The question struck Nathan like a bolt from the blue. He hadn’t expected Nancy to ask, and for a brief moment, silence stretched between them; soft, heavy, almost accusing. Her eyes were wide and curious, gleaming beneath the warm lights of the restaurant. He could feel his heart race, the unease crawling under his skin as he tried to form an answer.

  “I,” he hesitated, then forced a smile, hiding the storm in his chest. “I am a mechanical engineer.” The words rolled out too smoothly, too easily, and yet, a flicker of guilt crossed his face; so quick, so faint, but it was there. His jaw tightened, his eyes shifting slightly as though to hide from her gaze.

  Because even though he had studied mechanical engineering, and though it served perfectly as his cover, the truth gnawed at his conscience. Deep down, Nathan’s heart screamed for honesty. He wanted to tell her everything, that he is an undercover agent for the Vexmoor police force. But love can be a dangerous thing for a man who started a relationship with lies.

  Nancy, with her innocent smile, believed him completely. She nodded, brushing a strand of hair from her face, her trust as pure as it was disarming. “That’s interesting,” she said lightly, “I’ve never dated an engineer before.” Nathan chuckled softly. “Then maybe it’s time you tried.” Her laughter filled the air; light, genuine, unguarded. And in that moment, Nathan wished his life was truly as simple as the man she saw sitting across the table. He wished he had not lied to her from the beginning.

  When the evening drew to an end, they finished their dinner, and Nathan insisted on driving her home. The city lights reflected in her eyes as they cruised through Vexmoor’s quiet streets. Music played faintly from the radio, though neither of them spoke. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, rather, it was charged with unspoken thoughts, lingering glances, and the quiet rhythm of affection.

  When they reached her apartment, Nathan parked the car by the curb. Nancy unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to him with a small smile. “Good night, Mister Coleman.”

  “Oh! That’s it?” he teased, raising a brow. “You won’t even invite me in?” Nancy looked at him, amused but firm. “No.”

  “Why not?” he asked, leaning slightly closer. “Because,” she said, smiling slyly, “you’re not my boyfriend yet.” Nathan chuckled, his tone soft but laced with playful frustration. “But I don’t have to be your boyfriend before you invite me in, do I?” Nancy tilted her head, pretending to think. Then she smiled again, that mischievous spark lighting up her eyes. “Of course you have to be.” She reached for the door handle and stepped out. “Goodnight, Mister Coleman,” she said again, waving as she walked toward her gate.

  Nathan watched her go, her silhouette fading into the dim glow of the streetlights. He rubbed his temples and exhaled, half in amusement, half in longing. “Goodnight, Nancy,” he muttered to himself before driving off into the night.

  Meanwhile, across the city, darkness hung over another part of Vexmoor, a quiet neighborhood where old secrets refused to die. Director Stephen sat alone in his car for several minutes before stepping out, his expression grim, his eyes shadowed with worry.

  He wasn’t the kind of man easily shaken, but tonight, something haunted him, something that had resurrected from the dead after ten years. He walked up to the front door of a modest two-story house and knocked twice. A moment later, the door creaked open, and a man in his late forties, Jeff, appeared. His face froze when he saw Stephen standing there. “Director Stephen?” he stammered, visibly startled. “Sir, it’s been years since you last came to my house.”

  Stephen brushed past him and entered without invitation. “We need to talk,” he said coldly. Jeff shut the door and followed, unease prickling through him. He’d seen that look on Stephen’s face before, once, long ago, when blood had been spilled in the name of justice.

  They moved into the living room. Stephen didn’t sit immediately; instead, he stood by the window, his back to Jeff, hands clasped behind him. The silence between them was suffocating. Finally, he spoke, his voice low and deliberate. “Tell me, Jeff.” He turned, his gaze sharp. “Did you and Maxwell kill the Sundell girl ten years ago?”

