PART 1: The Conversation Jack Dreads
The knock on Nadine's door felt like more than just four quick raps.
It was a confession, a relapse, an apology that never formed.
Jack stood on the small stone porch of her split-level in the north suburbs, hands buried in his coat, unsure if she'd even answer.
She did.
The door cracked open. Nadine looked like she hadn't slept much either. Her hair was tied back in a rushed bun, her eyes ringed with faint irritation that had become second nature.
"You look awful," she said.
"Thanks."
"What do you want, Jack?"
"Answers."
"That's new."
He flinched. She sighed and opened the door wider.
"Don't make me regret this."
They sat in the kitchen, across from each other like a ceasefire between former nations. A chipped mug steamed in front of him. He didn't touch it.
Nadine folded her arms. "If this is about child support, I haven't gone to the courts. Yet."
"It's not."
"Then what?"
Jack reached into his coat and placed the photo of Leah — the one with Arthur in the background — on the table.
Nadine looked at it for two seconds before going still.
"I need to know," Jack said quietly. "How long was he watching her?"
Nadine didn't answer right away. She kept looking at the photo, jaw set.
"Six months ago," she said finally, voice flat. "He came to me with an offer."
"What kind of offer?"
"Money. A trust for Leah. Full college tuition, living expenses, international travel, the works. No strings."
Jack shook his head. "There's always strings with Arthur."
She nodded slowly. "There were. He didn't say them outright, but they were there."
Jack leaned forward. "Say it."
"He wanted Leah to cut you off. Officially. No contact. Nothing to do with you. He said it was for her future. Said it was time she saw you for what you were."
Jack sat back like he'd been punched in the stomach.
"She agreed," Nadine added softly.
"No," Jack said. "No, she wouldn't—"
"She did. I didn't push her. I stayed out of it."
"But he was watching her."
Nadine frowned. "What?"
He slid the photo back toward her. "He didn't just give her a trust. He followed her. Had surveillance shots. Had her name circled in a ledger. He wasn't being generous. He was marking territory."
Nadine stared at the photo now like it had shifted shapes.
"I didn't know," she whispered. "I swear, Jack, I didn't know he was—"
Jack stood abruptly, knocking the chair back.
"I need to talk to Leah."
"She won't answer."
"Then I'll wait."
He moved toward the door.
"Jack," Nadine said behind him, "this won't fix things."
He paused, hand on the knob.
"I'm not trying to fix it. I'm trying to stop it from getting worse."
And then he was gone.
PART 2: Izzy and the Pathologist
The elevator in the private lab clinic groaned like it was sick of secrets.
Izzy leaned against the back wall as the floor display blinked past 2... 3... 4.
The place smelled sterile, but the air carried a hush — not peace, not quiet. The kind of silence where truth gets autopsied without ever being buried.
When the doors slid open, Dr. Asha Menon was already waiting for her, arms crossed over her lab coat, dark eyes sharp behind square glasses.
"You always bring me the good ones," Asha said.
Izzy held up her hands. "This one comes with a warning label."
Asha led her down the hallway and into the cold room — where the hum of the refrigeration units filled the silence.
On a metal tray, the folder waited.
Izzy reached for it. Asha stopped her.
"Let me show you."
On the light board, Asha clipped up the cranial scan — top-down view, cross-sectioned, grayed out like a ghost in slices.
"This is Arthur Rourke's fracture," she said. "Primary point of impact. Blunt trauma. Occipital crest. Blunt enough to kill instantly."
"And the murder weapon?"
Asha smirked faintly. "According to the official file, this lovely thing." She pulled a photo from a folder — the polished brass letter opener, gleaming under evidence lights.
Izzy looked at it.
Asha tapped the scan. "Now look at this depression. Too wide. Too deep. There's hairline spider-cracking across both parietal lobes. That means the force distributed over a broader surface."
"Not a narrow blade."
"Not even close. Letter opener would puncture, maybe chip. This... this is bludgeon territory. Small, heavy, rounded. Metal or stone."
Izzy felt it click in her ribs.
"A sculpture," she said.
Asha nodded. "Something hand-sized. Dense. Probably smooth. Impact suggests a downward arc — not thrown. Delivered."
"So not a fight?"
"No defensive wounds. No bruises on the hands or arms. No hesitation. Just... one clean blow."
Izzy crossed her arms.
"Kerr never mentioned that."
"Kerr," Asha said, "signed off on a clean narrative. Letter opener in hand, suspect on record, no motive to question anything."
She slid the autopsy folder shut and handed it to Izzy.
"But you don't buy it."
Izzy didn't answer.
She just stared at the scan like it might confess something.
Then she said: "What about postmortem movement?"
Asha raised an eyebrow. "You saw it too."
"Too little blood at the point of impact. Too much on the carpet, away from where he fell. Someone moved him."
"Right after the kill."
"Before we arrived."
Asha nodded. "Scene was rearranged."
Izzy tucked the file under her arm.
"Thanks."
Asha smirked. "Bring me something simple next time. Like a chainsaw accident."
"I'll see what I can do."
PART 3: Nadine's Files
The house was too quiet after Jack left.
Nadine stood in the doorway for a full minute, staring at the spot where he'd stood, where the photo still sat on the table. Then, wordlessly, she turned, walked upstairs, and opened the hallway closet.
She pulled down the old file box — one of several she hadn't touched in years. Inside: insurance records, medical forms, crumpled birthday cards, half a coloring book Leah had never finished.
At the bottom, in a blue envelope with no markings and sealed with wax — old-fashioned, theatrical — was a letter.
She remembered Arthur's voice the day he gave it to her.
