"Fiery. I like that. But I think you’ll want to hear this. You see, I was looking into Bryan’s disappearance. It’s funny how the cameras in your morgue went dark last night, Madeline. Andeven funnier that I found a silver cross in the drainage grate outside the service exit this morning."
Sterling leans forward, the light from the café window reflecting off his cold eyes. He reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out a small, transparent evidence bag. Inside, the silver cross glints.
"I ran a rush panel on the biological traces found on this," Sterling says, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
"I expected a match for our shadow, the man you've been 'hosting,' Dr. Emerson. But the results were... unexpected."
He slides a printed lab report across the sticky table. My eyes blur as I try to make sense of the markers, but Sterling doesn't let me struggle for long.
"The DNA isn't a match for the man I was looking for. But it is a familial match. Specifically, a parental one."
He turns his gaze directly to me, his smile sharpening into something cruel.
"It belongs to a man who hasn't officially existed for a long time. A man named Charles."
The name hits me like a gun shot. Charles.
Memories I’ve buried under layers of armor start to fracture. A tall silhouette in a doorway. The smell of expensive tobacco and old paper.
A man who tucked me in once and then vanished into the night before I was old enough to even form a full sentence about him. My mother never spoke his name. To her, he was a ghost; to me, he was just a hole in my life.
"No," I snap, my voice cracking with a fierce denial.
"You’re lying. He’s been gone for years. You’re just trying to rattle us."
"Am I?"
Sterling tilts his head.
"Because the lab didn't just find his DNA. They compared it to the mandatory blood sample you gave for your license last year, Lucy. It’s a ninety-nine percent match. Charles Vane is your father. And apparently, he’s back in town."
I feel the air leave the booth. I look at Madeline, expecting her to back me up, to tell this cop he’s insane. But she isn't looking at me.
Madeline is staring at the silver cross as if it’s a ticking bomb. Her face has gone from pale to a sickly, translucent white. Her mouth is slightly open, her breath coming in short hitches.
I grab Madeline’s arm, my grip tight enough to bruise.
"Mali? Tell him he's wrong. Tell him this is some sick police tactic."
Madeline doesn't answer. She looks at me, and for the first time in our entire lives, she looks at me with a flicker of pure, unadulterated horror. She isn't seeing her best friend anymore. She’s looking at me like I’m someone else. A stranger. And I can’t figure out why?
"Lucy..." she whispers, her voice barely audible over the clatter of coffee cups.
"Oh god, Lucy."
I watch the color drain from Madeline’s face, leaving her looking more like the corpses she examines than a living woman. Her eyes are wide, fixed on the silver cross in Sterling’s hand, but I can tell she’s seeing something else entirely, some nightmare I haven't been invited into yet.
Sterling stands over us, his presence a suffocating weight. He looks like a man who just placed the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle and is enjoying the picture of the carnage it creates.
"Detective," I snap, my voice trembling with a mix of fury and genuine fear. I don't care about the badge; I care about the fact that my best friend looks like she’s having a stroke.
"Give us a minute. Look at her. You've made your point, now back the hell off before I call your sergeant."
Sterling gives a thin, oily smile. He knows he’s won this round.
"I'll be in the car, Dr. Emerson. Don't take too long. Silence is just another word for complicity."
He turns and walks toward the exit, the bell above the door chiming with a cheerful sound that feels like a mockery.
