PART 1: The Drop Point
The message came folded in half and slipped under Jack's door.
No name. Just a torn scrap of paper that read:
"Heller's. 11 PM. Come alone. Red wants to talk."
Jack stared at it for a long time, standing in his bare feet on the cold tile. Heller's wasn't a bar, not anymore. It had been shut down years ago — too many citations, too many "accidental" fires — but the basement still buzzed with dice, bad odds, and worse debts.
Red Malloy hadn't contacted him in over four years.
Jack still owed him three grand.
The stairwell to Heller's smelled like mold, spilled beer, and desperation. Jack descended into it like a memory he didn't want but couldn't ignore.
A muscle-thick guy at the bottom gave him a once-over, saw something in Jack's face — maybe ruin, maybe just recognition — and waved him through.
The gambling den was a low-ceilinged pit of flickering lights and whispering losers. Card tables creaked. Dice clattered in corners. A screen above the bar played a horse race on mute. No one watched it.
Red Malloy sat alone at the end of the counter, picking at something in his teeth with a cocktail straw.
He was heavier now — the kind of heavy that came from ulcers, not indulgence. His hair had thinned, dyed badly. His button-down clung to him in all the wrong places. But the eyes were the same: slick, bloodshot, and scanning everything.
"Jackie boy," Red said, not turning. "You look like shit's afraid of you."
Jack slid onto the stool beside him.
"I'm here. What do you want?"
Red didn't answer right away. He signaled the bartender, who dropped two warm beers in front of them. Jack didn't touch his.
Red took a long drink, then scratched at his chin.
"Someone was lookin' for you."
Jack stared at him. "Who?"
"Didn't give a name. Real clean. Not a cop. Not street, either. Corporate shoes. Tailored coat. Asked me where you were two nights before your brother took that exit."
Jack's blood went cold.
"You tell him anything?"
Red gave him a crooked grin. "What do you think, Jackie? I said, 'I don't know nothin', sir,' and he gave me a smile like I just confirmed something he already knew."
Jack swallowed. "Why now?"
Red finally turned to face him. "Because I got something you might want. And I figured you're desperate enough to pay."
Jack exhaled through his nose. "You always were sentimental."
Red pulled a small black USB stick from his shirt pocket, held it up between two fingers.
"You give me a thousand in cash — untraceable — and this is yours."
Jack didn't move. "What is it?"
"Security cam footage. Arthur. Three days before his murder. Getting into a black SUV. Not his car. Not his driver. Just walks out of a structure near his office and slides in like it's been planned."
"Driver?"
"Face is covered. Plate's visible — half of it. Enough to work with. I ain't sayin' it's a smoking gun, Jackie... but it's definitely not your gun."
Jack stared at the USB.
"I don't have a thousand."
Red sighed and knocked back the rest of his beer.
"Didn't think you would. But I also didn't think you'd show. So... let's make a deal."
He handed over the USB.
"You get this to your friend. The detective. She'll know what to do."
Jack took it, confused.
Red wiped his hands on his pants. "But listen to me. Carefully. If you got this... it means I'm already gone. So don't bother trying to call me."
Jack blinked. "Gone where?"
Red stood, adjusting his jacket.
"Somewhere colder. Quieter."
And with that, he walked out.
Jack watched him go.
Something told him this was the last time he'd ever see Red Malloy alive.
PART 2: Black SUV, No Face
The next morning, Izzy found herself squinting at the grainy still frame from the security footage Jack had handed her the night before.
They sat in her office, blinds drawn, door locked. Jack was hunched in the chair across from her desk, his hoodie pulled low and his eyes bloodshot, like sleep hadn't visited in days. He smelled like whiskey and tension.
She clicked through the footage on her laptop.
There: Arthur, leaving the rear entrance of the Rourke-Thorne office building at 9:46 PM, three nights before he died. He wore a dark coat, no tie, expression unreadable. He walked without hesitation toward the waiting vehicle — a large black SUV with tinted windows.
The driver never left the car.
Arthur opened the back door and slid in.
The SUV pulled away.
Izzy paused the video. Rewound it. Froze the frame where the license plate was briefly visible under a flickering parking structure light.
"Any luck reading it?" Jack asked, voice hoarse.
"Partial," she muttered. "Three letters: ZTV. Last digit's a 1. The rest is mud."
She took a photo of the frame on her phone and forwarded it to her DMV contact. Then she pulled up her search tool and typed:
ZTV—1, SUV, black, Eldenport metro zone, Rourke-Thorne radius
Less than a minute later, the result popped up.
