The private investigator's office was in a part of the city Marcus had never visited—a narrow building wedged between a laundromat and a pawn shop, its windows grimy, its doorbell broken. He stood on the cracked sidewalk in his thousand-dollar suit, feeling like an alien who had crash-landed in the wrong world.
The door swung open before he could knock.
The woman on the other side was not what he expected. She was in her late forties, with sharp brown eyes, graying hair pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail, and the kind of posture that suggested she'd spent years learning to take up space. She wore a leather jacket over a faded band t-shirt, and her expression was one of professional skepticism.
"You're Marcus Vance," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"Figured you'd show up even
