Novak didn’t move for a moment, then smiled—a dead, empty thing that made my skin crawl, although I’d seen worse. He spoke too calmly. “You will.” He stabbed Rufus in the upper thigh so hard the chair rocked back, the impact knocking the air out of him. Not near an artery, Novak knew his job, and Rufus screamed and jerked against the rope.
Novak took his time, tracing lazy lines up Rufus’s chest, not cutting deep—just enough to make the skin weep. He asked the same question again. No answer. Then came the pain, measured and deliberate: a cut here, pressure there, the dull crack of bone when he twisted a finger. Each sound echoed off the concrete walls.
Rufus broke eventually. I’m sure that faced with Novak, they always did.
Broken and blubbering, Rufus tried to pull air through the blood clogging his throat. His voice cracked as he choked outwhat he knew, words spilling between sobs. Novak crouched close, still calm, knife idle in his hand as he summarized for me, tone flat as if reading a grocery list.
“So let me get this straight. You deal with a surgical resident, Alex Dryden-Wells. You split the money with him for what he calls a live one. He sells the organs.”
Rufus sobbed harder, nodding frantically, confirming it with every gasp.
“I can give you half. More if you want it!” he said in desperation. The words spilled out, incoherent, messy, half-truths mixed with pleas. I stayed still, watching the exchange—measuring his pulse, assessing damage, detached from the sound of bones breaking. Novak’s expression never changed, and I watched the torture, impassive. I’d seen worse.
Blood, pain, noise—just another process. The drain took the runoff, the flickering neon caught every spatter, and when it was over, Rufus was shaking, going into shock, the adrenaline long gone. His skin had turned a sickly gray, sweat pooling at his hairline as his system struggled to regulate. I’d seen it a hundred times before—the heart slowing, blood pressure dropping, body closing down to protect what little life was left.
Novak wiped the blade on his jeans, calm as ever, and looked up at me. “Your turn?” he asked.
“I don’t do that shit.” That line belonged to someone else, and crossing it would make me something I couldn’t afford to be. On the other hand, Novak didn’t hesitate, drew his knife across Rufus’s throat, scarlet spilling, ragged breath, and then nothing.
“I’ll deal with this,” he said, and we exchanged nods before I left.
I headed for my car and stiffened as I drew closer, spotting a silhouetted figure in the moonlight. Leaning there, arms loose at his sides, a gun hanging from one hand, was Detective Rosen. Dressed in dark clothes as if he needed to disappear into thenight too, he stared at me. Streetlight caught the edge of his badge and the focus in his gaze. I wish I could see his steady brown gaze as clearly as I had at Redcars.
“Rough night, Doc?” he asked, voice low.
Behind me, I heard footsteps, Novak in the shadows. I waved a hand at my cleaner before he exposed himself.
I cycled rapidly through what I was supposed to be feeling about him being here, but beneath the calculation and control, there was something else—an edge of excitement I didn’t want to name. It stirred something sharp and dangerous inside me to see him standing this close to my world, seeing what I was capable of.
“It’s okay,” I said back at Novak, encouraging him to stay in the shadows, then gestured at Detective Rosen. “This one’s mine.”
SEVEN
Levi
Caleb toldme they’d tracked Doc to this warehouse in the middle of nowhere—it had been my idea to check it out, and part of me wished I hadn’t. I didn’t mean to look in there. I hadn’t even meant to follow him this far, but instinct got the better of me. When you’ve been a cop long enough, you follow your hunches, and this one led me straight here. I didn’t know what I’d find—a surgery where he was cutting people up, maybe?
I found two SUVs and surveilled the warehouse, the place falling apart around itself—cracked windows, flickering light spilling through the gaps. What I saw when I followed Caleb’s directions in my ear wasn’t something I could unsee, and I didn’t have the words to explain to him, or anyone, what I’d witnessed. The guy in the chair—the one they’d brought in—was unconscious. And another man—not Doc—slit his throat as if it were just another item on a checklist. My body locked up. Training screamed move, shout, intervene—and nothing happened. I stood there, lungs burning, watching, while the moment where I should’ve acted slid past and vanished.
I stumbled back and away, the taste of bile in my throat, thinking they’d spot me, seeing my life flash before my eyes.My hands shook, caught between instincts that fired too late to matter—reach for my gun, shout, intervene—each one colliding and canceling the other out until all I could do was stand there. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. Arrest them? Call it in? Pretend I hadn’t seen what I’d seen? My whole world tilted sideways, and all the years of black-and-white law blurred into something ugly and gray. Who was the man in the chair? If I’d been earlier, could I have saved him? Was Doc there to carve him up for his organs? Who was the other man who’d ended a life?
Who the fuckwasDoc?
By the time I made it out, feeling as though both men were hot on my heels, I could barely breathe. I leaned against his car door, gun hanging loose in my hand, the weight of it useless there while I tried to convince myself I still had control. As if I hadn’t watched a man die while another stood there and didn’t blink.
And then he was walking out—Doc. Calm. Unhurried. His expression unreadable, he sauntered toward me, hesitating for a second when he saw me before coming closer. The other man was in the shadows—I heard the steps, but Doc held up a hand to stop his companion from stepping into the light.
When I watched that murder, Doc hadn’t been the one touching the man in the chair.
But he hadn’t stopped the other man from cutting the victim’s throat either.
I wanted to ask a hundred questions, to arrest him, or not. To understand—but all I could manage was to breathe, steady and shallow, as he stepped closer. What the hell was going on? And how deep was he in whatever this was?
I wasn’t calling it in—not contacting Caleb. I should’ve. Any cop with half a brain would’ve. But something in me had locked up the second I saw the blade slice that man’s throat—some mix of shock, disbelief, and the sick certainty that if I moved, if Imade a sound, I might be the next one in that chair. I told myself I was waiting for the right moment, watching for a pattern, for an opening, for anything that made sense. Truth was, I’d been frozen. Rooted to the spot, breath shallow, heart pounding, watching the scene unravel like a nightmare I couldn’t wake from. And maybe a part of me—some dark, shameful part—needed to know what Doc was doing here. Whether he was part of this.
“It’s okay,” he said, but he was talking to the other man—the one with blood on his hands—not me. “This one’s mine.”
As he moved nearer, I straightened instinctively, adrenaline snapping through me. My pulse roared in my ears. I brought the gun up, safety off, hands steady, although my heart wasn’t. The distance between us shrank to a few feet, and I could see his face under the wash of the moonlight. His eyes caught the light—cold and steady, but there was something else there, something that pulled at me before I could stop it, and it threw me off balance. He was calm—too calm—as if none of this mattered.
