“The shard analysis? Yes. I got the server confirmation a second before the link died.” She grimaced, tossing a useless cable into the van. “But the video… Selene, the file was too big. It stalled at forty percent. We lost the footage.”
I cursed under my breath. We had the data on the metal, but we lost the visual proof of the void.
“It’s not a total loss,” Dane said. “We saw it. We know what to look for.”
“And we know where to look,” I added. “The police archives. Faye gave us the timeline. The ‘Purge Cases’ from two decades back.”
“Then we go to the station,” Dane said, opening his car door. “We pull everything we can find in that window before Morrow realises we’re looking for it.”
I nodded, moving towards the passenger side of the car. I reached for the door handle.
And then I stopped.
The air shifted.
A sudden, vicious hook snagged the centre of my chest.
A pull.
It hooked behind my ribs like a barb, dragging me backward. Gut-deep pain radiated up my left arm to the scar.
My heart stuttered. The sensation was demanding. It wanted me to turn around. It wanted me to find the source.
I scanned the yard. The uniforms near the cordon were talking quietly. The perimeter was empty. Just shadows, shipping containers, and the oily slick of the river.
But the pull sharpened. It wasn’t just eyes on me; it was a tether snapping into place. A pressure, ancient and heavy, slid down my spine.
My breath caught. The hair on my arms stood up.
“Selene?”
Dane’s voice cut through the fog. I glanced over. His hand was on the car door, but he paused, watching me. His amber gaze narrowed, scanning my face, then the empty lot behind me.
“You all right?”
“Fine.” The lie tasted sour. I forced my feet to move, fighting the drag of that invisible tether. “Just… a chill. Let’s go.”
He didn’t buy it. He scanned the shadows between the warehouses one last time, his hunter’s instincts catching onto my tension. But there was nothing there to see. Just the empty morning and the stillness.
I slid into the passenger seat, the heavy door thudding shut to seal us in. But as Dane started the engine, I glanced in the wing mirror.
The warehouse entrance was empty. Just shadows and fog.
But the pain in the scar didn’t fade, and the pull remained—an invisible chain in my chest, dragging me towards something I couldn’t yet see.
THREE
Dane drove in silence at first, the tyres hissing over wet cobblestones as we pulled away from Riverforge. The rain hammered the roof, a drowning cadence matching the ache in my bones.
I rubbed my chest, pressing the heel of my hand against my sternum. The visceral pull from the warehouse yard had faded, but the echo remained like a phantom limb, an awareness of something hovering just out of sight.
“You’re quiet.” Dane’s voice was low. His hands were loose on the wheel, but his eyes kept flicking to the rear-view mirror, restless energy looking for a threat that wasn’t there.
“Just thinking.”
He huffed a soft breath, the sound lost in the drone of the engine. “Long morning.”
“It didn’t just get long, Dane,” I said, watching the rain-streaked grey of the Old Quarter blur past. “It got twenty years deeper.”
