NATE'S POV
The walk to the holding wing was the longest journey I had ever taken. The air in the sub-levels of St. Jude's Key was filtered to a clinical perfection, yet it felt heavy, thick with the ghosts of the man I used to be. Every step I took in my expensive Italian boots echoed against the reinforced concrete, a rhythmic reminder that I was no longer the captain who walked the linoleum floors of the CSI.
I stopped at the heavy blast door. My hand hovered over the biometric scanner. For fifteen years, this hand had signed warrants, shaken the hands of grieving mothers, and held a badge that stood for the line between order and chaos. Now, that same hand was the key to a kingdom built on the ruins of the law.
