The Dockside warehouse looked emptier at night, as if the dark had swallowed a third of its volume and left the rest to echo. Kaein stood just inside the sliding door, headlamp off for a few seconds to let his eyes adjust. The scent of brine seeped through the metal seams, carrying a faint chill that climbed under his coat.
He'd come back because the arcs on the floor wouldn't leave him alone. Because a toolbox that looked staged kept tugging at the edge of his mind. Because the torn boarding pass in the evidence pouch—LX3—something—refused to stop humming at the back of his skull.
Footsteps behind him. A soft knock on the metal frame, not to startle, just to say: I'm here.
"Did you really follow me?" His voice was quiet, but not surprised.
"You weren't answering," Lior said, stepping in. His umbrella was dripping; he shook it once and tucked it near the door. "And you forget to eat when you're chasing patterns."
Kaein's mouth tipped. "You brought food?"
Lior lifted a paper bag. "Two buns. One coffee. No arguments."
He didn't argue. He took the coffee, the heat steadying the cold that had settled in his fingers. He didn't say thank you either, but the way his shoulders loosened for a heartbeat said it for him.
They clicked on headlamps, beams cutting pale lanes across concrete. The arcs of dried blood glimmered dull and brown, reaching three meters from the container and then… stopping, as if an invisible border had held them back. Kaein moved without hurry, each step measured, cataloguing angles he'd already catalogued twice and would catalogue again.
Lior matched his pace, gaze not on the stains but on the space between things—the scuffed tire marks that didn't lead to the loading bay, the row of pallets with one gap too clean, the seam of wall panel that didn't quite sit flush. He wasn't police. He wasn't officially anything. He was a pilot on a week with too much ground and a man who had decided tonight to make sure Kaein didn't get lost in his own head.
"Hold here," Kaein said, raising a hand just before the line where the arcs stopped.
Lior halted. His breath feathered in the cold. "You keep saying these arcs aren't random."
"They aren't," Kaein murmured, crouching. "Spacing is too regular. There's intent in the sweep."
"Like someone practiced."
"Like someone wanted it read."
Lior watched him, watched the way his focus narrowed the world to a circle of concrete under a lamp beam. The warehouse windows whispered with the sea wind. A loose chain clinked somewhere in the rafters.
"You know—" Lior's voice was soft, more to the air than to Kaein. "On stage, the trick looks big because your eyes are dragged to motion. But the switch? It happens in the quiet corner. The hand that never moves."
Kaein stilled.
The quiet corner.
He tracked the arcs' curve not across the open floor but to the dead angle—far right, where the container cast a wedge of shadow even with their lamps. A place the first sweep team had walked past because it was nothing. Because it wanted to be nothing.
He rose, angling his beam into the wedge. Concrete. Dust. A single skitter of grit chasing the light. He stepped in.
"Careful," Lior said, almost reflexively.
"I am." But he altered his footfall, light, almost soundless, like the floor might be listening.
The wedge smelled different, not sea-cold but metallic-still, as if the air there hadn't been stirred in days. Kaein ran his beam along the baseboard—stopped. Two screws on the trim were silver-bright; the others were dulled by time.
Someone had removed this panel recently. Someone had put it back.
He crouched. The screws turned under the smallest pressure—too easy—and the panel eased away, a narrow cavity yawning behind it: just wide enough for a hand. Just wide enough for a slip of paper. Or a small tool. Or—
A breath behind him, then the whisper of rubber on dust. Lior shifted his weight, leaning to see. The floor grit rolled under his sole.
He tilted.
Kaein's hand was already out. Fingers closed around Lior's forearm—firm, sure, the kind of grip that says I've got you before either of them think to say anything at all. Lior's momentum arrested with a startled inhale that they both heard too clearly in the quiet.
The headlamp beams crossed for a heartbeat, their shoulders nearly touching. Heat bled through coat fabric. The scent of rain in Lior's hair, warm coffee on Kaein's breath. Time hung there, small and taut, like a string pulled just before a note.
"Sorry," Lior murmured, voice lower now. He didn't move away immediately.
"Don't be." Kaein's hand eased but didn't fall until he felt the balance return. "Floor's slick."
"I noticed." A rough little laugh slipped out of Lior; it sounded like something uncoiling. He stepped back half a pace, enough space to breathe, not enough to break the thread. "What's in there?"
Kaein slid the panel fully aside. The cavity held dust and the faint outline where something rectangular had rested and wasn't there anymore. An impression like a shadow.
He exhaled slowly. "Whatever was hidden is gone."
"Hidden from the 'middle of the mess,'" Lior said, and Kaein heard his own earlier words reflected back, softened.
He swept his beam through the cavity again. A whisper of fiber caught the light. He pinched it free: a strand of twine, stained rust-brown at one end. Bagging it would come later. For now, the shape of the absence mattered more than the small thing left behind.