"Don't open it. Just give it to her when she turns eighteen."
Nadine had nodded, distracted. She'd meant to put it in a safe. She'd forgotten. And now she was holding it like it might burn.
Two days later, Jack opened his mailbox and found a brown padded envelope. No return address. No markings. Just his name, written in clean block letters.
He carried it inside like it was a live wire.
Inside: the blue envelope. Sealed. Arthur's seal still intact.
And inside that — a single typed letter.
It wasn't long. Just three paragraphs.
Jack sat on the edge of his couch and read it slowly, then again.
When he was done, he called Izzy.
They sat across from each other at her kitchen table, the letter between them.
Leah,
You may never read this. I suspect that by the time you're of age, you'll have made your mind up about who I was — and who your father is. That's your right. But understand this:
Money is a leash. It feels like freedom until you try to walk away from it.
The people I work with — the people I've tried to protect you from — will not stop at leverage. They will find ways to use your name, your identity, your very existence, to bury secrets inside bank accounts. If they do, run. If your father's there, trust him — even if he's broken.
A.
Izzy leaned back, exhaling slowly. "He knew."
Jack didn't look up. "He knew they were going to use her."
"Maybe already had."
He rubbed his eyes. "And he didn't tell me. He left me buried in my own mess while he tried to fix everything from the shadows."
"Maybe he thought if you knew, you'd fall apart."
Jack looked at her, jaw set. "I'm not falling apart. I'm boiling."
Izzy nodded.
They sat in silence a while.
Then she picked up the letter again and said:
"He didn't just leave a warning. He left motive. Just not yours."
PART 4: Pattern Recognition
The lights were still on in the Rourke penthouse when Izzy arrived, but no one was home.
She flashed a badge she wasn't technically supposed to still use, signed a name she hadn't used in years, and let herself inside.
It had been a week since the murder. The room had been catalogued, swabbed, dusted. Officially, it was processed.
But no one had asked the right questions.
Now she did.
She moved through the space slowly — not looking at what was there, but at what was missing.
A red outline still marked where Arthur's body had been found: sprawled at an awkward angle by the kitchen bar, blood pooled beneath his head. The letter opener had been found a foot away.
But something had always bugged her.
She knelt beside the marked blood pool and scanned the floor.
Too clean. Too contained.
No arterial spray. No high-impact splatter. Nothing on the nearby wall. No drips between the living area and this spot.
A single, tidy blot. That didn't happen in real life.
She stood and turned toward the glass windows — to the far wall, where a small marble sculpture had once stood on a side table. She remembered it from the real estate article in Modern Spaces: a twisted knot of brass and stone, small enough to fit in one hand.
She walked over. The table was still there.
But the sculpture was gone.
She bent down and scanned the carpet.
There — a faint discoloration. Something had once lain there for a long time, pressing into the pile. A ring, about six inches across.
She walked to the opposite end of the room and turned back, viewing the "crime scene" from the sculpture's point of view.
The line was cleaner now.
This was where the blow landed. The blood had been here. Then someone — likely the killer — moved Arthur's body to the other side of the room, planted the letter opener, and wiped the real weapon clean.
She glanced at the wall beside the missing sculpture. No security camera there. Just a single framed print of a cityscape, slightly crooked.
She stepped closer.
Behind the frame, hidden in the shadow where the nail bit into the drywall — a red smear.
Tiny.
Overlooked.
But blood.
Her pen tapped once against her lip as she stared.
Someone had staged the scene so well they'd even chosen the murder spot for its blind angles.
And that someone knew Jack would never be believed.
She stood, crossed the room again, and looked at the blood pool one more time.
Then she whispered, to no one in particular:
"Wrong body, wrong weapon, right mess."
PART 5: The Object Missing
Rourke-Thorne's top floor was quiet, hollow in that post-death kind of way, where no one wanted to move the furniture out of respect for the ghost that used to sit there.
Izzy didn't check in.
She still had the old passcode.
She moved down the hall toward the conference room. Neutral carpet, frosted glass walls, corporate art that tried too hard to look effortless.
Inside, the room was exactly as she'd remembered from the firm's PR photos.
Almost.
The centerpiece table was spotless, chairs pushed in, but her eyes went straight to the left-hand corner near the windows — to the small console shelf that once held a sculptural piece.
Now, the shelf was empty.
Not just cleared — absent in a way that left a story.
A faint half-moon of clean wood where dust hadn't settled. A weight pattern in the grain. A missing mass.
She stepped closer.
Pulled up the article on her phone.
There it was.
A photo from MetroStyle magazine, last summer: Arthur and Marcus Thorne shaking hands in this very room. On the shelf between them — a sculpture. Twisted. Bronze or brass, maybe both. Dense. Abstract. A small plaque beneath it, unreadable in the shot.
Now: gone.
Izzy reached into her bag and pulled out a soft cloth, wiped a line across the edge of the shelf, and tucked it into a test bag.
She wasn't expecting prints.
But if she got brass residue — that was enough.
She moved to the desk next. Arthur's private workspace — untouched since the investigation.
Everything in perfect rows. Pens. Business cards. A marble paperweight.
But beneath the desk, where his feet would rest — a single dent in the floorboard, as if something heavy had been dropped and then lifted quickly.
She knelt.
A tiny flake of reddish-brown caught the light.
Blood?
Perhaps.
She tucked it into another evidence envelope and stood.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Jack:
"They're watching the building. Just saw the black sedan again. Thought you should know."
She stared at the message for a long second, then pocketed the phone.
They were watching.
Which meant they were afraid.
Which meant she was close.