Ben [Ch. 2] | Martin Is Missing

Ex-Delta operative Ben Baker faces his worst fear when teammate Martin goes missing in Chapter 2 of this dark psychological thriller.

Content Warning: Ben contains mature content not suitable for readers under 17. This series explores subjects and scenes that may be unsettling for some readers. Content is rated Mature (17+) for realistic violence, strong language, and dark themes.

This chapter contains realistic depictions of physical violence, sexual harassment, and themes of coercion. It includes scenes that some readers may find distressing or triggering.

Reader discretion is strongly advised.

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Read Chapter One Below

Where We Left Off

“Think of your team.” He watched me with cold satisfaction. “Consider this mercy.”

I swallowed hard, feeling the weight settle deep in my bones. The mission was done.

But I lost everything in that room.

---

Martin is Missing

The thing about loss is, you never feel it all at once. It leaks in—slow, heavy, relentless. Before you even notice you’re soaked in it, you’re already drowning.

I was halfway through a shitty cup of gas station coffee—Jackson bitching about the taste, Garcia scrolling on his phone, headphones half on. Just a regular Thursday, which is exactly why I knew something was off the second the phone rang.

Martin’s name never showed up on my screen, not unless he needed something—usually a ride, sometimes an alibi. But this wasn’t Martin. It was his wife.

Both Jackson and Garcia’s eyes snapped up when they heard Mara’s voice on the other end. I put it on speaker—nosey bastards. “Hey, Mara. What’s up?”

Her voice was brittle. Like she’d been screaming into the Void for hours. “Ben… have you heard from Greg? He didn’t come home last night. He’s not answering.”

Silence.

Jackson and Garcia both stopped, frozen in that way we all do when real shit hits the table and nobody wants to be the first to speak.

“Did you call his phone?” Garcia finally asked, too soft for him.

diD yOu cAlL hIs pHoNe—idiot.

Mara made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Six times. Voicemail. I called his work, too, but… they said he left at the usual time.”

I felt something coil in my gut. Martin wasn’t the type to just… vanish. We’d made a deal. If any of us were considering blowing our brains out, we’d call each other. Not on some “it’ll get better” bullshit, just—we were all gonna do it together.

And the guy was methodical—paranoid, even. Trained. Reliable. If he went missing, it wasn’t by accident. Somebody made him disappear. And it’d take a hell of a lot more than a single guy off the street.

I covered the receiver, glanced at Jackson and Garcia. Neither looked at me. They were waiting—always waiting—for me to say it out loud, so they wouldn’t have to.

I pressed the phone closer. “We’ll find him, Mara. Stay home. If he calls, if anything changes, you call me first. Not the cops, not your dad—me.”

She said something grateful, but I’d already stopped listening. I was running timelines, locations, faces. Last time I saw Martin—Tuesday, after the gym. He’d been off. Quiet. I figured it was the usual: marriage, money, midlife sneaking up faster than a knife in the dark.

Now, all I could think was—did we all miss something? Did I miss something?

Jackson finally found his voice. “You think he ghosted, or—”

“He didn’t ghost,” I said, sharper than I meant. “Martin doesn’t ghost. Not on us. Not on Mara. If he’s missing, it’s because somebody wanted him gone.”

“That would take—honestly, it’d take a whole damn SWAT team to just nab Martin or any of us off the street like that.” Garcia said.

I nodded, swallowing hard. “Or one someone, just as good as us.”

Nobody said a word after that. The silence, for once, felt appropriate.

---

I killed the engine outside the Martin’s townhouse. Mara was staying with her mother; inside, Jackson was already at the dining-room table, two laptops open.

Garcia sat on the couch, one ankle hooked over a knee. His thumbs danced across his phone, ghost-pinging every tower within twenty miles for Martin’s last known location, spoofing a county-maintenance IP so the cell company’s audit log would bury the request under “line test.”