Behind them, the warehouse sighed. A wave broke somewhere outside, syncopated with the loose chain's clink. Lior touched two fingers to the side seam of the container, feeling for vibration that wasn't there. He wanted to tell Kaein about a memory that had been dogging him all day—a terminal gate years ago, a paper cup of coffee, the same quiet that made words heavier—but Kaein's gaze had gone distant, mind mapping invisibles.
So he waited. He had time.
"Say it," Lior said gently, when the silence stretched. "The thing your eyes just found."
Kaein's mouth quirked. "You hear that?"
"I hear you thinking."
He gestured to the panel. "If the arcs are performance, this is the wings. And if something lived here and is now gone, then the performance was a distraction to move it out. Not blood as byproduct. Blood as curtain."
"And the toolbox?" Lior asked.
"Prop. To make us look where we're supposed to."
"Which we did," Lior said, not unkindly.
"Which we did," Kaein echoed, and it was almost a smile.
They worked the perimeter again, slower now, letting the space teach them what it wanted to hide. On the far wall, Lior squinted at a scuff that didn't match the rest—fresh, low, like something heavy had been dragged at ankle height. He crouched, touching the mark with a knuckle, and spoke without looking up.
"You keep your lamp too high when you're tired."
"I'm not—" Kaein began, and Lior glanced up, the look soft enough to turn the protest into a breath.
"You are," he said, "and you still came back. Eat your bun before it turns into paste."
"Bossy," Kaein said, but he took the bun from the bag Lior had set on a clean stretch of pallet, tore it in half, handed the larger piece back. Deliberate care, disguised as habit. Lior's throat tightened, a small, inconvenient ache.
They ate standing, lamps tilted toward the floor. The warmth pulsed back into their hands. The case slid into the rhythm of chewing and watching, and the closeness threaded through it like a line they both pretended not to see.
"Tell me something from before," Lior said, lightly, as if the request could float. "Something not about work."
Kaein's eyes flicked toward him, then away. The past was a room with too many doors; opening one meant the draft might swing the rest. Not tonight. He let the silence answer. Lior nodded, accepting it, even as a small weight settled beneath his ribs.
"Another time," Lior said, and meant it. He nudged Kaein's shoulder with the back of his hand, a touch like punctuation. "We'll trade. I'll go first."
"Another time," Kaein repeated, softer.
They circled once more. Kaein's lamp caught a faint scrape on the concrete, perpendicular to the earlier drag. A pattern—not random, but measured, as if a crate on casters had been angled, paused, angled again. He followed the line to the loading-bay man door, not the big shutters. The push bar was smudged with something that wasn't grease.
He pressed a gloved finger to it, lifted. The smear stretched thin like old varnish. Resin? He sniffed; the note was chemical-sweet, almost floral under the metallic warehouse air.
"New?" Lior asked, close enough now that his coat brushed Kaein's sleeve.
"Recent." Kaein looked at the man door's threshold: a crumb of that same resin tucked into the groove. He resisted the urge to pocket it with bare fingers and instead marked it with a small triangle of tape from his kit. "If they rolled something out, they did it quiet and small. Not a truck. A van, maybe. Or carried to a van."
Lior's breath fogged. "You think they'll come back?"
Kaein's jaw worked once. "If this is staged, they already took what they wanted. But people repeat themselves when they think they're clever."
"Then we don't stay," Lior said, steady, practical. "You've got a sample. You've got a new angle. We go. You write. You sleep."
"You ordering me home?"
"Borrowing your line," Lior said. "Careful."
A beat. The word hung between them, wider than safety, narrower than love, true in a way that didn't need a label.
Kaein glanced at the cavity again, then slid the panel back into place—leaving it just misaligned enough to notice tomorrow with a proper team. His lamp swept the arcs one last time. Curtain, not consequence. The thought clicked into place with a satisfaction that didn't ease the knot so much as show him where to pull.
They killed their lights. The dark folded around them, and then the night seeped back in: wind, distant surf, the soft tick of cooling metal. At the door, Lior lifted the umbrella, tilting it to cover them both in the first wash of rain.
Outside, sodium lamps poured thin gold onto wet asphalt. They walked close because the umbrella insisted, because the street narrowed, because the world did. Their elbows brushed once, twice, a rhythm without plan. Lior's shoulder was warm against Kaein's. Kaein's pace adjusted half a step to match Lior's stride.
"What are you thinking now?" Lior asked, not looking over.
"That I owe you another bun," Kaein said, and the answer made Lior laugh in the quiet way that reached his eyes.
They reached the curb. A van idled two blocks down, lights off, a shape more suggestion than vehicle. When it pulled away, it didn't hurry.
Kaein's gaze tracked it until the turn. "Tomorrow," he said, almost to himself.
"Tomorrow," Lior echoed, and didn't ask which part he meant.
They stood there a few seconds longer than necessary, rain pattering on canvas, the case stalking Kaein's thoughts with new teeth, the warmth of Lior beside him easing the bite. Nothing defined. Everything felt. The knot loosened, not undone, but manageable.
They turned in opposite directions, then both looked back at the same time and didn't comment on it.
The warehouse behind them kept its secrets for one more night.