He didn’t argue. Everything she said lined up—point for point, motive for motive. The Berettis wouldn’t stage a circus like this. They had enough blood to spill quietly. And if they wanted a journalism student gone, the kid would’ve vanished without a whisper. No message. No show.
He rubbed his jaw, still tender from her punch, and nodded once. “You’re right. Doesn’t fit their methods. This was theater. Loud. Deliberate. Someone wanted the cameras rolling.” His voice softened, analytical, detached in that way that wasn’t quite cold—just habitual. “But the kid wasn’t just a journalism student. He was interning with The Hub Chronicle. Paper ran three exposés on corruption last year. The kind that makes enemies on both sides of the badge.”
He let the words settle before adding, “His editor went missing two days before he died. Same night someone torched a Chronicle storage unit. Records, sources, files—gone. That’s not mob cleanup. That’s someone trying to erase the story before anyone else can read it.”
His gaze flicked up to her. “So maybe we’re both right. Maybe it’s not the Berettis. Maybe it’s someone higher. Someone who uses them as a convenient cover.” A pause. “Which means, Huntress… you’ll need someone who can dig through the lies without getting shot on sight.” His tone stayed matter-of-fact, but there was a shadow of something else there—an invitation, maybe. Or a plea he didn’t have the words for.
When she turned to leave, his body moved before his brain could stop it. His hand caught her arm, fingers curling around the fabric of her sleeve. For a heartbeat, silence pressed between them, heavy and alive.
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds—just stared at where their hands met, as if the answer to everything he’d been chasing was supposed to be written there.
Then he let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh, if it weren’t so tired. “I’m… sorry,” he said, and the word came out strange on his tongue, like he wasn’t sure it belonged to him. “There’s a lot going on I don’t have figured out yet. Since—” he hesitated, the next word sticking like glass in his throat, “—since I died.”
He looked up at her then, the blank mask offering no expression, but his voice carried something raw beneath it.
“If I knew what was happening, I’d tell you. If I knew how I was back, I’d tell you that too. But for all I know, this is a dying hallucination. Or maybe I was wrong about everything, and the afterlife does exist, and this is what it looks like.”
He gave a small, humorless huff. “If that’s true, though… I could’ve done worse for company.”
He released her arm, stepping close enough that his trench coat brushed the edge of her cape when the wind shifted. It was the kind of contact that wasn’t quite accidental. A breath’s difference, and it could’ve been something else entirely.
“I’ll send you what I have,” he said finally. “You’ll see what I mean.”
If this is a dying dream, he thought as he waited for her response, please don't let me wake up.