I walked in and, without a word, dropped a stack of printouts onto the table—receipts, bank charges, traffic-cam stills.

“Gas station on 7th billed his card at 21:30 a few nights ago,” I said. “Next hit’s a bar tab at Whittaker’s, fifteen minutes later. Then nothing.”

“He drives all the way downtown for a vape and a beer? Bullshit.” Jackson muttered.

Jackson’s brow knit. The red splotches blooming along his neck told me everything I needed to know—he was pissed. He’d never liked Martin. Couldn’t always explain it, either. Just said the guy gave him the ick. “Walking red flag,” he’d called him. “Talks down to service staff. Gets real weird around women who know what they’re talking about.”

“Or he had company,” Garcia said without looking up. He stood, flicked a key, and pulled up Martin’s iCloud. “Text thread pings at 20:21. Contact saved as just ‘A.’ Sweet stuff. Real tender.” He scrolled. “Last message is a location pin. Martin never sends those.”

Jackson leaned in, squinting. “Affair?”

“Looks that way.” I slid a chair beside him and tapped the screen.

The contact photo was a soft-focus brunette, half her face hidden behind a paperback. Metadata said it was created eleven days ago—too fresh for a guy like Martin, who still shared Minion memes like it was 2015.

“She goes by Amelia. New number, VoIP. Rerouted through half a dozen international trunks.”

Jackson sat back, arms crossed. “Jesus. Why even get married if you’re gonna treat it like a part-time gig?” He shook his head. “It’s not hard—don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t act like your wife’s a fucking prop.”

I kept Jackson in the corner of my eye.

He squinted at the screen. “Burner-app romance. Cute.”

“Cute—until a Tier-two operator vanishes of the street,” I said.

We ran the usual playbook. Garcia funneled the ‘Amelia’ photo through every face-rec service he could bribe or blackmail his way into—DMV, Customs, even a low-res scrape of State Department visa apps. Zero hits.

The algorithm came back ninety-eight-percent confidence no match on any domestic database. That suggested two possibilities: the image had been AI generated, or the woman knew how to stay hidden.

My money was on the second. Fakes fool friends. Ghosts fool government assets.

---

By midnight we were circulating through Martin’s haunts. Garcia and I took the bars; Jackson stayed glued to the feed in the truck, bouncing satellite maps between handhelds. At Whittaker’s the bartender recognized Martin’s driver’s-license printout before it hit the counter.

“Yeah, security guy,” she said, drying a tumbler. “Regular on Thursday’s. Left with some girl couple days ago. Smart, quiet, pretty. Tiny little thing, too. Paid her tab in exact cash and walked him right out.”

Cash. Exact. I felt that coil in my gut twist tighter.

I’d hit a wall with the bartender. She’d answer questions, sure, but the CCTV was “employees only.”

Period.

So I signaled for the big guns—Jackson.

Growing up as the only brother among four sisters—and later spending half his social life as the “honorary girl-friend” who actually listened—Jackson had mastered what Garcia and I still fumbled through: making a woman feel heard. Safe. Valued.

He was too damn good at talking to women.

He ambled over, shoulders loose, voice low. “Evenin’, ma’am. Slow night, or is this just the calm before last call?”

He could have dialed the wattage higher but he wouldn’t unless the mission called for it. We called that his “last-resort setting.” He only pulled it on genuine villains—crooked execs, hostile assets, the type you wouldn’t mind seeing sweat.

So not the hometown bartender with a warm smile.

After that, it was all just steady eye contact and real attention. She told him her name; he used it. He stayed out of her personal space. Didn’t hold her attention when a paying customer approached.

I remember when he asked if the keg fridge still leaked; she laughed and shook her head at the memory. By the time he said, “Mind if we roll back the outside camera for a timestamp?” she was already keying in the passcode and sliding the monitor our way.

“Take all the time you need, honey. Want something to drink while it buffers?”

