his focus.

His eyes swept the cages again. That’s when he saw it: half-hidden beneath the bars of the last one, almost lost in the scatter of broken chains, a scrap of paper no larger than a matchbook. Too clean, deliberate, not debris.

Edward crouched, snatched it up before anyone else noticed.

Blank on one side. On the other, a string of characters, precise, deliberate:

54°11’17”N 27°34’42”E

Coordinates.

Edward’s pulse kicked. He glanced over his shoulder. Police were busy shepherding the women out, documenting the scene, photographing the dead. No one watched him.

He slipped the scrap into his pocket, chest tight. She’d been here. Freed them. And left this. Not by accident. Not in haste. A message. For him.

~~~~~~~~~~

Edward sat at the narrow table, his reflection pale and hard in the greasy window across the interrogation room. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, a high, unsteady whine, and every sound in the station seemed magnified—the slam of a door, the murmur of voices in a language he didn’t speak, the scrape of a chair against tile.

The officer opposite him spoke rapidly, gesturing, and the translator’s halting English stitched it together: “He asks… how you came to be at the compound?”

Edward recited the same clipped account he’d already given twice before. “Wrong place, wrong time. Following a lead on Shaw. That’s it.”

The translator repeated the words, stumbling over phrasing. The officer frowned, scribbled notes, then rattled off another question. A maddening loop of words he didn’t understand, followed by five-second pauses to wait for translation, then his own reply, delayed, inadequate. It was a mental grind, designed to wear him down.

And through it all, the slip of paper in his pocket burned against his thigh. Coordinates. He could see them clearly in his mind’s eye: neat black ink, deliberate. She had left them for him, to be found, to tease, to lure him further.

He shifted in his chair. The translator asked again: “Please… he asks you to clarify how you knew about Shaw’s property?”

Edward’s patience snapped thin. He ran a hand through his hair and forced his voice flat. “I already told you.”

The interpreter stammered. The officer scribbled notes, muttering something low. Another question followed, longer this time: Why armed? What authority? How did he gain access?

Edward stared past both of them, past the smoke-stained walls, past the station itself. Out there, beyond the bureaucracy, beyond the suffocating loops of protocol, the trail she had left was already fading.

He clenched his fists beneath the table, nails digging into palms. His voice remained level only through sheer force of will. The obsession wasn’t quiet anymore—it was roaring, impatient, insistent.

“Describe again…how you entered the building,” the translator pressed.

Edward repeated himself—methodical, stripped of anything instinctual. Gunfire, women, bodies, halls. But not her. Never her.

The interpreter stumbled over “compound,” eyes wide. Edward snapped his head toward him. “Not building. Compound. There’s a difference. Keep up.”

The interpreter froze; the officers exchanged glances, muttering low. Suspicion. Contempt. Edward dragged a hand across his face. Losing control here would get him nowhere. He forced the words quieter: “Just…translate it correctly.”

Hours blurred. Night collapsed into dawn, then gray daylight leaked through the barred window. Cold coffee sat untouched. Hunger was distant, insignificant. The itch to move, to chase, to do anything but sit here, clawed at him relentlessly.

Finally, the door opened. A man in a sharp suit, an American flag pin on his lapel, entered. He spoke Russian to the officers, then switched effortlessly into English as his gaze met Edward’s.

“Agent Masen. You’re coming with me.”

Edward rose so fast the chair scraped against the floor. The interpreter exhaled, shoulders sagging. The officers scowled but didn’t protest.

He followed silently, no questions asked, the slip of paper in his pocket pressing cold against his ribs. The trail she had left—the one lead he couldn’t ignore—was already fading, cooling by the hour.

The ride through Minsk was silent except for the hum of tires. Edward sat in the back, watching the city crawl past tinted glass. Gray buildings, flickering neon, early-morning street vendors—all filtered through the lens of containment. The escort didn’t speak until they reached the embassy compound.

Inside, fluorescent lights were harsher than the station. Edward was led past security checkpoints, locked doors, watchful eyes, until they dropped him in a conference room smelling of stale air and burnt coffee. A phone was pushed toward him, screen dark. A folder lay beside it.

“Director wants answers,” the escort said, then left.

Minutes later, the screen flickered. Director Harlan’s face filled it—creases in his brow, tired eyes, a man who rarely looked surprised.

“Forty-three days on payroll, Agent Masen,” Harlan began, skipping pleasantries. “And somehow you’ve managed to ignite an international incident. Explain.”

Edward leaned forward, voice measured. “Emmett McCarty’s murder, he was silenced. And the woman I’ve been tracking is connected. She led me to the compound outside Minsk—”

“You mean the compound where Belarusian police found you armed with no legal authority to be there?” Harlan’s tone was flat, each word a hammer.

Edward’s fingers curled against the table. He forced them still. “You didn’t see what I saw. Dozens of women, locked rooms, armed men. And someone cleaned house before I got there. It wasn’t the police.”

“Are you suggesting this mystery woman—from the case you were supposed to close—executed multiple men and freed trafficked victims single-handedly?” Harlan arched an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

Silence stretched.

