Maya pulled Omar behind her slightly and scanned the narrow hallway that led back to the market. No one. But the silence felt wrong: not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of a house just searched, its intruder waiting in the dark to see what the owners would notice.
She left Omar in the storage room and stepped out to the stall area. Night wind had begun to rise, carrying dust and the restless flapping of torn tarps. Maya checked every corner, every curtain, every shadow, but found no one. Still, the sensation of being watched pressed heavily against her skin.
Her encrypted phone vibrated. She drew it out, its screen glowing in the cramped dark. A new message. No name: That camera should have disappeared already.
Maya's heartbeat faltered for a moment, then surged. The message had come at the exact moment she opened the USB; that was no coincidence. She scanned the empty market, the night wind tugging at her jacket. Someone knew she now held the one thing Holston most wanted buried. And whoever sent the message, whoever touched the lock, was likely somewhere close.
Morning light in the Federal Forensic Office fell in cold, sharp beams across the photographs of Deshawn Brooks's body spread over the table. Eliza Stern leaned close to each image, a red pen gliding over the marks. She examined the bruising on the right temple, the fractures along the jawline, and the dried line of blood forming a jagged path.
"This is not a fall," she murmured to herself, her expression tightening. "This is direct, blunt force trauma."
The numbers in the local reports skimmed through her mind like meaningless excuses. She studied the photographs again, letting the silence of the room settle into her bones. Each angle of the wounds contradicted the story Holston had filed—a story written more to protect the uniform than the body it had failed. Eliza marked a circular contusion near the jaw, her pen tip pressing so firmly the paper bent. The longer she stared, the more the truth insisted on being seen. Someone had tried to bury this case, but the evidence had a pulse of its own.
She closed the folder and carried it with her to the Holston Forensics building. The place was old, the walls stained in uneven gray, and the lingering scent of disinfectant made her steps feel heavier. The hallways hummed with the weary dullness of a place that had learned to look away.
When she entered the records office, Chief Medical Examiner Miller sat behind a cluttered desk, eyes fixed on his screen. He barely acknowledged her presence.
"Federal," he muttered without looking up. "You people are a bit late."