“No thank you, ma’am—just need to check the footage for our friend and get out of your hair,” he said, gentle as ever, already at work.

He scrubbed the exterior feed. “Twenty-two-oh-eight,” he murmured, freezing the frame: Martin, holding the door for a woman. Five-three, dark jeans, leather jacket. Straight hair catching the streetlight, turning it a shade of copper. The camera caught her face clean, too—she was a fucking bombshell.

That’s neither here nor there.

Jackson screen-grabbed every frame and sent them up the pipe to Garcia, who’d taken his place in the van.

Minutes later my earpiece crackled: “Ran gait analysis off frame twenty-six. Ninety-one percent female, athletic build. It’s like she doesn’t exist outside of her fucking walk, dude.”

“CIA?” Jackson asked.

“Langley hires ghosts,” Garcia said. “But ghosts still need a payroll file. I got nada.”

I stared at the grainy pause-screen. Martin’s shoulders were loose, lips half cocked in that boyish grin he saved for the people he already liked. She’d done that—disarmed him in under an hour.

Once a Ranger, always a Ranger. All brawn, not a lot of brain.

Either she was an asset, or Martin really did just… disappear.

---

We kept digging, seventy-two hours straight, living on caffeine and muscle memory. I called favors the way priests call Hail Marys—Old Man Rourke at KCPD coughed up traffic-cam angles; an Army buddy in Signals jimmied a tower dump; even a TSA liaison shoved me snapshots from the airport’s SUBEYE system.

None of it hit.

Then Garcia rang a bell from the kitchen at five in the morning like we’d scored overtime. “Got a plate!” he shouted, waving a printout. “City parking cam two blocks south of Whittaker’s. Same timestamp. Midnight-blue Accord, out-of-state temp tag. Cross-matched with toll-road telemetry—bam, it’s in the wind nineteen minutes later heading west.”

Jackson grinned. “West is empty fields. Easier to vanish a body.”

“Or easier to avoid cameras,” I said, jaw like granite. “Pull every lot camera on the I-70 corridor. Cozy up to any farmer with a grain silo and a Ring doorbell.”

Garcia nodded, typing like a pianist with a gun to his head.

“But he didn’t go missing for three days after the bar meet-up—what if we’re wrong about this?” Jackson asked, eyes never leaving the still photo of our “Amelia.”

We always did share a type.

But even temp plates give off heat. VIN search traced the Accord to a rental kiosk—fake license, prepaid card. The address on file was a vacant church downtown. Whoever Amelia was, she packed her own blackout kit, and she’d used it before.

Which left me with one lead: the blurry shape of her, cached in my retinas long after the footage stopped rolling. I memorized the way she angled her head, the delay before she set her left foot down, as if she were counting. People walk in rhythms; hers felt like a metronome.

I leaned on a desk strewn with coffee cups, eyes burning. “All right,” I said, voice scraping gravel. “She’s not in the system. So we do it old-school. We stake her out.”

Jackson cracked his neck. Garcia killed the desk lamp.

I called it then, though I hadn’t said it aloud: anyone who could lift Martin off the map without leaving so much as a breadcrumb wasn’t a casual fling. She was a professional—intel, contractor, assassin, take your pick—and if she was that good, she wouldn’t spook easy. I needed a closer look.

And some reckless part of me wanted it.

Because the deeper we dug, the clearer the edges became: Martin might still be alive, but only one person on earth knew where, and she was a ghost.

I couldn’t wait to meet her.

Photo by Clifford on Unsplash

---

The bell above the door gave a half-hearted jingle as I stepped into The Lantern. Dim place—industrial bulbs strung like a lazy constellation, barista humming off-key.

And there she was.

Table against the far wall, laptop open, posture ramrod straight—too straight for a writer on deadline. I knew that spine; it belonged to someone who’d drilled “sit tall, breathe low” until it became a resting state. The screen flashed white across her face every few seconds, just enough for me to catch slivers of concentration: lips pressed flat, eyebrows loose, eyes locked on page—but her focus was anywhere but. I could tell. She wasn’t writing; she was monitoring.

