Chapter 2 - The House on Maple DriveThe yellow police tape flickered in the wind like a warning flag.
I parked two streets over, slipping through the shadows of the neighboring backyards with the practiced silence of a man who had spent fifteen years stalking high-value targets across the mountains of Afghanistan. I wore black tactical pants, a dark hoodie, and leather gloves. In my right hand, I carried a heavy-duty tactical flashlight with an ultraviolet filter switch.
The house was dark. The police unit stationed outside had driven off twenty minutes ago—a classic piece of lazy suburban police work that confirmed my suspicions. They weren't preserving a crime scene; they were abandoning it.
I slipped through the back patio door, sliding a thin steel blade through the latch with effortless precision. The door swung open without a sound.
The metallic tang of blood still heavy in the air struck my senses immediately. I didn't let my emotion control me. Emotion makes you slow. Emotion makes you miss details. In tactical operations, missing details gets you killed.
I switched on the UV light and swept the foyer floor.
The police had dusted for fingerprints on the door handles and photographed the blood pool where Violet had lain. But they hadn't looked at the ceiling, and they hadn't checked the air vents.
I knelt near the spot where Violet’s backpack had been dropped. The pool of blood was dark and dried now. Under the ultraviolet light, subtle footprints emerged—not from combat boots, and not from heavy work boots.
Sneakers. Expensive ones. The distinct herringbone pattern of a limited-edition athletic shoe size 11, mixed with the drag marks of a heavy object.
"Two people," I muttered under my breath. "One weighed around 180 pounds, heavy heel striker. The other was lighter, hovering around 140, stepping on his toes."
I followed the lighter footprints down the hall. They led away from Violet and toward my study at the back of the house.
Why would an intruder go to my study? There was no safe in there, no cash, no jewelry. Just my old military memorabilia, my books, and my private desktop computer.
I pushed open the door to the study.
The room was clean. Too clean. The dust on the edge of my desk had been wiped away in a straight, unnatural line. I opened the top drawer. My hard drive—an encrypted drive containing my old unit rosters, contact numbers of private security contractors, and personal journals—was gone.
They hadn't come for money. They had come for information. Violet had simply walked in on them while they were extracting it.
BZZZ.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was Ghost.
"I’ve got the tower dumps, Mason," Ghost said, his keyboard clicking rapidly in the background. "It’s weird. The tower closest to your house caught a total of forty-two cell signals during that forty-five-minute window. Forty of them belong to neighbors, delivery drivers, or kids coming home from school."
"What about the other two?"
"Burners," Ghost said. "Prepaid SIM cards activated three days ago at a gas station six miles out. But here’s the kicker: one of those burners didn't just ping your local tower. Right after the event at your house—around 4:05 PM—it made an outbound call to a number registered to the City Police Department."
My blood ran cold. "Who was the recipient?"
"Extension 404," Ghost replied. "Desk of Detective Arthur Grant."
I leaned against the wall, my knuckles turning white as I clenched my fist. Grant wasn't just incompetent. He was in on it. He had been tipped off the moment the job went bad, and he had been dispatched to handle the crime scene and control the narrative.
"Ghost," I said, my voice dropping an octave. "Who bought those burner phones?"
"I pulled the gas station security footage from the activation time," Ghost said. "The guy who bought them was wearing a prep school uniform. Crest on the blazer: St. Jude’s Academy. Name tag on his jacket was obscured, but he got into a black BMW sports coupe. Plate registered to a Vance Montgomery."
The name hit me like a physical blow.
Vance Montgomery.
Not Marcus. Marcus was his uncle. Vance was the seventeen-year-old son of Richard Montgomery—a powerful local real estate tycoon, city council candidate, and the biggest financier of the town’s police precinct. Vance was a rich, spoiled high school athlete with a history of violent outbursts that had been quietly erased by his father’s money and Detective Grant’s protection.
And Violet went to St. Jude’s Academy on a partial scholarship.
The pieces slammed together with terrifying clarity. Violet hadn't stumbled upon random burglars. She had walked into her own house and found the sociopathic son of the city’s most powerful man stealing from her father. And when she threatened to scream, Vance Montgomery and his friend had tried to beat her to death.
"Mason?" Ghost’s voice came through the speaker. "What are you going to do?"
"I’m going to go to work," I said softly.
"Mason, listen to me," Ghost urged, his tone panicked. "If Montgomery is involved, he’s got half the police force in his pocket. You can't just walk into his house and pull a trigger. They’ll put you away forever, and Violet won't have a father when she wakes up!"
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"I'm not going to shoot him, Ghost," I lied smoothly. "I'm just going to ask him a few questions."
I disconnected the call, stepped out through the back door, and disappeared into the darkness of the night.
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