The Cold Crimes Unit wasn't buried beneath the city, but it felt like it.
A single hallway, a basement-level room, no windows. Filing cabinets outnumbered people. Everything smelled faintly of paper, steel, and time.
Detective Lyra Vance stood at the far end of the room, motionless, a case folder opened in her hands like it had been waiting for her to return.
Elara Cross. Twenty-four. Missing for ninety-one days. Found wrapped in tarpaulin in an abandoned warehouse. Closed for lack of leads.
Dated: Seventeen years ago.
Her fingers moved with care, but her face didn't shift. Lyra had long mastered the ability to read horror without flinching. She wasn't hardened. She was focused — as sharp and still as a scalpel waiting to cut.
Across from her, Noah Reyes, their tech and data lead, was balancing two coffee mugs and a file tablet. He squinted at the wall of pinned photos.
"That warehouse Elara was found in?"
"Burned down last night," Lyra said without looking up.
Noah set down the mugs. "Arson?"
Lyra nodded. "Empty. Except for a single item left behind in the ash."
She handed him a printed photo.
A singed scrap of paper. One sentence in thick black ink:
"I buried her too shallow."
Noah stared at it. "Creepy. Do we know if it's real or someone playing with us?"
"That's what we're going to find out."
---
Later that day
Dr. Selene Hart, their forensic consultant, pulled up the original autopsy scans.
"Elara's nails were clean. No sign of fiber or tissue," she said.
"Too clean," Lyra replied. "If she fought back, there should've been something."
Noah tapped on his screen. "Also… one of her credit card statements from the week she vanished? Shows a transaction that was never followed up."
"Where?"
"A bookstore. Downtown. 8:17 a.m. Monday."
Lyra's head turned slightly.
"Elara left for work at 7:30 a.m. Her office was the opposite direction."
---
That evening, Lyra was the last to leave the unit.
She walked past the evidence wall they'd started rebuilding — photos, strings, timelines. Three old cases now sat side by side.
She circled Elara's photo.
Then, beside it, pinned a small slip of paper.
It read:
Warehouse. Monday. Missing fiber. Same month. Different year.
She stepped back, eyes sharp. Something wasn't matching.
Something was repeating.