“Black coffee, please” I told the barista, “two sugars. If you don’t mind.” Boring order—I’d have much preferred a Frappuccino—but it let me focus on “Amelia’s” reflection in the pastry case. When the tip jar came around, I dropped in a five.

Thirty-five percent on principle—also a test.

Most people barely notice generosity; operators register and catalog it. Nothing is ever free; every debt comes due.

Cup in hand, I drifted to the window seat that gave me line-of-sight across the whole shop. Sat sideways, one shoulder to the glass, keeping the exits in peripheral. I met her eyes once—half a heartbeat—and looked away first. Give her the win, see how she spends it.

She never broke rhythm. Scroll, type, sip, scan. The pattern felt rehearsed.

So she’s a metronome in more than gait. Noted.

I ran scenarios in my head: One, she bolts the second I move. Two, she pretends not to notice, lets me sweat. Or three, she makes contact first, because control is oxygen to people in intel.

Two minutes in, I could feel her recalculating. Her breathing changed—fractionally slower. Deciding.

I sipped and pretended the caffeine wasn’t burning a hole through nerves already strung tight. Martin ghosted with this woman. If she clocked me as a tail, things could go nuclear fast.

But the moment stretched, and her laptop snapped shut with a soft clap. She slid it into a canvas tote and stood—fluent motion, no tells. When she walked, her weight stayed mid-foot, heel barely kissing the floor. That’s range-work discipline; you walk like that when you’ve spent years trying not to telegraph mass shifts to a laser-trip board.

She passed my table, brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, then pivoted—perfect thirty-degree angle to present her left side, the ‘emotionally expressive’ one.

That was when I knew she had read the same books that I had.

“Hey, uh, I know this is totally random…”

Then she lied to me for the first time.

“My name’s Olivia—pleasure to meet you.”

If I didn’t have a clue what she—or rather what this thing—was capable of, I’d be getting very excited.

Alright, Ben. She’s a professional, but so are you.

Don’t fuck this up, killer.

I smiled like I hadn’t noticed. “Random’s my brand. What’s up?”

Oh COME ON. For fucks sake, man.

‘Random’s my brand’???

RIP this op—and probably Martin.

“I was wondering if you’d like to grab drinks sometime?” Head tilt, eyes wide—manufactured vulnerability to soften the ask. Voice pitched higher all of a sudden, with a calculated tremor at the end.

Textbook approachability hack.

A dozen alarms went off in my skull. Last known contact invites me for alcohol? Either she’s baiting me, or she’s just arrogant. Both options dangerous.

But I’d come here looking for an in. Invisible doors don’t open twice.

“Drinks sound good,” I said, then leaned back, giving her space. “I’m not really looking to date, though. Just a heads-up. Happy to hang, talk, see if we click as friends, but nothing past that.” I watched the words hit her—tiny hitch in her posture, the faintest narrowing of her eyes. She hadn’t gamed that response.

Thank fucking God.

She recovered with a smile that didn’t quite give the impression of warmth. “Oh, that’s perfect,” she said, like it actually was.

I took her phone when she offered it. Entered my real number—stupid maybe, but pseudonyms invite cross-checks—and typed Ben Baker because a lie that small would bite me later. Her case was spotless, no prints but hers; screen protector matte, hiding smudges. Girl thought of everything.

When I handed it back, our fingers didn’t touch. She saw to that. She thanked me, waved, slipped outside. Streetlight slashed gold across her jacket as she disappeared around the corner.

I exhaled for the first time in five minutes.

Now—if I could just survive one evening, alone, with a female version of myself…

Martin might still be alive. And we’ve done more with less.

