Nina stood in the alley where Captain Evelyn Cross's mutilated body had been found, the rain soaking through her coat, mingling with the metallic scent of fresh blood and rot.
Crime scene tape fluttered like a warning in the wind.
The body had already been taken to the morgue, but the scene still spoke.
Barbed wire lay coiled beside a pool of diluted crimson. Scratches on the brick wall told of a struggle. The words LIAR. KILLER. TRAITOR were etched into the soaked pavement in blood not painted, but scraped with fingernails until they bled raw.
He made her carve her own confession.
"Jesus…" one of the uniforms muttered nearby.
But Nina said nothing.
She crouched and touched the wire with gloved fingers. Blood still clung to the barbs. She felt it not just the violence, but the intention. It was too exact. Too personal.
"This isn't a spree," she whispered. "It's a ritual."
Back at the precinct, her walls were filling with profiles. Faces of the victims—all government. All dirty. All connected.
Each death was a message.
But who was it for?
She pinned up the latest crime scene photo, stepping back to study the growing constellation of bodies.
Then her eyes flicked to a face she hadn't yet pinned.
Dr. Reid.
She remembered the way he moved around the last corpse controlled, graceful, deliberate. The way his golden eyes didn't flinch at gore.
And he said something… odd. "You're chasing a ghost."
He knew too much.
Too calm. Too comfortable.
Nina's jaw clenched.
"Run it again," she told her assistant. "Background check on Reid. Every database."
Hours later, the report came back.
No file.
No history.
No fingerprints.
Nothing.
The name was a lie.
The man didn't exist.
Nina's heart pounded.
She looked again at the photos.
Golden eyes.
Dark hair.
A glimmer in the morgue light.
Her breath caught.
It's him.
The monster had walked beside her. Had spoken to her. Had watched her from behind the mask of a man who was never there.
And now, she was hunting not just a killer
but a ghost wrapped in flesh.
A ghost who knew her name.