The tracker

The chipped ceramic mug felt cool against my palms, a stark contrast to the inferno raging within my gut. Steam curled lazily from the black coffee, a thin veil between me and the city awakening outside my grimy office window. Another dawn, another day of pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Mr. Stamp, the upstanding, if slightly disreputable, lawyer. It was a costume I wore with increasing discomfort, the seams threatening to split with every passing hour.

Jacob Woodville. The name still tasted like ash. The man who’d walked out of my life, and out of a shattered classroom, leaving behind a tableau of unimaginable horror. He was supposed to be a ghost, a phantom in witness protection, living a life of quiet anonymity. And I, Mr. Stamp, was supposed to be the man who’d made it happen, the architect of his impossible freedom. A freedom paid for with the lives of children. The thought was a constant, dull ache behind my eyes.

My phone buzzed, a jarring interruption to the fragile silence. Agent Miller. Of course. She’d been a shadow, a persistent, unnerving presence since the initial chaos. Her questions, initially probing, had slowly sharpened, her gaze dissecting every word, every pause. She didn’t trust me. Not one bit. And she was right not to.