---

Photo by Sérgio Alves Santos on Unsplash

I hit WT’s parking lot twenty-five minutes early, killed the headlights, and let the Taurus idle while I stared at the neon sign bleeding blue along my windshield. WT’s wasn’t a bar so much as a brick-and-mortar migraine: concrete walls, one main door, two emergency exits that probably stuck in the humidity, cameras positioned to discourage lawsuits rather than deter crime.

Perfect place to vanish if someone knew what they were doing. I pulled the checklist from habit more than need. You’d think, after all these years, my hands would stop shaking before an op.

Guess I’m not that lucky.

Wardrobe. Dark henley, slate jeans, broken-in boots that didn’t squeak. No hat—makes you memorable—or jacket I’d have to ditch if things went kinetic.
Carry piece. No pistol tonight; Kansas City’s finest get twitchy when blood mixes with a gun. I settled for the ceramic push dagger tucked horizontal at my belt.
Medical. Tourniquet, Combat-Gauze, folded flat in a cargo pocket.
Comms. Burner clipped inside the boot, primary in the front pocket, encrypted chat open to Jackson and Garcia under the label FANTASY FOOTBALL.

Paranoid? Sure. But paranoia’s just pattern recognition accelerated.

Paranoid beats dead—every time.

Olivia texted here on the dot. That earned her respect. I killed the engine, checked the mirrors: no tail, just a couple college kids arguing over an Uber.

She wore ripped jeans, and a white V-neck. Hair down. The leather jacket framed shoulders that moved like a fencer’s—loose, ready. No visible weapon, no purse big enough to hide one.

Looked unarmed… enough, so I waved her over.

“Hey, stranger. You look nice.” Neutral compliment, nothing too crazy—even if she was in my top 5 most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life. And she definitely wasn’t 5.

27 years, you learn to keep your cool.

She smiled the way con men do before they lift your watch.

Inside, the music hit like an uppercut—some remix with a bass line fat enough to hide a gunshot. Lights cycled purple, then green, then migraine-red. Occupancy maybe sixty percent.

The first twenty minutes were the strangest interview I’ve ever survived. She asked about my favorite podcasts, but not the ones anyone actually likes—instead she probed for fringe stuff, psyche-ops, obscure history panels. Her eyes tracked micro-expressions the way you measure wind before a shot. Every time I deflected, she noted the angle of deflection, stored it for later.

And I let her.

Because the longer she talked, the more I heard what wasn’t said: no filler words, zero personal anecdotes, not a single “I went to this school” or “my mom loves that.” It was all data requests, dressed in casual cadence. If she was CIA, she’d have flashed a hint of pedigree to build rapport.

She didn’t.

That’s the thing about us—every operator, every agent, anyone who works under an acronym—we all have egos. She avoided anything remotely personal—including bragging—which meant she was something else entirely.

This was not necessarily a net positive, finding out that I went in blind.

Good news—FSB doesn’t recruit American. Bad news, I had no idea where she was even from. Believe it or not, the US does not have a monopoly on hot, suspicious, highly capable women.

Essentially, I had no idea who the fuck was sitting in front of me, which was less than ideal.

Across the room, a man leaned on the jukebox like he owned air. He lingered between crowds of college students, freshly 21 (or, at least fresh fake IDs). Odd for a man in his late thirties. He wore a too-tight tee, forearms veined from vanity lifts. He wasn’t drinking—just scoping.

I clocked his eyes jump to Olivia, linger on her hips, then flick my way. He smirked, like he’d already made up his mind.

Jukebox Guy went into the maybe-problem column. But by then, I’d already had more whiskey than I’d planned.

Time for a detox. Priorities. I wasn’t there for fun, I was there for Martin.

I excused myself after round four—said I needed to use the restroom. In the men’s room, I pulled up the chat.

B: She’s not gov. Reads like private op.
J: U.S.?
B: Unknown.
J: Extraction?
B: Negative. I’m staying. There’s something here, and I’m gonna get it. CM.
J: 5x5.

