The rain tapped against the windows of Ava Sinclair's apartment like impatient fingers, as if the storm outside demanded the truth just as much as she did.
She sat hunched on the edge of her couch, Nathan Cole's case file sprawled across the floor around her like a crime scene of its own. Pages torn from her notebook, photos stained with fingerprints, coffee rings bleeding into autopsy reports—chaos reflecting her thoughts.
His voice still echoed in her head.
"You're too late, Detective. But you already knew that, didn't you?"
Her hands trembled. She had replayed the call at least twenty times, scouring every second for a glitch, a mistake—anything to prove it had been faked. But it hadn't. The fear in Nathan's voice, the way he gasped for breath, like he was calling from somewhere far colder than the grave—none of it could be explained by technology.
She didn't believe in ghosts. Not really.
But she also didn't believe in coincidences.
The phone buzzed. It jolted her back to the present, but it wasn't a call. A text from Chief Lerman.
"Take the weekend off, Ava. You look like hell. Get some sleep."
She let the phone fall back on the table.
Sleep?
Sleep had abandoned her days ago. It didn't visit people who heard dead men whisper through static.
She picked up Nathan's photo. He was smiling—confident, kind. It was his ID photo, taken two weeks before his death. She stared into those eyes and whispered, "What happened to you?"
No answer.
She turned to her wall, where she'd pinned photos, dates, strings of red yarn—classic detective chaos, except this wasn't about catching a killer anymore. It was about understanding why a dead man was calling her.
Three days ago, she believed Nathan Cole was just another tragic murder—brutal, yes, but explainable. Now?
Now the truth clawed at her, sleepless and suffocating.
The clock read 2:38 AM when the knock came.
Three soft raps.
She froze. Who would knock this late?
She approached the door cautiously, gun drawn. Peered through the peephole.
Nobody.
Her heart thundered. She opened the door anyway, slowly.
The hallway was empty, except—
At her feet sat a small brown envelope. No name. No markings. Just a piece of black tape sealing it shut.
Ava stared at it, hesitant. Every instinct screamed trap.
She brought it inside carefully and opened it with gloved fingers.
Inside: A single photo.
Nathan Cole. Dead. His body in the morgue, zipped halfway in a black body bag—but this angle wasn't from the official crime scene photos.
No. This was taken from above. Like someone had stood in the morgue with him, waiting for her to see it.
Her stomach flipped.
On the back of the photo, written in red ink:
"He's not the only one."
Her breath caught.
Her hands gripped the table to steady herself as her mind spun. She needed answers—fast.
Ava pulled out her laptop, ignoring the cold sweat on her spine. She opened her secure police drive, typing in her passcode with shaking fingers, and pulled up the list of cold cases she had once shelved, closed, buried.
Nathan's wasn't the first body dumped in that alley.
Four years ago: Lila Vance. Similar throat wounds. No leads.
Two years ago: Jamie Hunt. Same alley. No DNA. No motive.
She had connected them loosely back then but was told not to chase "ghost theories."
Now she wondered if the ghosts had been trying to reach her all along.
Another buzz. Her phone again.
Unknown Number.
She answered without thinking.
"Detective."
That voice.
Him. Nathan.
But this time it wasn't frantic. It was cold. Stern.
"You're getting closer."
She pressed the phone to her ear tightly. "Nathan, why are you calling me? How are you calling me?"
"You left me there."
Her blood ran ice cold.
"You walked away, Ava. And now it's happening again."
"What is? Tell me who did this to you!"
Silence.
Then something new. A second voice.
Faint. Garbled.
A woman. Crying.
Ava's throat tightened. "Who is that? Nathan, who's with you?"
"She doesn't know yet. But she will. Soon."
Click.
The line went dead.
Ava stared at the phone, heart pounding in her ears. This wasn't just about Nathan anymore. There was another victim—alive or dead, she didn't know. But she had to find her.
She scrolled through call records. The number was untraceable. Burned.
She threw on her coat and grabbed her keys. If the killer—or whoever was behind this—wanted her rattled, they'd succeeded. But she wasn't going to sit still.
She was done reacting. It was time to hunt.
---
1 Hour Later – Morgue
The night shift attendant, Peter, gave her a puzzled look as she flashed her badge.
"Detective Sinclair? Something wrong?"
"I need to see Nathan Cole's body," she said, her voice flat.
Peter hesitated. "We already released it to the family."
Her world tilted. "What?"
"Yesterday. They came with paperwork. Took him to a private cremation home."
Her pulse quickened. "Who signed the release?"
Peter checked the log. "Uh… Damien Blackwood."
Ava's breath caught in her throat.
She had seen that name before.
Not in the Cole case—but in the Lila Vance file.
He'd been a witness. A bar owner near the alley.
And now, he was moving corpses?
Her thoughts snapped into a new pattern. The clues were converging. Nathan's call, the photo, the whispers about "not the only one"—they all led to the same name.
Damien Blackwood.
She stepped back from the desk and whispered to herself, "You're not done speaking, Nathan. You're just getting started."
And neither was she.
---