Vehicle Registration: Vireon Capital Holdings, LLC
Fleet Lease Number: 2020-419B
Registered Driver: N/A (Corporate Lease)
Associated Business: Rourke-Thorne (subsidiary holding)
Izzy leaned back, eyes narrowing.
Jack read the screen upside down. "What the hell is Vireon?"
"Thorne's shell. Used to move real estate across state lines without showing his face."
Jack let out a sharp exhale. "So Arthur gets in a car owned by his business partner's front company... and ends up dead two days later."
Izzy didn't reply. She stared at the screen like it had just whispered something only she could hear.
She picked up her phone and typed out a second message — this one to her surveillance contact downtown.
Need traffic cam records. Eastside structure exit. 9:45 PM. Three days pre-homicide. SUV — Vireon tag. Pull all angle backups. Quiet request. No Kerr.
Jack watched her.
"This help?"
She glanced at him.
"You just handed me a rope. We'll see whose neck it fits."
PART 3: Echoes and Warnings
The Traffic Surveillance archives weren't in the precinct. They were buried beneath City Utilities — two levels down, past the boiler room, through a locked steel door that smelled like hot paper and toner ink.
Izzy flashed her ID at the narrow-eyed tech behind the counter.
"Need footage request review. Quiet pull."
The tech, a wiry man in a Raiders hoodie named Kwan, raised an eyebrow.
"Quiet quiet or pretend-to-be-quiet quiet?"
"Think subpoenas and apologies if it leaks."
He nodded once and slid behind his terminal, fingers clacking.
"License fragment?"
She handed over a note with the partial: ZTV—1, Black SUV, Structure 5E, June 11, 9:45 PM.
Kwan leaned in.
"We had that file."
She frowned. "Had?"
He pulled up a digital log. A few windows opened in quick succession — line items, file IDs, playback stamps.
Izzy saw what he was looking at before he said it.
"Footage pulled yesterday morning. Accessed by someone using credentials tagged under—"
He paused.
Izzy's voice dropped. "Say it."
"Sergeant Kerr's access key."
Her mouth flattened to a line.
"Was it just viewed?"
"No," Kwan said quietly. "Deleted. Not wiped — that would trigger a flag. Manually reassigned to 'corrupted input,' then routed to temp and erased in the next hourly dump."
"Backups?"
"Supposed to be. But those get overwritten every seventy-two hours unless someone requests a flag."
"When were they due to purge?"
"Ten minutes after the footage was accessed."
Izzy stood very still.
"Can you retrieve anything?"
"I might be able to grab packet residue — snippets. No guarantees. Depends how clean the overwrite was."
She stepped closer. "Try."
Kwan nodded and opened a background recovery shell, hands flying across keys.
As code scrolled up the screen, he said, "You think he's dirty?"
Izzy's eyes didn't leave the monitor.
"I think someone gave him a reason to be."
Kwan hesitated. "Just saying — if I go digging and someone notices, my name hits a ledger."
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a small business card. Her handwriting was on the back.
"Give this number a call if anyone gives you heat. Ask for Carla."
"Who's Carla?"
"Attorney. Owes me three."
Kwan slipped the card into his desk drawer, then hit "Run" on the script.
Izzy watched the screen.
"Let me know what you find."
As she turned to leave, Kwan said, almost too casually:
"You know what's funny? That wasn't even the only access to the file."
She stopped.
"Who else?"
Kwan tapped the monitor. "Third-party ping. External. No badge. Ghost signature."
She stared at him.
"Outside the system?"
He nodded slowly.
"Someone was watching before you ever got here."
PART 4: Jack's Fraying Edge
Jack sat by the window with the lights off and the blinds cracked just enough for one eye.
He hadn't slept. Not really.
He'd tried.
But every time his head hit the pillow, the silence felt... artificial. Manufactured. Like someone had pressed pause on the outside world.
He kept hearing things. Imagining headlights stopping just out of view. Watching shapes linger too long on the sidewalk.
The jump drive — Red's gift — sat in his pocket like a hot stone. He hadn't let it go since last night.
A knock at the door made him flinch.
He stood slowly, grabbed the nearest thing with weight — a glass ashtray — and crept toward the door. The knock came again. Louder.
He yanked it open, ashtray raised — and found Mrs. Halloran from next door blinking up at him with wide eyes, holding a foil-wrapped plate.
"I... I just wanted to bring you this," she stammered. "Lasagna. It's Tuesday."
Jack looked at her, confused, hand still half-raised.
Then he noticed the way she took half a step back.
He lowered the ashtray.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice barely a whisper.
She nodded once and placed the foil plate on the floor. "I'll... leave it here."