Finally, Harlan exhaled. “You’re chasing ghosts, Masen. Memphis was meant to keep you busy, not drag you across borders. Whatever trail you think you’re on ends here. We’ll hand Shaw’s network to Interpol and the locals.”

Hesitantly, Edward reached into his jacket pocket. Fingers brushed the paper. He withdrew it and laid it atop the folder. “Coordinates,” he said steadily. “Another compound. Patterns match Shaw’s.”

Harlan glanced down, then back up. “And how exactly did you obtain these?”

Edward’s jaw flexed. “You’ll see in the logs.”

Harlan nodded curtly. “Good. We’ll run it through official channels. You won’t—you’re off this.”

“No.” The word slipped out before he could stop it. Pulse thrummed in his ears. “Sir, with respect—you’re wrong. She’s real. And I can prove it.”

“Careful,” Harlan warned. “Obsession makes agents sloppy. I saw it in your father. I’ll shut you down before I let it happen again.”

The screen went dark. Edward sat staring at his reflection in the black glass. His hands trembled once, then stilled.

The coordinates she’d left stared back at him, taunted him. The lead ended here. She had chosen the path, left the trail. He had the memory, the proof, the pulse of her movements—and that was enough for now.

When the escort returned with orders for confinement until his flight, Edward’s stomach twisted. He didn’t argue. He didn’t need to. High-security quarters, monitored, boxed in—the Bureau had him contained.

The elevator ride was silent. Edward’s reflection in brushed steel walls looked hollow-eyed, tight-wired. His mind drifted to the slip of paper. He’d done the right thing. Handed it over to Harlan, but he regretted it, because it was a reminder that she had been here. That she had acted. That she was still out there.

His search was paused, but it was far from over.

On the fourth floor, the escort keyed him in, then lingered in the doorway long enough to make the point: Edward was caged, no matter how gilded.

The lock clicked. Edward exhaled slow. The room was dark, curtains drawn, the air faintly stale.

He set his bag down and raked a hand through his hair, pulse hammering. He’d need to move fast, outsmart the watch they had on him. He turned toward the desk, already forming the plan. And froze.

A shadow shifted in the corner. A shape he hadn’t noticed.

The chair there wasn’t empty.

A woman sat in it, still as stone, her face half-lost in shadow. Only her eyes caught the light—dark, unblinking, locked on him.

Edward’s pulse thundered. His Glock was out before he could think, both hands steadying the aim.

Only then did he realize hers was already leveled at him.

She sat half in shadow, one knee crossed over the other, her pistol resting elegant and precise in her grip, pointed dead center at his chest.

“Drop it,” Edward ordered, breath rough.

“Funny,” she said, voice calm, “I was going to say the same.”

The standoff stretched. Seconds bled into each other. The hum of the minibar fridge was the only sound in the room.

“I should arrest you,” he said. His voice cracked on the word arrest. It sounded ridiculous here, with her eyes on him like that.

“You won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she said, tilting her head just slightly, “you don’t want to stop me. You want to understand me.”

The words hit harder than he expected. They dug past his armor, past years of training and detachment. He felt them dig at his chest, at the part of him that had always sought control, and for the first time in years, it faltered.

Edward swallowed. “You’re not walking out of here.”

She rose in one smooth motion, gun never wavering. He tightened his finger on the trigger, but she didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She stepped closer.

And then she was right there—the barrel of his Glock pressed to her forehead. Instinctively, Edward’s hand shot out, catching her wrist as she shifted her aim. Skin-to-skin. Heat snapped through his fingers, an electric current he couldn’t name, couldn’t fight. Every muscle tensed. His heart stuttered. The pull between them was immediate, undeniable, like gravity itself had tilted toward her.

The faint scent of her perfume hit him then—a sharp, almost green note, mingled with the warmth of her skin. It was too intimate, too close, and it clawed at something he hadn’t admitted to himself.

“Go ahead,” she whispered. Her eyes burned into his, unshaken. “Do it. I dare you.”

Edward’s muscles locked. Tendons screamed, fingers rigid on the trigger, yet he could not bring himself to pull.

Her smile was faint, not kind. “Exactly.”

For a long, excruciating moment, neither moved. Then she lowered the weapon. Slow, deliberate. She slid it back beneath her jacket, as though she had known all along he wouldn’t fire.

Before he could speak, footsteps echoed in the hall outside—shadows of his Bureau escort, making their rounds. Her eyes flicked toward the door, then back to him.

“You’re being watched,” she whispered. “But not just by them.”

The words hit like ice. Edward’s mind raced. Not just by them… Prague. The phone call. The clipped, male voice warning him that someone had eyes on him, that he had already been seen. He hadn’t known the name, only the presence, only that he had been followed long before he even arrived in Minsk.

His pulse spiked. “What do you mean—”

He wanted to demand, threaten, anything—but the words caught. She leaned in close, lips brushing the shell of his ear, and the scent of her again—faint, green, sharp—wrapped around him like a tether. Skin against skin, heat lingering from the grip on her wrist, it was a reminder of how dangerously alive this moment made him feel.

“You’re not chasing me, Agent Masen. I’m letting you follow.”

And with that, she was gone—slipping out the window into the night, leaving nothing but the chill of her presence behind.