Outside the door, I recognized Olivia’s steps—like a metronome—headed toward the bathrooms.

Fuck.

Had to think fast.

I shoved a couple fingers down the back of my throat until some of the whiskey cleared my system, then paused. If she were on a job, the puke wouldn’t be an obstacle—it’d be an opportunity.

Faucet water splashed cold on my face. I practiced breathing through the buzz in my skull—slow inhale, slow exhale—then listened.

Olivia’s boots squeaked as she turned toward the women’s room. So… not an op. Not the CCP. And not Russian Intel.

Definitely not the FBI, way too trained for that. We’d been at it for over an hour, and no one had accidentally shot anyone yet.

Maybe just a psychopath—

—no. That could not be it. There was just no way that I was ready to accept that she was just… Olivia. Fucking crazy—but just Olivia.

The bathroom door creaked open. Then another set of steps. Heavier, definitely a man, more than 200 pounds; walking into the women’s room. The door bounced off the doorstop with such force, I almost felt like it was owed an apology. Then the lock clicked.

Weird. Right?

Maybe she wanted privacy. Maybe she’d invited him after it became clear that I was throwing up whiskey, and no fun was gonna come from our evening.

None of my business.

Shouldn’t have been any of my business…

But my stupid fucking brain decided maybe wasn’t good enough.

I texted:

B: We got a Drake. Rendezvous normal spot. Get lost.

“Drake” was our codeword for creeps… that I had a habit of putting my hands on. Jackson and Garcia weren’t exactly keen on building a rapport with KCPD, and Martin’s wife needed them more than I did in the moment.

A few strides put me at the women’s bathroom. I listened again. Muffled words. Tile scuff. Then a thud, like a body hitting the deck. My hand found the knob—cheap brass. Pressure test: half-inch of give. Good.

Three deep breaths.

Two body weight shots, hinge side, to weaken the wood.

And one foot, an inch to the left from the knob, to blow the whole thing down.

---

I stepped through the mess and came face-to-face with the kind of scene commanders warn the boots about: Olivia crushed between sink and wall, Jukebox’s hand mapping territory that wasn’t his.

That’s when everything slowed to the clean, perfect moment before a gun goes off—the air tastes metallic, muscles coil, and the world waits for you to decide what kind of man you’re going to be; Hero, or Monster.

Turns out, I was going to be whichever one Olivia needed.

He turned, blood-hot grin melting to confusion, then to the clever calculation of a bar predator deciding just how much trouble I might be.

I figured I’d save him the math.

“Hey, asshole,” I said, voice calm enough to scare me. “Cornering women in bars is a dick move.” I chuckled—which, by the way, was probably frightening for Olivia in the moment. Or, at least it should’ve been. “But hey, glad you’re already in the mood, because you are so fucked.”

He squared to me, fingers flexing. “Mind your business, buddy. She’s fine.”

“Yeah, totally fine,” I answered, stepping within spitting distance, grinning. Waiting. I wanted him to swing—no. I needed him to. “She usually uses words like stop and fuck off when she’s fine.”

He finally jabbed—sloppy and wide.

I slipped inside, heel-palmed his nose—crrrk—cartilage folding like cardboard. Blood fan-sprayed the mirror. He back-pedaled, shrieking, one hand to his face, the other flailing.

“You learn that move watching TikTok?” I asked, voice steady, calm, because the calmer I sounded, the less chance I’d dislocate something permanent. “Little pro tip—”

I caught the wrist, rolled it over the top, and jammed his shoulder against the porcelain wall. I used his face to shatter the glass from the mirror—spider-webs cracking like a bad halo. I drove his sternum into the sink edge and his lungs spilled a grunt.

“—Don’t bring social media hacks to a fist fight. That’s how you get a broken arm.”

