The Weight of Smoke

The precinct smelled like bleach and stale coffee, but smoke still clung to me. I scrubbed until my knuckles bled raw, but the stink lingered, soaked into skin like memory. Some things don’t wash out.

The interrogation room was colder than outside, buzzing light overhead flickering like a cheap motel sign. Rourke stood in the corner, arms crossed, jaw locked tight. Across the table sat a man with ash under his nails. Name: Daniel Hurst. Ex-firefighter. Suspended for theft, demoted for insubordination, finally disappeared three years ago. Now he sat calm, staring at me like the room belonged to him.

“Tell me again,” I said, voice flat, pen tapping against the metal. “Why you were at the scene.”

His lips curled, not quite a smile. “Same reason you were, Detective Ellison. The fire called me.”

Rourke shifted, the scrape of his boot loud in the silence. My pulse kicked once, hard.

I leaned in. “You had accelerant in your truck. Cans in the back seat. Matches in your pocket. You want to play prophet, fine but you’re a sloppy one.”

Hurst’s eyes lifted, gray as old cinder. “Funny. Sloppy’s the word I’d use for your old man. He never saw it coming.”

The pen stopped. My fist didn’t. Rourke’s hand caught my arm before the blow landed, grip iron. His voice cut low. “Not here, Mara.”

I yanked back, chest tight. Hurst hadn’t flinched. He just leaned into the chair, relaxed like he’d scored the point.

“You think this is about accelerant and matches?” he asked softly. “No. This is ritual. Cleansing. And you, Detective—you’re the spark.”

The words hung like smoke, clinging even after Rourke dragged me out.

Outside the glass, the captain’s glare could’ve stripped paint. “You’re compromised, Ellison. Too close.”

“I’m the only one close enough,” I shot back. My voice cracked, but I didn’t let it soften.

Rourke muttered something about suspension under his breath. I ignored it.

Because Hurst wasn’t the Ashmaker. He was a decoy. Someone planted, someone burned-out and broken enough to believe he mattered. And the real arsonist was laughing in the dark.

The apartment greeted me with silence sharp enough to cut. The city’s hum pressed at the windows, muffled by grime. I dropped my jacket, lit a cigarette I didn’t want, and let the smoke fill my lungs until it hurt.

Sarah’s photo sat on the table. Twelve years old. Smiling before the fire. Before her bones turned to shadow in my dreams.

I pressed my forehead to the glass frame. The tape’s voice whispered through me again. The wrong Ellison burned.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number. I answered.

Static. Then breath. Long. Slow. Male.

“You keep chasing smoke, Mara,” the voice rasped, familiar in a way that gnawed at the back of my skull. “You’ll choke on it.”

The line went dead.

I sat frozen, cigarette burning down between my fingers. The ember flared, then dropped into the ashtray, curling into nothing.

The knock at my door came minutes later. Sharp. Three strikes.

I pulled the gun from under the couch cushion, moved slow, breath steady. Opened the door on the chain.

No one. Just an envelope taped to the wood. Black tape, thick.

I took it inside, set it on the table. Hands shook when I opened it.

Inside photographs. Fresh.

Me, standing outside the burned house tonight. Me, inside the cordon, ash streaking my face. Me, climbing out of the basement hole with Rourke dragging me. Angles only someone inside the fire line could’ve taken.

The last photo was different.

Sarah’s grave. Fresh flowers on the dirt. A matchbox balanced against the headstone.

My chest locked.

I didn’t remember sitting down, but suddenly I was there, gun in one hand, photos in the other, breath coming too fast. The city outside kept humming, blind and deaf.

I looked at the final picture until my eyes burned. The matchbox brand was the same. Always the same. A laugh almost tore out of me, jagged and humorless.

The Ashmaker wasn’t leaving bread crumbs. He was carving a map. And every road ended with me.

Sleep didn’t come. When it did, it wasn’t sleep.

The dream brought fire. Always the fire. Flames licking the ceiling, smoke pressing low. My father’s voice yelling through the crackle, my mother’s scream tearing in half. Sarah’s hand reaching through the dark. Always reaching. Never reaching far enough.

I woke with the taste of smoke thick in my mouth.

The phone buzzed again. Another number I didn’t know.

“Mara.” This time it was Rourke. His voice was rough, hollow. “You need to get down here. Now.”

“Where?”

He gave the address. My stomach dropped.

The old rail station. Abandoned twenty years. Burned ten.

I didn’t ask questions. I grabbed the gun, the badge, the lighter I swore I’d quit using. Stepped into the night.

The station loomed against the skyline, ribs of black iron cutting into the sky. Windows shattered, walls scarred with soot. Rourke waited by the chain-link, face pale under the streetlight.

“What did you find?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Just opened the gate. His hands shook.

Inside, the air was cold, stale with old fire. Our footsteps echoed too loud. My beam cut across walls, catching graffiti, rat nests, and something worse.

A row of photographs. Taped across the wall.

My face. Over and over. From different nights, different cases. From childhood. From now. Even one of me sleeping on my couch, mouth open, hair tangled.

My knees went loose. “How the hell”

“Keep looking,” Rourke said.

The last photo was new. Taken tonight. Me, sitting at my table, staring at Sarah’s picture.

Which meant someone had been inside my apartment.

I swallowed bile. My hand closed tighter around the gun.

Then the sound came. A match strike.

Sharp. Soft.

The flame flickered alive at the far end of the hall.

A figure held it. Face lost in dark. Limp in his step.

The match burned out, but the image didn’t leave. It seared.

And the whisper came again, not from memory, not from tape. From the dark

itself.

“The wrong Ellison burned.”

The walls groaned. The air shifted. And I knew what was coming