Edward didn’t move for a long time after the window clicked shut. The curtains stirred faintly with the draft, the only proof she’d been real at all. His gun was still in his hand, heavy, useless, his wrist tingling where he’d caught hers. He inhaled slowly, as though any sudden movement might scatter what little was left of her from the room.

Edward’s breath sawed. Hands trembling, he lowered the Glock. It had been years since he’d felt so unsteady. The lingering warmth of her wrist burned across his palm, ghosting against him like fire. He could feel it still, imprinted under his skin, in the tension that hummed through his veins.

That’s when he saw it, resting on the desk where she had been sitting. A black-and-white photograph, edges frayed with age.

The woman in the picture wore a beaded dress, hair in crisp 1920s waves. She smiled, serene, a string of pearls at her throat.

Edward’s breath caught. The face—God, it was her face. The same from Memphis. The same from Jessica’s old album. It couldn’t be.

He turned the photo over, searching for a date, a name, a clue. Nothing. Just brittle paper and ink too faded to give him anything solid.

Edward forced a laugh under his breath. Coincidence. A relative. A double. There had to be explanations. Logical ones.

But sliding the photograph into his pocket did nothing to calm him. The heat from her wrist lingered. The scent lingered. The pull lingered.

She hadn’t just vanished. She’d left him breadcrumbs. Taunts. And he hated how badly, how desperately, he wanted to chase them.

He settled into the chair, hands brushing the edge of the desk where her warmth had been, pulse hammering, mind spinning. He was right at the edge—aware that obsession was whispering in his ear, daring him to move, to follow, to risk everything for her shadow.

And no matter how many times he tried to deny it, Edward realized he might already be lost.

The silence pressed in, thick and suffocating. He drew a breath, then another, shallow at first, before the air caught in his lungs. Her scent was still here—sharp, green, threaded with something faintly metallic, like rain on copper. He closed his eyes against it, against the way it clawed under his ribs. No one should be able to leave a room and remain inside it like this.

He pressed his palm against his thigh, hard, trying to erase the sensation of her wrist against his skin. The warmth hadn’t faded. He could still feel the fine bones of her arm, the sudden snap of energy that had gone through him when they touched. Electricity wasn’t the word—it had been something older, more instinctive. A pull. A claiming.

Edward forced himself into motion. Rising from the chair, he set the Glock on the desk and opened the minibar, cracking a bottle of water. The plastic crinkled too loud in the stillness. He drained it in three gulps, but it did nothing to steady him. The water only sharpened the taste she’d left in his mouth—faint perfume, a ghost of her breath when she’d leaned close enough to whisper against his ear.

You’re not chasing me, Agent Masen. I’m letting you follow.

The words circled, relentless. His escort’s footsteps came and went in the hallway outside, but the warning she’d given cut deeper. Not just by them. The memory slammed back: Prague, the male voice calling him by name. A voice that knew more than it should, watching more than he wanted. He’d dismissed it as misdirection, another ploy. Now, the weight of her whisper made it real.

He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on his knees, the photograph turning over in his hand. The paper was brittle, the woman’s face too sharp, too familiar. Her. The same smile from Memphis. The same face Jessica had once shown him in her grandfather’s journal. A century-old likeness, staring back at him like an accusation.

Coincidence, he told himself again. A double. A relative. Something explainable.

But logic felt paper-thin, collapsing under the heat still humming through his veins.

He pressed the photo flat to his thigh, rubbing the corner with his thumb until the edge dug into his skin. It didn’t hurt. It barely anchored him. He let his eyes wander back to the window, curtains fluttering like breath, and for a second he swore he could still hear the rush of her voice in his ear.

A shiver chased down his spine. He stood, pacing the room. The walls felt too close, the ceiling too low. He yanked open the curtains, letting the city bleed in—neon signs flickering in Cyrillic, sodium lights staining the street below. Minsk stretched out, sprawling and indifferent, but his gaze caught on every moving figure. A woman stepping out of a cab, a shadow crossing the intersection, a face turned up toward the hotel.

Every shape looked like her. Every glance felt like surveillance.

He shut the curtains again, too quick, too sharp. His pulse refused to slow.

The photograph lay on the desk now, the edges glowing faintly under the lamp. Next to it, the imprint of her presence lingered—the chair still angled just so, the faintest indent in the cushion, proof she had been there in his cage, waiting for him like she belonged.

Edward dragged a hand over his face. Sleep was impossible. He knew it even as he sat on the bed, leaning back, staring at the ceiling. Her perfume clung to him, buried in his skin, caught in his lungs. His hand still remembered the shape of her wrist, the defiance in her pulse when he’d gripped her.

He lay there for hours, the city outside restless, the photograph burning in his pocket. Every sound in the corridor tightened his chest. Every whisper of wind against the glass set his nerves on edge.

He wasn’t chasing her anymore. He knew it.

She had him exactly where she wanted him—on the edge of sleep, on the edge of reason, teetering between obsession and ruin.

And he hated the part of himself that wanted to fall.