He turned and swung again, blind, and high on adrenaline. I pivoted, hooked his ankle, and let gravity do the rest. Concrete kissed the front of his skull with a sound like thunder, two miles out.

Olivia hadn’t moved. Arms crossed, chin slightly raised, eyes tracking angles like a coach with a clipboard. The look did strange, electric things in my chest.

Stupid.

Jukebox guy tried to lever up on his one good hand. I knelt on his spine, fingers curling around the back of his neck. “Still breathing? Good. Let’s reflect: consent is a binary. Yes or—” With my free hand, I ratcheted a wrist until tendons sang—“no. Complicated?”

He screamed.

Satisfied, I eased so nothing snapped. Blood pooled under his cheek, spreading like a dark Rorschach. Part of me wanted to keep crushing until the picture made sense. Part of me—older, disciplined—pulled back.

Talk.
Breathe.
Keep the switch from flicking to total black out.

I leaned down, whispered in the guys ear—an oddly intimate gesture for the moment, I have to admit.

“What? Being assaulted in a public bathroom not fun anymore?” I couldn’t stop the crazy villain laugh. Went from feeling like Batman to Joker, real quick.

My spine straightened. I gripped the collar of Jukebox Guy’s shirt, lifting his head from the concrete floor. My shoulders squared, and core braced. “I don’t know, man. Me, personally? I’m having—” The guys face crushed back against the concrete like punctuation.

“A goddamn,” Impact.

“Blast!”

Silence.

I barely glanced up at Olivia—blank expression.

Fucking psycho…

So I kept going until the doorway clogged with security—two bouncers first, then a uniformed off-duty. Guns stayed holstered when they saw me. KCPD knew my face from the incident with my sisters boyfriend… and the half-dozen drunken brawls, and one unfortunate barstool “accident.”

Poor guy never saw it coming.

They clocked Jukebox guy bleeding and Olivia “in shock”—wide eyes, trembling lip, Oscar-worthy—and decided the story wrote itself.

“He grabbed her,” I said before questions started. “I intervened. He resisted.”

Hard stop.

Olivia backed it with a wavering nod and a perfect tear. Cop’s shoulders loosened. I was honestly just shocked they believed her. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she was convincing—but they usually wait for the offenders side of the story because cops are useless.

Paramedics hauled what was left of pretty-boy out on a board. I collected a wet-wipe from the bartender—she couldn’t look me in the eye—and scrubbed drying red from my knuckles while the officer ran my ID.

“Baker?” he asked, recognition dawning. “That you? Holy shit.”

“Was.” I managed a crooked smile. “Just call me Ben now, please.”

“Okay.” The officer chuckled. “Ben. What was the plan in there? I mean, were you trying to kill the guy?”

“If I was trying, he’d be dead.” I replied; honest, flat.

I could hear his breath hitch. He quickly handed my ID back, and mumbled “Appreciate your service” before joining the rest of the officers by the ambulance—who couldn’t help but stare at me like I was some kind of rabid dog.

Gotta love small-town hero reputations.

Outside, humid air hit like bathwater. I dropped onto the curb, elbows on knees, pulse finally slowing. Olivia sat beside me, leaving exactly eight inches—enough for plausible deniability, close enough for conspiratorial hush.

“You okay?” I asked, voice shredded.

She considered, head tilted. “I think I should be asking you that, killer.”

The nickname pinged something warm in my ribs. I barked a laugh, immediate and too loud. “All in a day’s work.” I shrugged, eyes on the smudge of Jukebox guy’s blood still crusted near my cuticle. “Guy was asking for a remedial lesson.”

Olivia hummed in quiet agreement. Then: “Alright, come on. Let me take you home. Consider it a thank you.”

I should’ve said no; gone home, iced my knuckles. Instead I heard myself mumble in agreement. I knew I was in over my head before. But then? Then I knew I was fucked.

I just had hope that it would be in the fun way.

Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.

---

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Until the next chapter,

—The Narrator.

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