Bruce woke slowly, as if surfacing from somewhere deep and murky, the kind of sleep that felt less like rest and more like being pinned underwater. Cold leather pressed against his cheek. His neck throbbed, a sharp line of pain shooting from spine to skull as he lifted his head.

  The deep aroma of coffee wafted up his nose.

  “Sleeping on the job?”

  Jac’s voice. Dry, but damn it, amused.

  Bruce blinked up at her, vision swimming. The overhead fluorescents hummed like a swarm of hornets. He had the impression he’d fallen asleep mid-thought—crime scene photos still scattered across the conference table, a half-eaten granola bar crushed under a report folder, his jacket half off and twisted around one arm like he’d been wrestling himself in his sleep.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Five forty-two,” Jac said, handing him the fresh coffee. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to beat you into the office. I can see that’s a futile gesture.”

  Bruce groaned and sat upright, his spine protesting. His mouth tasted like he’d chewed cigarettes all night.

  “That couch,” he grumbled, “was manufactured in hell.”

  Jac folded her arms. “You didn’t go home last night.”

  It wasn’t a question. He didn’t respond. Instead, he took a long drink of coffee, burned his tongue, and kept drinking anyway. Bitter, cheap precinct sludge. It tasted better than shame.

  Jac stood there, watching him with that unsettling mixture of concern and restraint—like she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to care.

  “How’s your mom doing?” Bruce asked abruptly, trying to redirect.

  Jac blinked. “My mom?”

  “Your old man’s birthday just passed.” He shrugged. “I know, things like that never get easy. It can be quite a load to carry.”

  Jac stared at him for a second, surprised he remembered. She perched on the corner of the table, arms loose now instead of folded.

  “She’s okay,” Jac said quietly. “She gets… haunted sometimes. But she’s strong. Stronger than I am most days.”

  Bruce snorted softly. “You’re stronger than you think, kid. Give yourself some credit. You’re just like him, by the way.”

  Jac lowered her eyes. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

  Bruce rubbed the sleep from his face. “Commissioner Jack Vincent? Everybody knew him. Especially rookies.” His eyes glossed over.

  She waited. He could tell she wanted more. And hell—maybe he needed a moment to be a person before they dove back into corpses and burnt apartments.

  “Your dad had this calm,” Bruce said. “Like… real calm. Not forced. If a bomb went off in the squad room, he’d just tilt his head and say, ‘Alright boys, let’s start with the debris.’”

  Jac smiled faintly.

  “There was a case he ran,” Bruce continued. “’88 or ’89. It was a wealthy husband supposedly murdered by one of three suspects—old business partners. Evidence pointing every which way. The media was hounding us, the mayor breathing down his neck. Sound familiar?”

  Jac’s brows lifted.

  “But your dad didn’t crack,” Bruce said. “Didn’t let the mayor push him into picking a convenient suspect. He followed the book. Dug deeper. Turns out none of the men did it. It was the wife—hired some out-of-town operator who tried extorting her afterward. The only reason the case broke was because Jack didn’t buckle.”

  Jac breathed in slowly, softly.

  “My mom tells that story,” she said. “Only she says he didn’t come home for five nights.”

  “He didn’t,” Bruce said. “But he solved it. And he saved an innocent man from going down. That was your dad.”

  Jac looked at him differently then—not as the stubborn old chauvinist she’d been assigned to, but someone who’d respected the man she’d spent her life trying to live up to.

  Bruce cleared his throat, embarrassed by the weight of the moment. “Alright,” he said gruffly. “Let’s work.”

  Jac smirked. “Yes, sir, Detective Sunshine.”

  He flicked a balled-up paper at her. She dodged it, and like that, the moment had passed.

  Captain Carl Ritter stormed out of his office before Bruce and Jac could even stand from the table. He looked like he’d slept less than Bruce—shirt wrinkled, tie askew, hair standing up like he’d clawed at it during a nightmare. His eyes were bloodshot, and he walked with purpose, the way a man does when he’s trying very hard not to show the precinct he’s about to blow apart at the seams.

  “Morning, Captain,” Bruce offered.

  Ritter stopped, glared at him, then pointed at the whiteboard plastered with photographs—John Doe’s bloody ruin, Tally’s shattered skull in his parked car, Marla Halden’s front door and the dark stain spreading across her blouse.

  “Three goddamn murders in five days,” Ritter hissed. “And the mayor wants a suspect on his desk by noon.”

