The rain in Blackwood did not fall. It drifted, a cold and suffocating gauze that clung to the granite headstones and turned the dress uniforms of five hundred police officers into damp, heavy armor.
Sarafina Cole stood at the epicenter of the grief, her spine a rigid line of glass that threatened to shatter under the weight of the silence. Before her, the casket of Captain Stephen Cole sat perched above the open earth, draped in a flag so vibrant it looked like a wound against the gray morning.
She did not cry. To cry would be to admit that the man beneath the mahogany was gone, and Sarafina was not yet ready to inhabit a world where her father's shadow didn't shield her from the sun. Instead, she inhaled the scent of the cemetery: wet cedar, cloying lilies, and the metallic tang of the city's exhaust creeping over the wrought iron fences.
The ritual was a well-oiled machine of tradition. The sharp, rhythmic crack of the twenty-one-gun salute tore through the mist, a violent percussion that made the birds scatter from the skeletal oaks. Sarafina didn't flinch. She watched the smoke dissipate, thinking of how easily a life could be reduced to a few echoes and a handful of brass casings.
Then came the folding of the flag.
The officers moved with a choreographed solemnity, their white-gloved hands snapping the fabric into a tight, crisp triangle. When the Chief of Police approached her, his face a mask of practiced sympathy, Sarafina felt a surge of nausea. He leaned in, murmuring platitudes about sacrifice and the thin blue line, words that felt as hollow as the box they were about to bury.
As he pressed the folded stars and stripes into her hands, the weight of it nearly buckled her knees. It wasn't just fabric. It was the leaden remains of a thirty-year career, a heavy, triangular ghost that smelled of starch and the cedar chest where her father had kept his secrets.
"He was the best of us, Sarafina," the Chief whispered.
Sarafina's fingers tightened around the rough wool. She looked past him, searching for the one face that should have been her anchor. Detective Miller, her father's partner for a decade, stood a few paces back. He was a man who had sat at their Sunday dinner table and laughed until the walls shook. But today, Miller's gaze was fixed on the mud caking his shoes.
She waited for him to look up, to offer her that silent, knowing nod of shared loss. Instead, he adjusted his cap, his jaw tight enough to snap, and turned his head away. It was a subtle movement, a flick of the eyes that should have meant nothing, yet it felt like a door slamming shut in a dark hallway.
Doubt is a quiet predator. It doesn't roar; it whispers. Sarafina felt it now, a cold needle of suspicion stitching itself into her heart. Why wouldn't he look at her? Was it grief, or was it the kind of shame that only took root when a man was standing over a grave he helped dig?
The service ended with the mournful, lonely wail of the bagpipes. The "Sea of Blue" began to break apart, officers turning into individuals again, shaking off the rain and heading toward their squad cars. They spoke in hushed tones about shift changes and bars where they would go to toast a fallen legend.
Sarafina remained. She stood until the grass around her was empty, the flag clutched to her chest like a shield. The cemetery workers waited at a distance, their shovels ready to finish the job that a single bullet had started three nights ago.
The air changed. It didn't grow colder, but it grew denser, charged with a sudden, suffocating electricity that made the fine hairs on her arms stand up. Sarafina turned her head slowly, her eyes scanning the perimeter of the graveyard.
There, parked on the narrow access road beneath a weeping willow, sat a sleek, black sedan. It was an apex predator of a car, its windows tinted to a void-like darkness that reflected nothing but the gloom. No lights were on. No exhaust puffed from the tailpipe. It simply sat there, watching.
Sarafina's pulse hammered against her throat. She felt a gaze on her, heavy and deliberate, a physical pressure that felt like a hand ghosting over her skin. It wasn't the gaze of a mourner. It was the gaze of an owner.
She didn't know his name yet. She didn't know the shape of his face or the depth of the darkness he carried. But in that moment, as the rain turned to a steady downpour, she felt the first cord of an invisible tether snap tight between them. Joseph Mcwell was there, hidden behind the glass, observing the wreckage he had created.
He was forty-five years of calculated power, a man who moved the pieces of the city like a grandmaster on a blood-stained board. And she was the twenty-two-year-old girl holding a dead man's legacy in her trembling hands. To him, she was a tragedy in a black dress. To her, he was the shadow she would spend the rest of her life chasing into the light.
The car didn't speed away. It began to roll forward with a predatory grace, the tires crunching slowly over the gravel. As it passed the gates, Sarafina took a step toward it, her boots sinking into the soft, treacherous earth.
She expected the window to roll down. She expected a threat, or perhaps a mock-tribute. Instead, as the sedan glided past the iron pillars, a small, white square fluttered from the rear window, landing facedown in a puddle near the gate.
Sarafina dropped the flag onto her father's headstone, ignoring the sacrilege of the act. She ran to the gate, her lungs burning as she knelt in the mud.
She reached for the paper. It was heavy, expensive cardstock, the kind used by men who valued the permanence of ink over the fleeting nature of a phone call. The rain had not yet blurred the writing.
The handwriting was elegant, the slants sharp and lethal, as if the pen had been used as a scalpel. There was no greeting. There was only a single sentence that turned her blood to ice.
He died for a lie, Sarafina, but you don't have to live for one.
Below the words, a single letter was embossed into the paper, a mark of ownership that felt like a brand: M.
Sarafina looked up, but the black sedan was gone, swallowed by the gray throat of the city. She looked back at her father's grave, then at the letter in her hand. The "hero" she was burying suddenly felt like a stranger, and the monster who had sent the note felt like the only person in the world telling her the truth.
She tucked the paper into her coat, her fingers brushing the cold steel of the off-duty weapon holstered at
her hip. The funeral was over. The hunt had begun.