Matt Rivers still carried himself like a cop.
That was the problem.
Not the haircut—he'd let that go feral on purpose. Not the clothes either. It was the posture. The way he entered a room like exits mattered. The way his eyes cataloged hands, doors, reflections. You don't unlearn that. You just learn where it gets you killed.
Tonight it got him paid.
The dealer's apartment smelled like burnt oil and cheap citrus cleaner. Someone had tried to make it look respectable and failed in a way that felt personal. The couch sagged. The TV was too big. The blinds stayed closed like the sun had warrants.
The kid on the couch—kid, because anyone under thirty looked like a fetus to Matt now—kept tapping his foot.
Matt didn't tell him to stop.
Silence did the work.
"You shorted me," Matt said eventually. Calm. Flat. Not a question.
The kid swallowed. "No, man, I—"
Matt held up a finger.
The finger mattered. It wasn't threatening. It was administrative. The finger said wait your turn. The finger said I've done this before and it ends the same way.
Matt reached into his jacket slowly, deliberately, and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
He placed it on the coffee table.
The kid leaned forward despite himself.
It was a photocopy of a charging document. Old. Real. Names blacked out, but the structure was unmistakable. Federal letterhead didn't lie. It didn't need to.
"I used to help build these," Matt said. "You know how many ways there are to ruin someone with paperwork alone?"
The kid shook his head too fast.
"Hundreds," Matt said. "And that's before anyone gets emotional."
Matt waited. Let the panic bloom.
The kid reached under the couch cushion and pulled out a second envelope. Thicker.
Matt didn't smile when he took it. Smiling was amateur hour.
"Next time," Matt said, standing, "don't make me explain accounting."
He headed for the door.
"Hey," the kid blurted. "You a fed?"
Matt paused. Looked back.
"No," he said. "I'm worse. I remember the rules."
Outside, the cold slapped him awake.
Snow hadn't started yet, but it felt like it was thinking about it. The city always got quiet right before weather turned. Like it was holding its breath.
Matt walked two blocks before his phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
That was never good.
He answered anyway. "Yeah."
"You're active again," a voice said. Older. Familiar in a way that made Matt's jaw tighten. "That's brave. Or stupid."
Matt stopped walking.
"Who's asking?" he said.
A pause. Then: "Someone who scrubbed your name once already."
Matt closed his eyes.
"Don't do this," he said. "I stayed gone."
"You stayed adjacent," the voice replied. "There's a difference."
Traffic hissed by. A bus coughed diesel. Normal life. None of it applied.
"Why now?" Matt asked.
"Because patterns repeat," the voice said. "And you're back in one."
Matt leaned against a brick wall, suddenly aware of how tired his knees felt. How cold sank straight into bone these days.
"You got a file?" Matt asked.
A soft chuckle. "You always did ask the wrong question first."
The call ended.
Matt stared at the phone until the screen went dark.
Active again.
He hated that phrase. It implied choice.
He headed to his car, an old sedan with a dented rear panel and plates registered two addresses ago. He sat behind the wheel for a long moment without starting it.
Formerly lawful.
That's what the academy instructor had called guys like him during ethics week. The ones who bent rules until they snapped. The ones who didn't retire so much as transition.
Matt hadn't bent anything. He'd just noticed what the rules were actually for.
He drove.
Twenty minutes later, he was parked under a flickering streetlight behind a closed tire shop. He popped the trunk, lifted the false panel, and pulled out a tablet sealed in plastic.
He hadn't turned it on in months.
It booted slow. Old security. Old ghosts.
He bypassed two screens, entered a code he still remembered even though he wished he didn't, and accessed a directory he was never supposed to see again.
Names. Dates. Flags.
And then—there it was.
CROWLEY.
Matt felt his stomach drop.
Crowley wasn't a person so much as a gravity well. You didn't work for him. You orbited him until something broke.
Matt scrolled.
Assets. Burned assets. Informants who died of overdoses or bad luck or sudden, aggressive silence. Patterns hiding inside chaos.
And then—
A name he recognized.
"Son of a—"
He shut the tablet off immediately.
Too late. You couldn't unsee structure once you saw it.
Crowley wasn't cleaning up messes.
He was feeding them.
Matt leaned back against the car, breath fogging, heart steady but heavy. The kind of calm you got right before the drop.
Somewhere across town, men like Aaron were making choices they thought were private.
They never were.
Matt looked down the street, half-expecting headlights that weren't there yet.
"Okay," he muttered. "So that's the game."
Formerly lawful.
Currently exposed.
He closed the trunk, got back in the car, and drove without turning the radio on.
Silence helped him think.
And thinking, he knew, was about to get dangerous.