Olivia Harper didn't believe in déjà vu.
Not until she stood ankle-deep in plaster dust, staring at the exact curve of a staircase she'd only seen in nightmares.
The brownstone on Chestnut Street was supposed to be empty. She was supposed to be observing a damaged beam. She was supposed to be profiling a potential arsonist with a vendetta against real estate developers.
Instead, there was a body.
Male. Middle-aged. Face crushed. Chest pinned beneath a collapsed banister. The surrounding floorboard had given way with surgical precision—one slice too clean to be natural, too precise to be accidental. No scorch marks. No wiring damage. No signs of intrusion.
No chaos. Just silence.
Her heart beat like a war drum in her chest as she crouched closer, snapping on latex gloves. The weight of the scene didn't come from the blood. It came from the clean geometry of the destruction. A line had been cut into the joist with intent, a leveler's signature—straight as design. She'd seen that cut before. Only once.
And that time, it killed her mentor.
"Harper."
Detective Rachel Kim's voice came sharp from behind. Olivia didn't turn.
"He's the contractor. Homeowner confirmed this morning—Caldwell & Sons Restoration. Name's Peter Lamont. Worked with Ethan Caldwell."
Olivia's throat tightened. "Caldwell?"
"Yeah. Big-name architect. Reclusive. One of those legacy families from Beacon Hill. Used to restore courthouses and museums. Then he dropped off the radar for a while." Rachel stepped beside her, scanning the space. "Guy's been back in the spotlight lately. This was his project."
Olivia stood, brushing plaster off her black slacks. "He's still licensed?"
"Barely. But this job was approved." Rachel turned to face her. "What do you think?"
Olivia inhaled slowly. "Someone's mimicking structural failure. But they're not sloppy. This collapse was engineered. Someone wanted Lamont dead, and they used the joist to do it."
"You think Caldwell's involved?"
"I think he's next."
Rachel raised a brow. "Bold start."
"I don't make safe guesses," Olivia replied, pulling her notebook from her bag. "I make dangerous ones that save lives."
She didn't mention the real reason her stomach was twisting. That staircase—the curve, the grain, the banister style—it all matched the rendering her father had drawn in the margins of his final journal before disappearing eighteen years ago. This exact blueprint.
Coincidence? Maybe.
But Olivia had long stopped believing in those.
---
The first time she'd heard Ethan Caldwell's name, it was whispered in courtrooms. People said he built dreams with wood and broke them with silence. A preservation prodigy from a family of architects, he'd vanished after a fatal collapse during a university restoration. Charges were dropped. Blame shifted. But he disappeared.
Until now.
She flipped through the contractor's logbook, left open on a dust-coated worktable. Final sign-off: Ethan Caldwell.
Ink still fresh.
---
Two hours later, she found him.
He was standing alone in the city permit office, leaning against the window with his hands in his pockets, watching the rain hit the sidewalk. He didn't look like a man who'd built landmarks. He looked like a man made of tension and apology. Hair silver at the edges, eyes grey like concrete, jaw tight enough to fracture.
"Dr. Harper," he said without turning. "I heard you were looking for me."
"How very convenient," Olivia answered, stepping forward. "I suppose you also heard your project just became a crime scene."
Ethan turned now, gaze slow and measured. "I know what happened to Lamont."
"You signed off on the structure."
"Yes."
"And now he's dead."
Silence.
He didn't flinch. "I didn't sabotage it."
"I didn't say you did."
"You implied it."
She didn't respond. She took a slow breath and studied him—not the expensive coat or the immaculate shirt cuffs, but the way he carried the silence like it was armor. Defensive. Calculated. Familiar.
"Your joists," she said. "Every one of them matches a signature fault that caused a fatal collapse seven years ago in Cambridge. That collapse was ruled structural fatigue."
"I know. It wasn't."
She tilted her head. "Interesting you'd admit that."
Ethan leaned forward. "That joist was altered after inspection. I proved it. No one listened. They blamed my name, my father, my bloodline. I lost ten years of work, and I let them. I don't plan to do that again."
Olivia studied him for a beat, then pulled something from her bag—a small white envelope, sealed in wax. She tossed it onto the counter between them.
He frowned. "What's this?"
"It was mailed to me after I accepted this case."
He peeled the wax and withdrew the contents. One Polaroid photograph. One thin red ribbon. And a copy of an architectural blueprint, decades old—worn and yellowed, but unmistakably marked with an E.C. in the bottom corner.
Ethan's jaw slackened.
"This isn't possible," he muttered.
"Isn't it?"
"That plan was never approved. It was a draft. A mistake. I buried it."
Olivia narrowed her gaze. "Then how did it end up in my mailbox, paired with a body and your old joist signature?"
He looked up slowly, pain flickering behind restraint.
"You're not being framed, Mr. Caldwell," she said coldly. "You're being re-engineered."
---
Somewhere in the city, another building creaked beneath the weight of its design. Another flaw. Another collapse waiting.
And Olivia knew—this wasn't about restoration anymore.
This was about reconstruction.
Of blueprints.
Of legacies.
Of secrets.
And someone was building a masterpiece in blood.