Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The address was found and a glass shard
The scuffling stopped as abruptly as it had started. Trevor held his breath, the revolver cold and familiar in his grip. The silence that followed was heavier than the noise, pressing in from all sides like a physical weight. He counted to ten, then twenty, his finger resting alongside the trigger guard, not on it.
A cat emerged from behind a overturned dumpster, its eyes catching the distant glow of streetlights before it darted past him and vanished into the night. Trevor exhaled, the tension leaving his shoulders in a slow release. He holstered the revolver, chiding himself for jumping at shadows. The shard in his pocket seemed to mock him.
He resumed his search, thumbing through records on his phone. Three break-ins at optical labs in the past month. Two at private research facilities. All within a five-mile radius of this alley. The pattern was there, but it was incomplete, like a puzzle missing its center piece.
A notification buzzed—a text from an unknown number. He opened it to find a single photograph: a shattered lens, its edges catching light in a way that mirrored the shard in his possession. Below it, a time and an address. No signature, no explanation.
Trevor stared at the screen, the rain beginning to fall harder now, plastering his hair to his forehead. Someone was watching. Someone knew he was following the trail. The question was whether they were leading him toward the truth or into a trap.
He pocketed the phone and stepped out of the alley, the revolver a steady weight against his ribs. The address was only a few blocks away. He had time to call for backup, to loop Vane in. But the message had been for him alone, and something in the photograph's precision suggested that showing up with company would close whatever door had just cracked open.
He walked, the city's neon reflections bleeding across wet asphalt, each step a choice he couldn't take back.