The bullet

The city air, usually a symphony of distant sirens and the low hum of traffic, felt unusually taut, like a drawn bowstring. I’d always had a knack for sensing shifts in the atmospheric pressure of a situation, a sixth sense honed by years of navigating the murky waters of human desperation. This time, it was screaming at me, a shrill, insistent alarm that set my teeth on edge. Jacob Woodville, my… client, was a ghost. A phantom I was supposed to be shepherding through the shadows, a murderer disguised as a repentant soul. And the shadows, it seemed, were finally closing in.

Agent Miller, bless her by-the-book heart, was proving to be a surprisingly effective shield. Her presence, a constant reminder of the law I was so expertly bending, had kept the hounds at bay. For a while, anyway. But Don Corleone's reach was long, his vengeance a chillingly precise instrument. I’d managed to stitch together a plausible narrative, a flimsy alibi for Jacob, a carefully constructed illusion of his imminent demise. The FBI, under Miller’s relentless gaze, had bought enough of it to consider the case… contained. But containment, in my line of work, was a euphemism for a ticking time bomb.

The rain had started an hour ago, a steady, persistent drizzle that mirrored the gnawing unease in my gut. It plastered my tie to my chest and slicked the pavement of the quiet street where I’d parked my beat-up sedan. Miller was inside the diner across the street, nursing a lukewarm coffee and probably dissecting my every word from our last, predictably tense, conversation. I’d arranged to meet her here, a calculated risk, a way to provide a final, convincing piece of evidence that Jacob had met his maker. A staged suicide, a carefully orchestrated disappearance. The details were already forming, a grim mosaic of deception.