The precinct felt different when something finally clicked. Buzzing, almost but not the kind from lights or monitors. This was internal. A gut-snap that both Darryl and Amara felt at the same time, like the pressure had been building and someone finally opened the valve.

Amara spun her monitor toward Darryl so fast her coffee sloshed over the rim. “You need to see this.”

It was a still frame from traffic cam footage blurry, low-res, timestamped from Devil’s Night. But the subject was clear: a tall man in a long coat, standing outside Bianca Payne’s art gallery. Not moving. Not going in. Just watching.

Darryl leaned in. “That’s our guy.”

“I ran facial recognition got partials. It’s a mess,” Amara said, typing quickly. “But check this. I backtracked the gallery’s building security footage from that night. Bianca never left. The system glitched at 10:12 PM. That’s when the camera went black.”

“You thinking someone disabled it?”

“Either that, or something walked through the signal and didn’t like being seen,” she muttered. “And there’s more.”

She dropped an image onto the screen: a file recovered from Councilman Martel’s encrypted drive. It had been buried under layers of dummy files—looked like a budget spreadsheet on the surface. But once their tech guy peeled it open...

There she was. Bianca. A photo of her gallery’s storefront, her name in block letters. Underneath: a line of text.

“Secondary target. Visual confirmed. No public record of exit.”

Darryl sat back, stomach turning. “They’ve been watching her since before Devil’s Night.”

“And tracking her after,” Amara added. “I found another note linked to Cortez’s burner phone. Sent two weeks ago. Just coordinates and a timestamp. One of those pings matches the alley where we found Sarah Miller.”

The air in the room thickened.

Amara stood and pointed at the board. “Cortez is our middleman. He sources. Moves people. But he’s not the killer. Someone else is doing the cleanup.”

“And leaving roses,” Darryl finished.

“Yeah.”

He grabbed his coat. “We’ve got enough. Let’s go rattle Martel’s cage.”

Amara grabbed her badge and nodded. “And if he won’t talk?”

Darryl didn’t blink. “Then we start kicking in doors.”