When she turned away, Jack shut the door slowly and locked both bolts.
He stood there, hand on the knob, eyes closed.
He was slipping.
He knew it.
An hour later, Izzy knocked.
She didn't wait for him to invite her in. Just stepped past him, looked around once, and wrinkled her nose.
"Jesus," she said. "What died in here?"
"Hope," Jack muttered, flopping onto the couch. "Or possibly a rat in the wall. Could be either."
She glanced at the bottle on the coffee table — half empty, cheap, no label.
"Red's footage was real," she said.
Jack didn't respond.
"But the full plate's gone. Scrubbed. Kerr accessed the file. Someone else did too — off-book."
That got his attention.
"Someone outside the department?"
Izzy nodded. "Ghost trace. No badge signature. Just enough digital footprint to tell it was there."
Jack sat forward.
"He's dead, isn't he?"
"Who?"
"Red."
She didn't answer.
"I saw his face last night," Jack said. "He knew he was done. He handed me that drive like it was his will."
Izzy looked around again — the closed blinds, the locked door, the ashtray still sitting on the floor.
"You're unraveling."
"No," Jack said. "I'm adjusting."
"To what?"
"Being hunted."
She sat beside him, not too close.
"You're not crazy. But you're no good to me sloppy."
He looked at her.
"You sound like Arthur."
She raised an eyebrow. "Do I?"
"Only when you're right."
She reached out a hand.
"Give me the drive."
Jack hesitated.
Then, slowly, he pulled it from his pocket and set it in her palm.
She slipped it into a case inside her coat.
"You still have that backup phone?"
He shook his head. "Gone. Whoever hit my place took it."
"Then stay sober, stay inside, and answer the goddamn door like a human."
Jack gave her a weak smile.
"I'll try. Can't promise anything with the rat."
She stood.
"If someone comes for you — and they will — don't try to be brave."
"I'm not brave. I'm broke."
"Good. Use that."
Then she left.
Jack stayed where he was, eyes on the dark window, as if trying to guess which shadow might blink first.
PART 5: Crosshairs
The bar was the kind of place you didn't find unless you were already lost.
No name on the sign. No windows. Just a faded green door tucked between a pawn shop and a payday loan place, the sidewalk cracked like bad skin.
Izzy pushed it open and stepped inside.
It was dark, low-ceilinged, and smelled like bleach barely covering up something worse. A single TV flickered in the corner with the sound off — muted boxing, bloodless punches looping on replay.
Behind the bar stood a woman in a denim vest and smudged eyeliner who looked like she'd thrown out her last ounce of patience two years ago.
"Red Malloy," Izzy said, straight to the point.
The bartender squinted. "Who's askin'?"
Izzy flashed her badge just long enough to make a point, then slipped it away.
The woman rolled her eyes. "He was here last night. Got jumpy halfway through his second shot, said something about 'checking the wind,' and bounced."
"Leave anything behind?"
"A tip. For once."
"Did he say where he was going?"
"Just said he needed to be 'anywhere but here by morning.' Looked white as a ghost."
Izzy nodded and dropped a few bills on the counter. "If he shows again, don't tell him I was here."
The bartender gave her a look. "You expect him to?"
"No."
Outside, the alley behind the bar was a narrow chute of brick and shadows, a single dumpster wedged halfway down between rusted pipes and a sagging fire escape.
Izzy stepped carefully, flashlight in hand.
Near the back corner of the dumpster, something caught the light — a smudge on the metal lip. Red. Fresh.
She moved closer, squatted.
Blood. Just a little. But enough.
She followed a trail of droplets three feet down, where they ended abruptly at a black scuff mark on the pavement.
A heel drag.
Someone had been hauled.
Izzy stood, scanned the alley.
Silence.
Then — headlights flared down at the far end of the street.
A black sedan. Engine idling. No movement.
She squinted. Tinted windows. Nothing visible.
She stepped forward, just once.
The sedan shut its headlights off.
Then, slowly, rolled backward into the intersection — silent, smooth — and disappeared around the corner.
Izzy stood still, one hand on her holster.
She pulled out her phone and dialed.
"Dispatch."
"This is Inspector Diaz. I need a unit to Park Street and 6th. Possible scene. One injured, possibly taken."
"Victim ID?"
She looked down at the blood.
"Red Malloy."
"Confirming. Are you—"
"I'm fine. Just send someone."
She hung up.
But she didn't move from the alley.
Not yet.
Because something had just changed. Not the evidence. Not the trail.
The rules.
They weren't just watching anymore.
They were clearing the board.