Detective Mara Lund had spent three years trying to crack the Holloway case, and lately it felt as though the unsolved mystery had begun to beset her — creeping into her sleep, her meals, every quiet moment she tried to steal for herself.
The victim's most prized possession had never been recovered: a leather journal said to contain names that powerful people desperately wanted buried. Mara believed finding it would break everything open.
Her captain wanted her to work within department protocol, consult the task force, file every hunch in triplicate. But Mara had always been a maverick. She followed the evidence where it led, department approval or not, and tonight it had led her to a crumbling warehouse on the edge of the harbor.
She slipped inside and found him immediately — Gerald Finch, a low-level fixer with nervous hands and a rehearsed smile. On the table between them sat the journal.
"You don't want to do this," he said. His voice carried something beneath the calm, something violent — a coiled energy suggesting he was one wrong word away from shattering.
Mara kept her own voice steady. "I'm not here to arrest you, Gerald. I'm here to neutralize the threat you're sitting on. That journal goes public, and nobody — not you, not your employers — gets buried by it."
He studied her for a long moment, then slid the journal across the table.
Outside, fog rolled in off the water. Mara tucked the journal under her arm and walked toward the light, three years of shadows finally beginning to lift.