A door hung askew ahead, its metal frame twisted by heat. Beyond it lay what had been an executive suite, its pretensions reduced to melted plastic and scorched drywall. The footprints ended at the threshold.
My radio crackled. "Marcus, report position." James's voice was measured and steady, fighting hard to mask his concern.
I keyed my mic but didn't respond.
The ceiling groaned overhead. I looked up as movement flashed in my peripheral vision. A figure vaulted through a broken window onto the external fire escape, their motion displaying intimate familiarity with the building's layout.
I lunged after them, but they were already descending with practiced efficiency. Their dark clothes blended with the shadows, but I caught glimpses of athletic grace in their movements. They'd studied how bodies worked and how they broke.
The fire escape's metal rang with their footsteps, each impact precise and measured. They weren't running scared. They were performing—showing me what they wanted me to see.
I reached the window just as they hit the ground. For a moment, they stood perfectly still, face hidden in shadow but body language radiating satisfaction. Then, they melted into the darkness between buildings with the same controlled grace they'd shown in their descent.
"Marcus!" James's voice was closer now. "Where are you?"
I stayed at the window, pulse hammering in my ears. The figure had moved like someone who'd studied motion professionally—an athlete or maybe a dancer. Someone who understood how bodies worked under stress. Under fire.
When I turned back to the room, something caught my eye. There, placed with artistic precision on a burned-out desk, sat my old stopwatch. It was the one that had disappeared from my locker weeks ago. The heat had warped its metal casing, but the display still showed the exact time of my best training run from last month.
My fingers closed around the twisted metal. It was warm from the fire, the ridged buttons pressing into my palm exactly the way they used to when Dad would time our runs outside the station.
Smoke curled through the rafters, but I caught something else underneath it—the faintest trace of burned plastic, like the casing on old cassette tapes when they melted. It smelled exactly like the summer our basement flooded, and Dad spent a whole week trying to salvage his collection ofSpringsteenbootlegs.
The memory hit sharp and fast—him cursing good-naturedly as he strung the ruined tapes across a drying rack and me perched on the stairs watching, not understanding why he cared so much aboutone moreversion of"Born to Run."
"Jesus." James appeared in the doorway, slightly breathless. "What happened?"
"He was here." The words were steady despite the rage building in my chest. "Watching us work the scene. Waiting to see how we'd handle his message."
James moved closer, eyes tracking between the stopwatch and my face. "You saw them?"
"More than that." I turned the stopwatch so he could see the display. "They wanted me to see them. To know they could access anything—Dad's manual, my equipment, this building. It's all part of their performance."
The truth slammed into me, sharp and unrelenting. They'd moved beyond observation. They were exerting a quiet, surgical kind of power, stripping away any illusion of self-control.
They weren't merely watching. They were inside every corner of my life and wanted me to know it.
"You need to pull back." James moved as if to touch my arm, then caught himself.
"Not happening." I clenched my fists, feeling the strain in my shoulders from hours of firefighting. "I'm not backing down just because some psycho is turning my life into their art project."
"Then I can't—" His voice broke.
"No." I stepped into his space, close enough to see the tension in his throat. "You don't get to fucking leave. Not now."
"Marcus—"
"You think you can walk away from this?" A feral growl underlined my words. "From me?"
His shoulders stiffened. "I didn't say that."
"Then say what you mean." I watched him at war with himself. "Because we both know you're already too deep in this."
James exhaled. "This is going to end badly."
"Then let's make sure it ends on our terms." Something inside me settled even as adrenaline still burned through my system.
He nodded once, just enough to acknowledge what we both knew—there was no walking away now. Not from the case. Not from each other.
