Some men were built for hierarchy, for clean lines and regulations and uniforms pressed so crisp they could slice your wrist. Rick had never been one of them. He didn’t follow the rulebook so much as circle it, a wolf testing a fence. He trusted instinct more than protocol, the kind of gut feeling that surged up from the marrow and didn’t give a damn about standard procedure.
That’s what made him such a good detective, the best the Calgrave Metropolitan Police Department had. Tenacious. Unshakable. Sharp enough to cut through bullshit and lies alike. There were bounds in his job, he’d never deny that, but his talent lay in crossing the right ones at the right time, reading a crime scene the way others read tea leaves. The last thing he needed was some paper-pusher barking at him from behind a slab of executive-grade walnut.
The captain’s office reeked of stale coffee, cigarette tar, and the sour hint of sweat beneath too much cologne. Papers lay sprawled across the desk, case files bleeding ink, stab wounds no one had stitched. Behind it, Captain Mallory was a fuming statue sculpted from old rage and bureaucratic rot, jabbing a fat,nicotine-stained finger at Rick and his partner, chipping away at their dignity one threat at a time.
“You two bring in the suspect with blood literally on his fucking hands,” Mallory snarled, “and somehow he lawyers up before we can get so much as a goddamn word out of him?”
Rick didn’t answer. He didn’t trust himself to. His fists twitched in his pockets, jaw ticking. One wrong word and the thing in him—that thing—might slip. Rage came easily these days. Hot, sharp, and dangerous, a blade tucked under the tongue. Instead of meeting Mallory’s gaze, he turned his head toward the window, where rain threaded down the glass in the pattern of veins, watching the city drown in its own decay. Outside, Calgrave looked like a wet cigarette left burning on the sidewalk. Streetlamps bleeding into puddles. Lightning burning the skyline into negative space, each burst revealing its bones against the night.
Frank Burton leaned on the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, impassive as ever. There was a stillness to him Rick had always envied—nothing could touch him, not even this. “He knew his rights,” Frank said, tone calm but firm, a man used to navigating other men’s tempers.
Mallory’s face reddened. “Knew his rights? I got a commissioner breathing down my neck, a mayor who wants the ‘Sculptor’ headlines buried before the next goddamn election, and you two bringing me jack shit but attitude and a half-naked twink with a smart mouth. You want to talk rights?” He slammed his palm on the desk, making the papers flutter. “Youmakethat little shit talk, Detective. I don’t give a fuck how.”
Rick didn’t flinch, but he felt the ripple of heat climb up his spine. That word—twink—hung in the air like a slap. Something about the casual dismissal, the venom soaked into it, made him want to growl. His hands stayed plunged in his pockets, nails digging deep enough to leave crescents in his palms. He had toomany memories of broken noses, split knuckles, things said in anger that couldn’t be taken back. He wasn’t going there again. Frank could do the talking. It was safer that way. For everyone.
“Captain,” Frank said, voice hardening, “you want us to break protocol, say it out loud. Otherwise, let us do our jobs.”
Mallory’s glare could’ve cracked the plaster behind them. His lip curled, but he didn’t say the thing they all knew he wanted to. Didn’t dare put it on the record. Instead, he sneered and waved them off with a dismissive flick of his hand. “I want this motherfucking case wrapped. Got it? Wrapped. Clean. No leaks to the press, no panic in the streets. We’ve got five bodies and no official suspect. Media’s sniffing around, but they don’t have the full story yet—and I’ll make sure it stays that way, unless one of you two fucks it up. Last thing I need is the wordserialon the front page with Halloween coming up.”
The implication sat heavy between them: the murders hadn’t been announced as connected. Not officially. But the silence wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, the city would start to put it together—the pattern, the bodies, the way each face had been left a blank canvas of naked bone.
“Now get the hell out of my office,” Mallory barked.
Rick moved first, the heels of his shoes thudding against the dark granite tiles as he turned. Frank followed, close and quiet. The captain’s door slammed behind them, the sound echoing across the bullpen like a gunshot held between teeth.
(1:56 a.m.)
Calgrave Central, the beating heart of CMPD, felt colder than usual at this hour. Not in temperature, but in temperament: a chill that sank into the marrow and lingered, no matter how long you paced the halls or how much burnt coffee you slurped trying to chase it off.
Rick strode like a tempest in a suit, all muscles and quiet menace. At six foot five and thirty-eight, he didn’t just walk through the station—he dominated it. He didn’t say much, but then again, he didn’t have to; people always made room when he showed up. Big, broad, as if the world had sculpted him from granite, with dark brown hair, eyes like clouds over a storm-tossed sea, and the mood to match: gray, sullen, always on the verge of thunder.
Frank fell in step beside him, matching Rick’s longer stride with the quiet confidence of someone who’d seen enough bullshit to know when to ignore it. “Guy’s one stress ball away from a stroke,” he said, voice low, shoes echoing off the tiles.
Rick grunted. “He wants blood. Doesn’t care whose.”
They passed a uniform wheeling a coffee-stained chair, its busted wheels shrieking in protest. Somewhere, a phone rang and rang and rang. Around them, officers on duty hunched over ancient desktops, their screens fat and flickering, stubborn relics in a world that had long since gone flat. The glow painted tired faces in sallow shades, eyes bleary from too many hours and too little sleep.
“You think the kid did it?” Frank asked.
Rick exhaled through his nose. “I think he’s not telling us everything.”
Frank glanced at him sidelong, unreadable behind the armor of experience. Forty-six, with just a hint of silver at the temples and the kind of lines that sharpened a man rather than softened him, his dark face strong, his presence bedrock-solid. He was the calm to Rick’s volatility, the balance that kept the scale from tipping too far into recklessness. “Doesn’t mean he killed anyone,” he said. “People hide things for all kinds of reasons.”
Rick didn’t answer right away. Hiding was something he’d mastered early. Hell, Frank might be the only one who reallyknew him, and that was after a decade as partners. He stared straight ahead, jaw ticking again. “What do we got on him?”
“Riggs is digging through his priors, seeing if any known associates pop,” Frank said. “Nothing from Forensics until Gloria comes in the morning. The vic’s face was carved off clean—no prints, no ID, no surveillance. Ghost job, same as the other four.”
He swore under his breath. “Always the fucking clean ones.”
“Yeah, well, nobody dumps a body in a blind alley by accident.” Frank’s tone sharpened. “And our guy was caught kneeling in the blood with no alibi and a look on his face as if the devil kissed him goodbye.”
Rick’s jaw flexed harder. He didn’t like coincidences. Coincidences meant someone was playing them.
“Let me see if anything’s come up while you take another shot at cracking him,” Frank added. “I’ll try to hamper his lawyer, buy you as much time as I can.”
He nodded.
“Just don’t shove him off the ledge before he talks, all right?”