  Jac straightened immediately. “Sir, the investigation is active, we’re processing—”

  “Processing,” Ritter snapped. “We’re processing.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Every media truck in the county is parked outside. The commissioner called me at four in the morning asking why the hell Billings suddenly looks like a bad episode of City Confidential. Residents are calling dispatch reporting their neighbors for taking out their trash at the wrong hour.”

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  Bruce held his tongue. Ritter was wound too tightly to interrupt.

  “Where are we with Mick O'Conner?” Ritter demanded.

  Jac blinked. “Mick?”

  Bruce exhaled through his nose. Here we go.

  Ritter jabbed a finger at the photo of John Doe.

  “Mick owns the storage unit where our John Doe was butchered. He’s tied to every lowlife in this city. He profits off tenants who disappear. You want motive? Pick one.”

  Bruce stepped forward. “Captain, Mick didn’t own Halden’s house. He didn’t own Tally’s apartment. There were no prints on the scene. Not a single trace of evidence links him to any scene directly. Mick has no connections to MentaTech. He’s a criminal, sure—but this doesn’t seem like one of his crimes.”

  Ritter’s jaw flexed. “I’m aware. But the mayor wants a suspect. A viable one.”

  “So what, you want him as a fall guy,” Bruce asked quietly.

  The room froze.

  Jac watched Bruce, eyes sharp with caution.

  Ritter turned slowly. “What did you say, Morrow?”

  Bruce held firm. “This isn’t a Mick kind of job. He’s dirty, yeah. But this isn’t his style. Or any of his boys’. You know it.” Bruce rubbed his chin; his mind was back on Jack. Jack wouldn’t have suggested implicating an innocent man because the pressure was getting to him.

  Ritter stared at him long enough that Jac shifted on her feet. For a moment, Bruce thought he’d crossed the line. Then Ritter dragged a hand down his face and exhaled.

  “I know,” Ritter admitted. “But the city doesn’t know that, and they won’t care.”

  He turned away, his voice lower.

  “Pick him apart. Dig until you find something, or until we can prove he’s not our man. I need something. Anything. Before the mayor calls again.”

  Ritter marched toward the lobby where reporters waited behind glass doors.

  Bruce watched him go. Jac watched Bruce. And both of them felt the same cold realization: They might not have an answer in time.

  Bruce drove, Jac staring out the passenger window as they crossed town. Snowmelt slushed against the tires. The city was locked in a gray morning—heavy clouds, moisture in the air, buildings that looked like they were holding their breath.

  MentaTech’s building loomed ahead, clean and corporate, like someone had set a slice of Silicon Valley down in the middle of Montana. Security waved them through reluctantly, eyes flicking to Bruce’s badge with barely concealed anxiety. Inside, the lobby was too bright, too polished. Crime didn’t belong here. Or at least, they wanted to believe it didn’t.

  HR director Margie Pennington met them at the elevators. “Detectives,” she said with a tight, practiced smile. “We already spoke to the police yesterday.”

  Jac matched her tone. “Today isn’t about Stall. It’s about Luke Ringer.”

  Margie froze a fraction of a second—just enough for Bruce to catch it.

  “Mr. Ringer hasn’t been with us since last fall.”

  “We know,” Bruce said. “That’s why we need his file.”

  Margie’s smile thinned. “His personnel information is confidential.”

  Bruce tilted his head. “He’s connected to two dead colleagues and a murdered lead scientist. You want the warrant? I’m sure there’s plenty more to uncover.”

  Margie swallowed.

  “I’ll… retrieve what I can.”

  When she stepped away, Bruce leaned toward Jac.

  “They’re hiding something.”

  Jac nodded, her jaw tight. “They’re all terrified of lawsuits. Or the government. Or both.”

  “Or whoever actually killed these people,” Bruce said.

  Jac remained silent.

  They brought Ringer’s personnel file into a small conference room. Thin. Underwhelming. Deliberately sanitized.

  Bruce flipped pages.

  “Here—multiple HR complaints. Claimed Stall stole his intellectual property. Claimed he was being targeted. Claimed the company was ‘covering something up.’”

  Jac leaned in. “What was the response?”

  Bruce read: “HR recommends counseling. No investigation necessary.”

  Jac shook her head. “They dismissed him. Was that part of the counseling?”

  “They discredit the unstable first,” Bruce said. “Makes the rest easier.”

  Jac’s eyes softened. “You really think he’s unstable?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I think,” Jac said slowly, “that paranoid people are often afraid of something real.”

  Bruce closed the file harder than necessary. “We have two suspects now. The man who vanished”—he tapped Ringer’s empty address record—“and the man everyone wants to blame.”

