Kai had always believed patience was the difference between chaos and control. Plans rarely unfolded exactly as imagined. Variables existed. People resisted. Bodies surprised you. Noah surviving the fall was one of those variables. But it didn't matter. Not really.
Kai stood by the hospital window, reading the glowing chart on the screen beside Noah's bed. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and plastic tubing. Machines hummed with quiet authority, measuring things that mattered to doctors but meant something else entirely to him.
Blood loss. Internal trauma. Delayed shock. Kai had spent years studying how bodies fail. He didn't need a doctor to interpret the numbers. Noah Knox would not last long. Maybe hours. Maybe a day. But the line was already drawn.
Kai exhaled slowly and let a small, private satisfaction settle in his chest. Even when plans bent, they still found their way back to him. Soon, Evan would have no one left. No one except the one person who had always understood him. Kai rested his hand lightly against the cool glass of the observation window. Soon.
Across the hall, Rhea sat in a plastic chair outside the ICU. She hadn't moved for almost twenty minutes. Doctors came and went. Nurses whispered to each other in quiet, professional tones. Someone's phone rang at the far end of the corridor. But Rhea barely noticed any of it. Something was wrong. Not the obvious wrong. Not the violence of what had happened. Something quieter. A thread pulled too tight somewhere in the story. Her mind kept circling the same question. Evan Kale attacking Noah Knox didn't make sense. Not emotionally. Not logically. And yet the evidence kept pointing directly at him.
Rhea rubbed her temples slowly. "Think," she murmured to herself. Her eyes drifted across the hallway. And landed on Kai. He sat several seats away, leaning back casually, one ankle resting on his knee, a paper cup of coffee in his hand. He looked calm. Too calm. He lifted the cup and took a slow sip, staring out the window like a man watching an ordinary afternoon pass by. Rhea frowned. That expression. That posture. It didn't match the situation.
His best friend lay in critical condition behind a glass wall. A man he had worked beside for years. And yet...Kai looked… relaxed. Not relieved. Not happy. Just… untouched.
The thought flickered across her mind before she could stop it. That is not the face of someone who might lose their best friend tonight. Her stomach tightened. Kai noticed her looking and gave a faint, tired smile. She nodded politely. But something had already shifted inside her.
Half an hour later, Rhea was back at the station. She moved quickly through the quiet hallway toward her office, pushing the door open with unnecessary force. Files...Folders...Case boards...Everything she had collected over the last weeks sat waiting. She dropped her bag on the desk and began pulling documents out one by one. Crime scene photos...Autopsy reports...Timeline charts...Victim histories...She laid them across the desk, then the chairs, then the floor. Her eyes scanned them rapidly. Something was missing. She could feel it.
A space in the pattern. A gap where something important should have been. Rhea leaned against the desk, breathing slowly.
"What am I missing?" she whispered. Her mind replayed the investigation from the beginning. The first body. The second. The pattern Noah had started mapping...Hunter...That was the name they had given the killer. A phantom moving between crime scenes. Precise. Controlled. Always just out of reach. Her gaze moved over the papers again. Nothing. Just fragments. She straightened suddenly. Evan. "I need to speak to him," she muttered.
An hour later, she stood outside the interrogation wing. The officer at the desk barely looked up when she approached. "I need access to Evan Kale," she said. The officer shook his head. "Orders from Detective Kolon. No outside interviews right now."
"I'm part of this case."
"Still denied."
Rhea exhaled slowly, frustration tightening her chest.
"Fine," she said quietly. She turned and walked away. Back in her office, the silence felt heavier. Rhea sat in her chair and stared at the scattered files. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe everything really did point to Evan. Maybe trauma had finally broken him. Maybe—
Her thoughts stopped.
Suddenly. Without warning. A memory surfaced.
Kai.
Standing beside her desk earlier that week. Looking down at the files. Leaning over the papers. Her eyes widened slowly. The comparison sheet. The one she had written by hand. The page connecting response times and personnel overlap across the crime scenes. She had left it right on top of the stack. And now...It wasn't there. Rhea stood up so fast the chair rolled backward. "No," she whispered. She dropped to her knees and began searching the scattered papers across the floor. File after file. Report after report. But the page was gone. Completely gone. Her pulse began to rise. She remembered writing it clearly. Remembered the small sticky note she had placed in the corner. Consistent proximity. Coincidence?
Her breathing slowed. Her mind went very still. Kai had been standing right there when she last saw it. And now the page had vanished.
Across the city, Evan sat alone inside a cold interrogation room. His wrists rested on the metal table. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. He hadn't spoken in hours. The image of Noah falling replayed again and again in his mind. The sound. The blood. The way the body hit the floor below. His chest tightened painfully. If Noah died… The thought refused to finish itself.
At the hospital, machines continued their quiet rhythm beside Noah's bed. A monitor beeped steadily...Slow...Fragile...Uncertain...And somewhere between those fragile seconds, the truth was beginning to move. Slowly...Quietly...But once it started...it would not stop.