Detective Cade Mercer leaned over his cluttered desk, eyes fixed on the corkboard pinned with photographs, maps, and handwritten notes. The fluorescent light above flickered, humming faintly in the silence of the late hour.
Six deaths. Six different locations. No clear forensic links. On paper, each case was unrelated — a heart attack here, an overdose there, an apparent suicide in between. But Cade felt it in his gut: this was no coincidence.
He traced the red string between two crime scene photos. Both victims were men in positions of power, both with quiet whispers in the background about corruption and cruelty. He tapped his pen against the desk, staring at the grainy security footage from outside an art warehouse two nights ago.
A shadow — small, slender, deliberate — moved across
