The park was a ghost of its daytime self, its playgrounds empty, its benches shrouded in the humid night air. Alex sat alone, a cold, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. The meeting with Marcus had confirmed her darkest fears. The Collector was not a lone wolf; he was a pawn. The case that had ruined her life and taken Ben's was a front for something far more sinister: a secret society with its hands in every corner of the city's power structure. The files Marcus had, the names he had collected over a decade of unofficial investigation—they were a lifeline, but they were also a death sentence. To know was to be a target.
Her phone vibrated in her hand, the screen glowing with a number she didn't recognize. Her first instinct was to ignore it. The anonymous text had taught her a lesson in caution. But something about the sequence of numbers, a subtle pattern, made her heart pound. It looked like an old, de-activated FBI burner number, one she and Ben had used years ago for high-risk operations. She answered.
"Alex?" The voice on the other end was a shaky whisper, laced with a raw, unadulterated terror. "Is that you?"
"Who is this?" she demanded, her mind racing to place the voice.
"It's me, Ray," the voice said. "Ray Chen. From the old team. Ben's team."
Alex's breath hitched. Ray Chen. He had been a low-level analyst back then, a brilliant kid who kept his head down and his work immaculate. He had been one of the few who had visited her after Ben's death, his eyes full of a silent, shared grief. She hadn't seen him since.
"Ray, what is it? Where are you?"
"You have to stop, Alex," he said, his voice frantic, a desperate hiss into the phone. "They know you're back. They know you're asking questions. You have to stop."
"Who are 'they,' Ray? Is it the society?"
His voice cracked. "Don't say that. Don't say it over the phone. You can't trust anyone. Not the bureau, not your old team. They have eyes everywhere. Just stop. They'll kill you."
The terror in his voice was real, a visceral wave of fear that made Alex's skin crawl. This wasn't a warning from Sterling, a man trying to protect his own skin. This was a man who was genuinely, utterly terrified.
"I can't stop, Ray," she said, her voice dropping to a persuasive, calm whisper, the voice she used to use on traumatized witnesses. "Not until I know what happened to Ben. Please, Ray. You knew him. What do you know?"
There was a long silence on the other end, punctuated only by his shaky breathing. "I can't talk here. I can't talk on the phone. Meet me. Now. Grand Central Station. The old clock in the main concourse. In one hour."
"Ray, that's too public. What are you thinking?"
"They watch the shadows, not the light," he said, his voice a strained gasp. "They're hunting you, Alex. Don't be a ghost. Be a person. And hurry."
The line went dead.
Alex felt a cold wave of dread wash over her. Ray was terrified, but he was also smart. He knew that a secret meeting in a dark alley was exactly what the society would expect. A public meeting place, a bustling, anonymous crowd—it was a paradoxical kind of invisibility. She got in her car, her mind a whirlwind of fear and purpose. She drove to Grand Central, the city lights blurring into a chaotic streak of color. She was no longer just a hunter. She was being hunted, and the prey was now a person she had once considered a friend.
She arrived at the station with fifteen minutes to spare. The concourse was a bustling sea of humanity, people rushing to catch trains, tourists with cameras hanging from their necks, and locals hurrying home. Alex found a bench near the iconic clock, her eyes scanning the crowd with the practiced intensity of a profiler. She looked for anything out of place. A person who was too still, a face that was too clean, a pair of eyes that were searching, not for a train, but for her.
She waited. A man in a business suit walked by, talking into a headset. Was he an agent? A woman with a large camera stood by the newsstand. Was she a tourist, or was she waiting for a signal? Every face was a potential threat, every casual glance a possible surveillance.
Then she saw him. Ray. He was in the back of the crowd, near the ticket counters. He looked nothing like the confident analyst she remembered. His eyes were wide with fear, darting nervously from face to face. His movements were jerky, paranoid. He was a man coming apart at the seams.
He spotted her. His face, a mask of sheer terror, was a roadmap of his inner turmoil. He began to move towards her, his body a tight wire of barely-contained panic. He was only a few feet away when he suddenly froze, his eyes fixed on a point just over Alex's shoulder. His face, already pale, went as white as a sheet. His jaw dropped.
"He's here," he whispered, his voice a horrified sound of pure, abject fear. "The watchman."
He turned and fled. Not towards the exit, not towards the police. He simply vanished into the sea of people, a man running from an unseen threat. Alex tried to follow, but it was useless. He was gone, swallowed by the crowd.
Alex stood there, her heart pounding. She had just had her only lead, her only connection to her old life, vanish before her eyes. Ray's terror was more real than any official report. He had seen something. He had recognized someone.
She looked to where his gaze had been fixed. There was no one there. Just a man reading a newspaper, a family with small children, a group of college students laughing. Nothing. No one.
Alex felt a surge of profound frustration. She had been so close. Ray had been about to give her the key, the name, the truth she had been searching for. And he had just disappeared.
She turned to leave, a wave of despair washing over her. She took a step, and then she saw it. On the ground, near where Ray had been standing, was a small, torn piece of a page from his notebook. It was a single, crumpled clue.
She picked it up. It was a piece of a map, a section of the city she didn't recognize. But on the map, a single location was circled in a spidery, panicked handwriting. It was a place she had never heard of before. On the back, one word was scrawled in a shaky hand: Labyrinth.
Alex felt a renewed surge of purpose, a cold, unwavering resolve. Ray had fled, but he had left her a clue. The society had eyes everywhere, and it was watching her. But she was a profiler. She was a hunter. She was a woman who was no longer running from her past. The game had just escalated, and now she had a new name to hunt. Not the Collector. Not the mastermind. But the 'watchman' that had sent a good man running in terror. The hunt had just gotten a lot more dangerous.