Cellar Door

I take a measured breath, slowing my climbing heart rate, then head out of the alley toward my car before reinforcements arrive. Seated behind the wheel, I turn on the tracker. Watch the green dot move along the LCD screen in the middle of my dashboard.

Patience.

I’ve waited six months; I can wait a few minutes more. I need to think. Devise a plan. I need…

Hudson.

A tremor rocks me, and the sound of rain thudding rhythmically against the hood of my car encapsulates every emotion thrumming through my body. I’m a rivulet branched out from the storm. Created from the overran stream.

Isolation can wreak havoc on your rationality.

I’ve been alone in this pursuit too long. When I finally catch up to him…what then?

A lie can be more telling than the truth.

That’s how Hudson trained me to perform an interrogation. He believed you couldn’t ignore anything a perp said, no matter how outlandish. There’s a sliver of truth woven into every fabrication. That’s the way great liars work. And the truth is full of lies.

You have to use discernment. Pick which truth you trust.

I crank the car and pull onto the street. I tell myself I’m only going to follow him, to find out where he’s going, to make sure I don’t lose him. Then I’ll log the information and go back to the loft to make a plan.

Because that’s what I do. As a detective, as an investigator, I collect details and piece together the narrative of the crime. I’ve been working this case for over a year, and I can’t act on impulse or emotion now. Not when I’m so close.

No matter how personal it is.

I can almost hear Hudson’s voice as he scolds me about not getting emotionally invested in a case. It’s not personal. Well, that ship has long sailed, hasn’t it?

I check my rearview and note the headlights of the car behind me. It’s not strange to see other cars around midnight. It’s a city. But they’ve been behind me since I left Myer’s building. And the car is following a little too closely. I’m paranoid.

Yeah. I’ve been paranoid ever since that night.

The green dot that is the shooter suddenly veers off the main road and slows. I make a choice, and it might not be the one Hudson would make…but he’s not here. I flip on my blinker and turn right onto another road where I pull over along the curb.

I watch in my rearview until I see the car pass, then I get back onto the main street and head for the destination of the shooter.

Think about this logically. Any other criminal who just committed a murder would be running right about now. Would be fleeing the city, getting as far away as possible. Not my guy. He’s stopped at a warehouse along the sound. He doesn’t fear getting caught.

Headlights off, I coast to a stop across the street from the sound port and kill the engine. I use my camera to zoom in on the building. It’s light-gray, rusted from age and brackish water. A row of cars line the front parking spaces, and they’re nice cars. Imports. I snap a few pictures and then look for the shooter.

Somewhere in the back of my head a thought occurs to me: Jennifer Myer is a widow. She’s probably received the call by now that her husband is dead. I wonder how long it will take her to cancel my services.

Callous of me to think…maybe. But I can’t stop my analytical mind from dissecting the story, examining the evidence. She hired me to spy on her husband, and then only hours later, the man is shot to death. Right in his office. Where there’s a witness.

She put me there.

Objectively, I need to consider her a suspect.

Unreasonably, I’m angry, and I want to sweep all the evidence aside and focus on one theory: my theory. Milton Myer was murdered by the same man who killed my partner.

It’s what I want—what I need—to be true.

My obsessive search has cost me too much to be wrong. My career, my friends…my life.

I deviated from my training in order to pursue my partner’s killer. You can’t build a case on instinct. You can’t make a case fit inside the box you design. The facts have to align.

That’s why I’m here. That’s why I sought out Jennifer Myer in the first place, planted emails and texts and receipts to make her question her husband. Devious, maybe. Morally questionable, absolutely. But it all led to Myer Keystone Enterprise.

I can be livid that months of strategizing to position myself inside the company was taken away by one man tonight—or I can be here, now, intent and ready to take the next step.