The warehouse was the kind of place that made you feel like you were walking into someone else’s bad dream. Steel ribs overhead, concrete underfoot, and the smell of diesel, smoke, and damp cardboard. Fluorescent lights flickered like they were waiting for a cue in a ghost story, and rats with doctorate-level survival skill watched from the rafters, smug as sin.
The air was still hot from the fire—what was left of it. You didn’t need to be a genius to know it had burned fast and dirty. Someone had wanted it to look like chaos, but chaos didn’t stack crates this neatly before settingbthem on fire.. This was a message sent to Elky Jennings. And it spelled my name in black soot.
We entered through the side door, the one with the dented loading ramp and a rust stain shaped like a man trying to crawl out. Elky walked ahead, stiff-backed, quiet, a storm wearing a suit. He didn’t say a word. Neither did his men. They stood in a semicircle around the wreckage like it was holy. They all had th