~~~~~~~~~~

The phone felt heavier than it should as Edward leaned against the windowsill, morning light spilling through the slats of the curtains. The city below was already awake—horns, footsteps, the clatter of delivery trucks—but up here the room was still, stale with the remnants of her perfume that hadn’t faded overnight.

He scrolled past numbers he couldn’t use, contacts who would only report him, until he landed on one he hadn’t called in months. His thumb hovered before he pressed it.

Rosalie picked up on the second ring. “Jesus, Edward. Do you have any idea—”

“I’m fine,” he cut in. Too fast, too clipped. He tried again, softer. “I’m fine, Rose.”

There was silence, then the sharp exhale he knew too well. She wasn’t convinced. “Where are you?”

“Europe. I’ll be on a flight soon. Headed back stateside.” His eyes flicked to the desk, where the black-and-white photograph still lay. He couldn’t bring himself to put it away. “I just wanted you to hear it from me before someone else twisted it.”

Her voice sharpened. “You sound like him, you know.”

The words landed like a blow. He closed his eyes. “Don’t.”

“You do,” she pressed. “That edge in your voice, like you’re chasing something no one else can see. Dad used to call it purpose. I call it obsession. And it destroyed him.”

Edward braced a hand against the glass, jaw tight. “This is different.”

“Is it?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The photograph burned in the corner of his vision. The memory of her wrist under his hand still throbbed like a pulse that wasn’t his.

Finally, he forced a laugh, hollow. “You always know how to keep a man grounded.”

“I’m serious, Edward.” Rosalie’s tone softened, but only slightly. “Come home. Don’t make me bury you the way we buried him.”

His throat worked, but no words came. The silence stretched too long before he finally said, “I’ll call when I land.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she murmured.

He hung up before she could say more, his reflection pale in the glass. For a moment he stood there, phone still in hand, listening to the city rise outside.

But all he heard was her voice, low and certain, in the dark of last night: You’re not chasing me, Agent Masen. I’m letting you follow.

And he knew Rosalie was right—he wasn’t headed home. Not yet.