Marked From The Shadows.

Conner

"You look like you haven't slept at all," Liam said as he stepped into my office, the door clicking shut behind him.

"Maybe that’s 'cause I fucking haven’t." I leaned back in my chair and scrubbed a hand down my face. My eyes burned, jaw tight from a night of grinding my teeth and replaying every second at Inferno. "I saw her last night. At the club."

Liam’s eyebrows shot up. "Who, your ghost girl?"

"Yeah."

"And?!" He flailed his arms like a deranged bird, nearly knocking over the stack of papers on the edge of my desk.

"And nothing." I exhaled hard, shoulders sagging. "She was there one second, gone the next. Like always."

"Jesus," he muttered, then snorted. "You need a fucking hobby, man. Or better yet, a woman. A real one. You haven’t had a girl in what, years?"

"Yeah, and the few I have been with somehow randomly disappear off the face of the earth," I said bitterly. I wasn't joking.

Liam grinned. "Maybe your little ghost’s been taking them out."

He meant it as a joke, he laughed, loud and stupid like always but I didn’t laugh back. I just stared.

His laughter cut off. "Wait. You don’t…you don’t actually think she’s doing that…do you?" He blinked at me like I’d grown horns. "Jesus fucking Christ, you do!"

"I’m not saying she definitely is," I muttered, swiveling in my chair to look out the window, but even that felt too exposed. I dropped the blinds. "But she’s everywhere, Liam. Eyes and ears in every corner. No one’s that consistent without surveillance. And the timing? The way these women vanish after one night like ghosts themselves? You tell me that’s just coincidence."

"You’ve officially lost your damn mind."

"Have I?" I gestured to the wall of monitors behind me, feeds from Inferno, from the warehouse, even the hallway outside this office. "Every time something happens, she’s already two steps ahead. Every time I think I’ve caught her, she’s already gone. And last night—she left me a fucking napkin, Liam. Lipstick. Her color. A message. Elegant. Intentional. She’s not just watching me. She’s playing with me."

Liam slowly turned his head, eyes flicking around the office. "You think she’s bugged this place too?" he whispered, suddenly subdued.

I didn’t answer immediately. Instead, I slowly stood and scanned the room, the corners, the bookshelf, the underside of my desk. A faint click of tension built in my spine.

"Maybe," I said finally. My voice was quiet. Controlled. "She’s smart. Obsessively careful. If I were her, I’d plant audio in here... hell, I’d have cameras in the damn vents."

Liam didn’t move.

"Relax," I said, grabbing my jacket from the back of the chair. "We’ll sweep it later. Right now we’ve got a bigger problem. The docks."

He was still frozen. "If she’s listening right now...what if she already knows we’re going?"

I paused at the door, my hand tightening around the knob.

"Then I hope she’s in the mood for blood," I muttered, voice like gravel. "Because so am I."

The engine rumbled beneath us as we cut through the city, the roads too empty for a Thursday night. No traffic. No cops. Just the soft hum of tires on asphalt and the occasional flicker of a broken streetlight. I kept one hand on the wheel, the other tapping out a restless rhythm on my thigh. Liam sat beside me, unusually quiet. He was scanning too, like he could feel it. Something wasn’t right.

“You notice anything off?” I asked without looking at him.

He grunted. “Besides the fact we haven’t passed a single patrol car in ten blocks?” He shifted in his seat, eyes narrowing out the passenger window. “Yeah. I don’t like it.”

“Me either,” I muttered. “You call ahead?”

“Talked to Marco an hour ago. Said the shipment was late. Claimed they’d be unloading by now, but he was cagey, too cagey. He didn’t know I already checked the manifests.”

I nodded, jaw tightening. “So Marco’s still our guy?”

“Unless someone higher up’s pulling strings. But yeah. I’d bet good money he’s been skimming. Smaller cuts. Repackaged goods. Moving them out the back under fake orders.”

I let out a low breath. “Tonight we bleed him dry. No more warnings. No more second chances. We make an example.”

Liam glanced at me, brow raised. “You sure you’re not just pissed about the girl?”

“Two birds, one bullet,” I said flatly.

We turned off the main road and headed toward the industrial part of the docks. The streetlights here were dim, flickering or completely out. A fog had rolled in, curling low across the ground like smoke. My instincts screamed.

I slowed the car. “Something’s not right.”

“Want to circle back?”

“No. Let’s finish this.”

We rolled up to warehouse 9. Supposedly abandoned. Supposedly where the shipment was being held.

As we stepped out of the car, the silence hit first, thick and suffocating. No gulls. No creaking of dock lines. No shouting from the crews. Just dead air.

Then came the click. Metal. Sharp. Deliberate.

“Fuck. DOWN!” I shouted, dragging Liam behind a stack of crates just as a shot rang out, splintering the wood inches from where his head had been.

“Ambush!” he yelled.

No shit. Three figures moved from the shadows, heavily armed, faces covered. Not dock workers. Not street-level rats. Professionals.

We were outnumbered and exposed. But we weren’t dead. Yet.

I pulled my piece and returned fire, just enough to keep them from advancing. Liam scrambled beside me, panting. “They were waiting for us!”

“Yeah. And they knew exactly where we’d enter.”

Which meant this wasn’t just Marco freelancing. Someone fed them our route. Our time. A sharp whistle cut through the chaos, high-pitched, unnatural. The lead shooter froze for a second. Just long enough. Crack. One clean shot tore through his skull and dropped him like a sack of bricks.

“Sniper!” Liam hissed, ducking even lower.

“No…” I said, heart suddenly thudding in a different way. “Not a sniper. Our sniper.”

Another shot. The second man dropped before he could even raise his weapon. I rose just enough to see it, perched high across the yard, hidden in the skeleton of a half-built tower crane, a black figure. Steady. Hooded. The faint gleam of a scope catching the moonlight for a blink before she moved again, fluid and vanishing. By the time the third man turned to run, the final shot took him through the thigh, dropping him screaming. Purposefully non-lethal. She wanted him to talk.

Liam was staring at the bodies. “What the fuck…”

“She was here before we even got in the car,” I muttered, holstering my weapon. “She knew.”

I stood and looked toward the crane. But the sniper was gone.

“She saved our asses,” Liam breathed. “Again.”

No answer from me. Just the cold burn of adrenaline and something else, something deeper. I reached into my coat and felt the folded napkin still tucked in my pocket. She never left anything to chance. She was always watching.