  “Mick,” Jac whispered.

  Bruce nodded. Neither option sat right. Both felt wrong in different ways.

  Ringer’s old storage space sat behind a row of shuttered repair shops in a half-abandoned industrial stretch of the city. Potholes full of brown water. Chain-link fences patched with mismatched mesh. The sky hung low and heavy, pressing down on everything.

  Bruce unlocked the roll-up door, the metal groaning.

  Inside was… nothing. Not empty in a careless way. Empty like it had been visited recently, wiped clean. No stray tape, no spiderwebs disturbed, no footprints in the thin dust at the edges.

  Jac hesitated before stepping in.

  Bruce noticed. “You alright?”

  She nodded, but her eyes stayed fixed on the back wall. She felt something—he could see it. A prickle ran up the back of her neck. A subtle, animal unease.

  Bruce stepped inside and scanned the corners anyway.

  “Dead end,” he muttered.

  But Jac only stood there, still as stone, eyes narrowing at nothing.

  “You see something?” Bruce asked.

  Jac shook her head. “No.” There was a stammer. “I… don’t know.”

  She didn’t say the real truth: she felt like the air was tighter in here. Like someone had been watching them.

  Bruce closed the door behind them with a metallic clatter, and Jac flinched.

  He noticed. “Hey.” His voice gentled. “We’re good. Just a bad room. Nothing more.”

  Jac nodded, but her shoulders stayed tense as they walked back to the car.

  Phones rang non-stop when they returned. Ritter barked orders at officers like a general in a losing war. The murder board had grown crowded—photos, timelines, red string, scribbled notes. The forensic tech who’d been running prints flagged them down.

  “Detectives. You need to see this.”

  Bruce followed, Jac at his shoulder.

  The tech pointed to two sets of fingerprint charts:

  ? Set A: George Andrew Stall — age 31

  ? Set B: George Alan Stall — age 45

  Bruce’s stomach dropped.

  “They’re definitely not the same person,” Jac breathed.

  “Nope,” the tech said. “Not even close. We ran them twice.”

  Bruce rubbed a hand over his face, the weight of the case doubling. “So,” he said slowly, “our Doe wasn’t Stall at all.”

  “And the man who really was Stall…” Jac added, voice trailing off.

  “…was killed in an alley while scoring drugs,” Bruce finished. “Nothing to do with MentaTech.”

  Ritter stepped into the doorway, overhearing.

  “So we’ve been investigating the wrong man for five days?”

  Bruce turned. “We can only deal with what’s in front of us. The prints didn’t lie—someone else did.”

  Ritter swore under his breath.

  Jac stared at the photos of both men—one strung through wires and plastic sheeting, the other slumped against cold concrete—and whispered: “Then who the hell was he?”

  Bruce stared at the board, at every dead face, every red thread, every unanswered question. He felt something cold settle into his bones.

  “Someone scared,” Bruce said. “Someone running.”

  Jac looked at him, eyes wide.

  “Someone who was apparently found.”

  The frenzy faded as the hour crept past nine. Phones stopped ringing. Ritter shut himself in his office with blinds drawn. Officers filtered out, coats slung over shoulders, voices low.

  Jac gathered her notes.

  “You should go home,” Bruce said.

  Jac gave him a pointed look. “You’re one to talk. You know, you shouldn’t do that to Karen. I remember how my mom mentioned how she would feel when Dad—”

  Bruce waved her off. “I’ll head out soon.”

  Neither of them believed it.

  Jac hesitated. “Bruce… today felt different.”

  “It was,” he admitted.

  Her voice lowered. “Do you think these murders are connected?”

  Bruce considered lying. “I think we’re missing the piece that makes it make sense,” he said. “And until we find it… we’re blind.”

  Jac exhaled slowly, nodded, and finally left.

  The precinct settled into darkness, punctuated only by the hum of the vending machine and the distant static of a dispatcher’s radio.

  Bruce sat alone at the board. Noodle, Halden, Tally, and the mysterious dismantled man in the storage room. All dead. Bodies broken, connected by something they couldn’t yet see.

  He reached into his wallet and touched Suzy’s hospital bracelet.

  Karen’s last voicemail blinked on his desk phone. Bruce didn’t play it. Instead, he stretched out again on the precinct couch, his jacket serving as a makeshift blanket. His eyes fell closed, exhaustion dragging him under.

  The last thought before sleep claimed him: “Jack Vincent wouldn’t have buckled.”

  Bruce wished he felt half as steady as the man Jac remembered.