(10:06 a.m.)
The bolt slid open with a groan that felt too personal. It tore through the silence like a bone splintering under pressure. Ash didn’t move. He watched as the cell door cracked, then widened, revealing Detective Rick Slade with a plastic bag tucked under one big arm and his trench coat draped over the other. Tall as rumor and twice as strong, he stepped inside with the air of a man who hated being here and hated that it showed.
“You’re being released,” he said. His voice was sandpaper and smoke, worn rough by long nights and harder truths. “For now.”
Ash rose from the cot in one smooth movement, fluid and catlike, springs creaking below him in a whispered complaint. He held Slade’s gaze, steel-gray, watchful, the kind of stare that left fingerprints on the soul. “That must’ve hurt, Detective,” he said, voice thick with velvet mockery. “Letting me walk free. I imagine that bruised your sense of justice—or was it just your ego?”
Slade’s jaw twitched. “Don’t get comfortable. You’ll be back in a cell before long.”
Ash’s smile came slow, all teeth and disdain. “That would make you even stupider than you look.”
Slade dropped the bag onto the bench with a thud and stepped back, though not far enough to kill the current between them. “Get dressed.”
Ash crouched and opened the sack. His clothes were inside: black denim, scuffed leather, the familiar weight of his former self. He took out the garments, laid them over the cot, then slidthe zipper of his jumpsuit down to the base, the coarse fabric parting with a faint rasp. Cold air kissed his skin. He peeled off the uniform in a single motion and stepped out, naked beneath the yellowed light that burned overhead. He didn’t hide, and he didn’t hurry.
Slade turned away a moment too late. Ash watched the muscles in those massive shoulders tense as he faced the door, spine rigid, posture stiff with effort. The man was a sculpture of self-control, but Ash had always enjoyed cracking stone.
He dressed slowly. The ripped jeans slid up over strong thighs and bare ass, tight and shaped to remember him. The army boots went on next—polished black leather, laces curling cotton snakes. He cinched them up with deliberate precision, the metal eyelets clicking softly under his fingers. When he slipped his arms into the jacket, cool against his skin, he caught a flicker of movement in the tiny window on the cell door.
There. Slade’s reflection in the glass, staring at him before glancing away, fast and guilty. But not fast enough.
Ash smirked, letting the leather settle over his shoulders, old armor falling into place. “See something you like, Detective?”
Slade didn’t flinch, but the pause in his breath gave him away. Only a second, but enough. “I’m trying to give you some privacy,” he replied, facing the door.
“I thought you knew better than to turn your back on an enemy,” Ash murmured, tugging the zipper of his jacket halfway up. He left the chest harness draped on the cot like a snake shed of its skin, a quiet farewell for whoever came next. “Or maybe you’re one of those men who get off on danger?”
Slade turned then, his face a mask of indifference, but the air between them still pulsed. “Tell me something. How’d you turn Hayes into your personal errand boy? He doesn’t even fetch coffee for superior officers.”
Ash tilted his head, the smile never reaching his eyes. “Guess I just bring out the best in people.”
Slade huffed, low and humorless. “Or maybe he just wanted you quiet for five minutes. Was that it?”
“Sorry, Detective,” Ash said, brushing past him toward the open door. “A magician never reveals his tricks.”
Slade followed him out into the corridor, the heavy door left open behind them. The air outside the cell was cooler, still carrying the faint tang of bleach and metal. Ash let his boots strike the floor with deliberate weight, every step an echo in a cavern. “It’s just—” Slade said, walking beside him now, “Marvin Hayes isn’t exactly known for random acts of kindness.”
Ash’s tone sharpened. “So you know he’s crooked.”
Slade stopped mid-stride. “What are you getting at?”
Ash kept walking. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving a hand. “Soon he won’t be in a position to hurt anyone.”
A silence bloomed behind him, thick, suspicious, taut with something unsaid. Then footsteps. Two long strides, and Slade was beside him again. “And what exactly does that mean?” he asked, low and hard.
Ash smirked without looking at him. “Don’t strain that tiny little brain of yours, Detective. You might pull something.”
Slade said nothing. But his jaw was tight enough to crack.
They walked the corridor in silence, footsteps thudding sharp and even. The hush between them was loaded, a held breath neither wanted to claim. Slade’s broad frame moved beside him, all coiled strength and clean lines, his presence dragging shadows behind him. Ash kept his eyes forward, but the awareness of the man was unavoidable. Too close. Too solid. The scent of wool and tobacco clung to him, masculine and faintly bitter, and Ash felt it ghost at the edge of his awareness like a dare.
The next moment, his focus shifted: he was free. Not just from the cell, but from the silence, the cold echo of his breath, the stifling weight of walls too close and a ceiling too low. He hadn’t thought much about what it’d feel like, stepping out of that cell. Two days had passed, but time bent in there, warped itself into something slow and suffocating. Now, with every step down that cold corridor, the weight of air felt thinner, freer. But freedom didn’t come clean. It left a smear of something behind. Something sour and unfinished. He didn’t feel safe. He didn’t feel grateful. He just felt… exposed.
And beside him, Slade was a storm in a suit.
They reached the last checkpoint, the end of the line. Slade opened the double doors, and Ash stepped into the vast lobby of CMPD headquarters. Out here, the world moved again.
The grand hall of Central Station thrummed with life, all brass and bustle beneath a soaring dome ribbed with iron and gilt. A chandelier the size of a Buick hung overhead like a spiked halo, shedding warm yellow light across a floor tiled in black and white marble. Everything gleamed except the people.
