The wind came off the lake sharp enough to taste the rust in it. South dock, just past the shipyards — another crime scene, another body in a city that never ran out of them.
Alice ducked under the yellow tape, coffee in one hand, badge in the other. The forensics team was already at work, their voices clipped and low. Cameras flashed, capturing the shape of a man sprawled face-down against the concrete barrier.
Rhodes met her halfway, his jacket collar pulled high. "Morning, Pierce."
"You call this morning?" she muttered, kneeling beside the body.
Male. Late forties. Dock worker, by the look of the calluses and the grease under his nails. His ID was missing. His face was—
She looked closer.
Two perfect bullet holes. One through each eye.
"Execution," she said. "Close range. Precise."
"Same as the Broker jobs?" Rhodes asked.
Alice shook her head. "Cleaner. No burn marks, no residue. Whoever did this knew their tools."
The forensics lead, a wiry woman named Choi, straightened up. "No wallet, no phone. Just this."
She handed Alice a strip of cloth — torn, wet, and faintly red with embroidery.
Alice frowned. The pattern was familiar. Not the Broker's mark, but something adjacent — a sigil she'd seen once before, long ago, in one of Marcus's old notebooks.
"Where'd you find this?"
"Inside his jacket lining," Choi said. "Sewn in like a tag."
Alice pocketed it before Rhodes could see. "Good work. Log everything else."
From across the street, through the glass of an abandoned office window, someone was watching.
The camera lens adjusted—a faint mechanical whisper. The figure behind it didn't move, didn't speak. Only watched.
Alice's reflection flickered in the zoom — tall, composed, all business. The watcher marked the time on a small notebook.
**09:42 A.M. — Subject arrived. No escort. Conducted on-site analysis. Possesses an item. Did not report it.**
The hand that wrote the words was steady, efficient. Gloved.
Below the note, a photograph of Alice — taken from her apartment balcony two nights ago. Her face lit by a lighter's flame, a photo burning in her hand.
The watcher's phone buzzed once.
A text: **"Update?"**
They typed back:
**"She's active. Curious, but contained."**
Another message arrived seconds later.
**"If she digs again, remind her who she is."**
The watcher looked out through the cracked glass, the wind cutting across the docks. Down below, Alice was talking to Rhodes — serious, methodical, that old Pierce focus in her eyes.
"Remind her who she is," the watcher murmured.
There was a hint of amusement in the voice.
"Let's see if she remembers."
"Pierce," Rhodes said beside her. "You alright?"
Alice blinked. "Yeah. Just thinking."
He frowned. "About what?"
She looked past him — past the tape, the river, the cranes rusting against the skyline.
"About how the past never stays buried in this city," she said. "No matter how many times you dig new graves."
Rhodes exhaled. "That's dark, even for you."
She almost smiled. "You haven't seen dark."
That night, someone slipped an envelope under her apartment door.
Inside was a note written in clean block letters:
**"You're looking in the wrong direction."**
And beneath it — a photograph of the dock worker, taken *before* he died.
---
The precinct smelled like coffee and rain-wet paper.
Alice leaned over her desk, reading the coroner's preliminary report.
Two rounds, both nine-millimetre, both clean entries.
No defensive wounds, no hesitation.
"Professional hit," she muttered.
Rhodes dropped a file beside her. "Dock security footage came in. Nothing but static from midnight to two."
"Of course it did."
She flipped through the photos — the body, the alley, the blood pattern running toward the drainage grate.
Something about the angle of the shots tugged at her memory. A pattern, a rhythm.
She shook it off.
Coincidences weren't evidence.
By noon, she was at the docks again, boots grinding against salt and gravel.
She walked the line of warehouses until she found the one marked **Blackwell Freight**.
Inside, the air smelled of iron and diesel. A foreman named Denny met her halfway down the corridor, cigarette dangling from his lips.
"Detective Pierce, right? I told the uniforms everything already."
"Humour me," she said. "You know the victim?"
"Name's Leon Jacobs. Been here fifteen years. Didn't talk much, didn't fight much. Just showed up, did his shifts."
"Any enemies?"
"Only the river," Denny said. "But that one always wins."
Alice let the silence stretch. "You ever see him with visitors? Strange deliveries?"
Denny hesitated. "A couple of nights back, he met with some guy in a black sedan. Out by the cranes. Didn't see the plates."
She nodded, taking notes. "You remember anything else? Logo, accent, anything?"
He frowned. "Yeah. The guy had a ring. Looked expensive. Had this mark on it — like a snake eating itself."
Alice's pen stopped moving.
"Snake eating its own tail?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah," Denny said. "Does that mean something?"
"Not yet," she lied.
Back at her car, Alice sat behind the wheel and stared at the strip of cloth she'd taken from Leon's jacket.
The embroidery matched the symbol Denny described—the ouroboros, the same one that had haunted the margins of Marcus's old ledgers.
Her phone buzzed. Rhodes again.
"Pierce, CSU found tyre tracks near the scene. European tread, high-end. You think our guy's corporate?"
Alice looked at the cloth, at the faint red stitching that glowed in the weak daylight.
"I think our guy's careful," she said. "And I think this isn't his first job."
She drove to the evidence locker that evening.
The air was stale, metallic. Rows of tagged bags lined the shelves like unmarked graves.
She checked Leon's case file out under routine procedure — barcode scan, signature, nothing unusual.
But instead of returning it to evidence, she slipped the strip of cloth into her own pocket.
The camera above her blinked once, its red light steady.
She didn't notice the faint click of a shutter somewhere far down the hall.
Later, in her apartment, Alice pinned the cloth beside the others — Jonas's charm, the pendant from Pier 21.
Three symbols, three bodies.
Different crimes, same echo.
She stepped back, looking at the board.
It wasn't enough for a theory, not yet. But the lines were starting to form.
She poured herself a drink, stared out the window at the city lights, and whispered to no one,
"Alright, Dad. What the hell were you into?"