  Jeff froze. The color drained from his face. For a moment, he simply stared, as though unsure if he’d heard right. “Why ask this question now?” he said slowly, his voice trembling. “It’s been ten years, Stephen. Ten years since that case, everyone has forgotten about it, why do you want to resurrect it?”

  Stephen’s expression didn’t change. “Because I have reason to believe she’s alive.” The words struck Jeff like a thunderclap. “Alive?” he whispered. “That’s impossible.” Stephen took a step forward, his eyes blazing with something darker than fear. “She’s back, Jeff. The girl you and Maxwell were ordered to eliminate, she’s back in Vexmoor. And she’s killing everyone connected to that case.” Jeff’s heart thundered. His throat went dry. He took a shaky step backward. “You mean, she’s come for us all?”

  “To kill us all,” Stephen said grimly. “Every one of us who was part of that operation.” Silence. Heavy. Suffocating. Jeff’s hands trembled. The weight of ten years of buried guilt pressed down on him. “Now,” Stephen said, his tone hardening. “Tell me the truth. Did you finish the job that day?” Jeff hesitated, his lips parting but no words coming out. He could feel the sweat breaking across his forehead. The memories came flooding back, a girl holding his hands when he received call, theb the girl broke up and began to run. He wanted to lie to keep his ego, but the tone of Stephen convinced him that it best for all of them if he admits the truth.

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  He swallowed hard. “No,” he finally admitted. Stephen closed his eyes and drew a long, frustrated breath. “Why did you lie?” he demanded. “Why did you tell me the job was done?” Jeff’s voice cracked as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Steve. She ran, we pursued her through the streets, but she escaped. We thought she was wounded badly. Later, we found a corpse of a young girl, about her age, with similar features, burnt beyond recognition.”

  He looked down, guilt washing over him. “We assumed it was her. We buried the body and filed the report. We thought it was over.” Stephen clenched his fists, anger mixing with dread. “You should have been honest with me, Jeff. You have no idea what you’ve unleashed by lying.”

  Jeff lifted his gaze, fear etched deep in his eyes. “You mean she’s really alive? After all these years?” Stephen nodded gravely. “She is. And she’s not the same girl anymore. She’s become something else, something dangerous.” The room felt colder suddenly. The ticking of the wall clock seemed louder than before. Jeff’s lips quivered. “You mean she’ll come for my head too?” Stephen placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Definitely. When your time comes, she’ll pay you a visit.”

  Jeff’s legs almost gave way beneath him. His mind raced with panic, his thoughts spiraling back to that night, the little girl ran to them crying. And instead of helping her, they were ordered to kill her. He’d buried that memory, thinking it would never resurface. But now, it was alive again, crawling back to destroy him.

  Stephen removed his hand and walked toward the door. “I tried to warn you,” he said quietly. “You should start praying she spares you.” Jeff stood frozen, his heart thudding so loud he could barely hear his own breath. When the door finally clicked shut behind Stephen, the silence that followed was unbearable. He sank into a chair, trembling. His eyes darted toward the darkened window as though expecting a shadow to appear there.

  Every sound made him flinch, the creak of the floor, the whistle of the wind, even the faint hum of the refrigerator. He had lived ten years trying to forget, but the past had come knocking, and this time, it wouldn’t leave without taking something. Outside, Stephen got into his car and sat quietly for a long time before turning the ignition. He stared at his own reflection in the rearview mirror, his face pale, his eyes sunken. He knew Jeff was terrified, but he also knew it wouldn’t save him. He was in danger himself and was kore concern about himself at that point.

  For the next one week, Stephen spent his hours like a man possessed, shuffling files, tracing timelines, mapping routes, and rehearsing possibilities until the edges of the city blurred. He constructed scenarios on paper: likely targets, motive chains, access points, escape routes. Each scrap he pinned to the wall tightened into a spider-web of suspicion with one name spinning at the center: Lia Sundell.

  He was certain now. The pattern, the cruelty, the signature phrase carved into metal and flesh, “October tenth, twenty fifteen. The orphan is back.”, it all said the same thing to him. Lia had not been a simple casualty of a ten-year-old coverup. Lia had returned. And she was surgical about it.

