"Thank you," he continued, voice rising with fervor, gesturing wildly with his free hand like a preacher delivering a sermon, "for connecting me to Dominion Hall. I don't know what it is yet, but I will. I'll find out. I'll tear it all down—you, your career, whatever shadow operation you're all running. I'll expose every lie, every cover-up, every dirty secret."
Then he stepped over the line.
His gaze slid to Sophie, lingering in a way that made my skin crawl, made violence simmer hot and immediate in my blood. "A pretty girl like this would be better off with a real man. A man of substance. Someone with a future instead of a criminal record. Someone like me."
Something snapped inside me.
I stepped forward, instinct overriding thought, every protective impulse I had firing at once, not caring about the gun or the danger or anything except getting between him and her.
And Klein pulled his service weapon.
The gun came up fast— standard FBI issue—barrel pointed at my chest, his hand shaking just enough to make him more dangerous, not less.
Shaking hands pulled triggers accidentally. Shaking hands missed center mass and hit something vital, anyway.
"Don't," I said, voice low and controlled despite the adrenaline screaming through my veins, immediately shifting my body in front of Sophie, making myself the bigger target. "Put it down, Klein. Right now. This doesn't end well for anyone if you don't."
But his eyes were too bright, too far gone, pupils blown wide with whatever cocktail of obsession and delusion and sleeplessness was driving him. The zealot I'd known before—the one who'd made my life hell at Bragg—had found blood in the water and wanted the kill, wanted the vindication he thought would come with destroying me.
"We can talk," I said, hands coming up slowly, palms out in the universal gesture of non-threat, trying to de-escalate even as my mind cataloged distances, angles, options for disarming him. "Somewhere else. Off the bridge. We can figure this out like professionals."
Klein laughed again, but it was hollow, broken, the sound of something that used to be human. "Talk? You want to talk? Like that helped before? Like talking kept you from ruining everything?"
"Klein—"
"You ruined me!" he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth, face contorting with rage that had been building for years. "Ilost everything because of you! My reputation in the Bureau. My investigations. My life. Everything!"
"That wasn't my fault," I said firmly, trying to ground him in reality, in facts instead of delusion. "I was clean. The investigation cleared me. I'm still clean. You know that."
We'd been shifting as we talked, both of us moving instinctively—him advancing with the confidence of armed authority, me backing up slowly, angling us along the walkway, trying to create distance from Sophie. The railing was close now, maybe five feet to my right, fog swirling thick and impenetrable below us, hiding the deadly two-hundred-foot drop to the harbor.
"You were never clean," Klein spat, gun still trained on me, barrel unwavering even as his hand trembled. "You just had people protecting you. Your CO. Dominion Hall now, probably. Whatever shadow shit you're part of. But I'm going to expose all of it. I'm going to get it all back—my career, my standing, my life. I'm going to build it on the bones of Wyatt Fucking Dane and all your pals."
Then something changed in his face. The mania drained away for a moment, replaced by cold calculation, and that scared me more than the rage had because rage was predictable and calculation wasn't.
"You know what?" he said quietly, almost conversationally, like we were discussing weather instead of murder. "Maybe I should just end it right now. Save everyone the trouble. One bullet. Self-defense. You attacked a federal agent. No one would question it."
I saw his finger tighten on the trigger, saw the decision crystallize in his eyes, saw the moment when talking stopped being an option.
I moved—fast, years of training taking over—turning my body, trying to minimize the target, trying to get small.
The gunshot was deafening in the fog, sound bouncing off water and concrete and metal cables, echoing like cannon fire.
Pain exploded in my shoulder, white-hot and immediate, the round biting deep into muscle and tissue, tearing through meat.
I stumbled, gasping, hand coming up instinctively to the wound, feeling hot blood already soaking through my shirt?—
And turned just in time to see Klein slam into the railing, his back hitting first as momentum drove him over. His arms flailed wildly, fingers clawing at air as the gun tore free from his grip and vanished into the fog. Then he was gone—body tipping backward, swallowed whole by the white nothing below.
A scream—Sophie's voice, raw and terrified and disbelieving.
She was at the edge, hands outstretched like she'd just pushed something away from her, eyes wide with shock and horror.
She'd pushed him.
To save me. To stop him from shooting again. To end the threat.
But he was gone now. Over the edge. Falling two hundred feet into dark water that would hit like concrete at that speed.