  Recognition would be the problem. Ten years had changed a child into a woman. Faces mature, hairline moves, voices deepen; grief hardens into something unreadable. Stephen knew the danger of relying on memory. He had to catch her by habit, by the little things that never left, how she moved, the small gestures, the way she might stand at a cemetery bench and rub the same worn stone until her thumb ached.

  So he began spending more and more time at the Sundells’ gravesite. The plot lay under a row of silver birches; the family stones were clustered together, James, Ellen, and the child with the small polished plaque: Lia Sundell. He came at odd hours: pre-dawn when mist hugged the earth, the hour of the city’s last quiet; mid-afternoon when the light drew every leaf into polished gold; late at night when the stars looked indifferent and cold above the stones. “If Lia is truly alive and in Vexmoor, she will definitely visit her parents’ grave,” he told himself aloud on the second morning, watching dew rise in the sun. He imagined the scene over and over, her fingers tracing the letters, her jaw set so tight the knuckles in her hands would whiten. He imagined the weight of a single rose in her fist and the way a person bent over a grave moves like someone trying to coax the past into speech.

  But he surveyed the grave site for two weeks and saw only other kinds of visitors: a tired woman watering chrysanthemums for the elderly, a young father teaching his son how to place coins on a headstone, an old man reading a newspaper while his wife dabbed her eyes. No one who might have been Lia, no shadow with the particular angle of shoulders he remembered, no posture identical to the child who used to sit cross-legged by her father’s boots. Nothing.

  Doubt, a slow drip, began to find its way into Stephen’s confidence. Had he been wrong? Had ten years of rumor and rumor-sown fear built a phantom in his head? Or was Lia simply cleverer than they had ever imagined, clean, patient, waiting until the net was already woven?

  You cannot wait at graves forever, he told himself, but he kept returning. He would sit on a bench a little distance away, hands wrapped around a thermos of coffee gone cold, watching the lane of visitors, cataloguing them for future cross-reference. Every time the gate squeaked and a figure passed under the birches, his posture tightened. Every time they turned away from the Sundell plot, his breath left him slow and bitter.

  On the fifteenth morning, after a string of false alarms and empty expectations, he decided it was time to escalate. The President needed to know, he needed to know not in passing, not as a rumor, but as a construct of hard evidence and disciplined suspicion. If Lia was stalking the city and picking off anyone with a connection to that old, ugly night, then the President had to be warned and the nation’s security posture bolstered.

  He reached for the secure line on the desk in his office, thumb paused a moment over the call key. He dialed the number and waited, ear to the tiny speaker as the secure channel cleared. It was picked up by President Maxron of Vexmoor, voice cool, always efficient.

  “Hello Stephen,” the President said. The sound of it was casual, the sort of tone that masked schedules and delegations behind a practised nonchalance. “Do you now have the assassin?” Stephen did not answer the question immediately; instead, he chose the path of bluntness. “Your Excellency, we have a problem.” He let the words hang between them; clean, unsparing. A thin pause. The President’s voice came back, composed. “What do you mean?”

  Stephen drew air into his lungs and let it out in a tight gust. “I believe the killer is Lia Sundell, daughter of James Sundell, the officer you ordered me to eliminate ten years ago.” He said it flatly, watching for the reaction that always followed the name. The room seemed to shrink around him as he waited for the President to break the news apart, to ration disbelief into policy.

  On the other end of the line, the President froze. The faint click of a pen, the nearly inaudible shift of breath. “That is not possible,” he said finally, the old certainty cracking. “You told me she died. She was even buried close to her parents’ tomb.”

  Stephen shook his head slowly, the motion as much to himself as to the empty air. “That is what the officers told us,” he said, and the sentence tasted like ash. “I just realized they lied.” The President exhaled sharply. For a moment, the leader of the nation, used to controlling crises from glass offices and secure briefings, sounded small. “Then you have to find her and kill her yourself.”