All Chapters of The Full Moon Verdict: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Ethan was already moving before the rotor wash had faded into the night.He tore back down the stairwell two steps at a time, heart hammering hard enough to shake the breath out of him. The door to the apartment banged open under his hand, and he was swallowed by the wreckage.The place looked like a war zone. Glass glittered under the moonlight spilling through the ruined window. Bullet holes pocked the walls like fresh scars. The air stank of cordite and bloodless violence.The three men were gone — even the one he’d dropped. No bodies. No weapons. Nothing left behind but the echo of gunfire and the stink of adrenaline. He crouched, scanning. That was when he saw it: a faint smear of blood by the window frame, already drying, and the shallow print of a boot dragged through it. Proof they hadn’t disappeared — they’d been lifted. Extracted fast. Surgical.Her phone. He needed to see her phone.He tore through the wreckage with his gaze, praying she’d had it on her when they took her.

The door groaned open again, its hinges sighing like a warning. Calder stepped in, the same cultivated ease written into every line of him. Thin, pale, tall — the aristocratic silhouette sharpened by the faint scar on his forehead and the shoulder-length hair slicked back to look deliberate rather than disheveled. He carried no tray this time. That followed behind him in the hands of another man, who set the meal neatly on the nightstand before retreating without a word. Calder’s eyes swept the room before settling on her. The untouched plate from earlier sat exactly where it had been left. His lips curved faintly, feigning concern. “You haven’t eaten,” he observed, his tone laced with the softness of someone remarking on the weather. “Is it distaste? Suspicion? Or have we offended your palate?” Anna didn’t move, her chin tilted in quiet defiance. He sighed, long-suffering. “I assure you, there’s nothing… untoward. This isn’t a prison, Anna. Think of it instead as a… vacation o

Chapter Thirty-SixThe Hill of ShadowsThe sedan tore through the sleeping city like it was on rails, headlights carving two pale scars across the night. Neon bled behind them in fractured streaks, signs and traffic lights collapsing into a smear of color that couldn’t keep up with their speed. The skyline broke apart, thinning, until even the towers seemed to shrink in the rearview.Ethan leaned forward in the back seat, elbows braced on his knees, the glow of his phone reflecting hard angles into his face. On the screen, a single green dot pulsed across the grid of streets and alleys. Every blink was her. Every blink was his tether.“Faster,” he said.The driver jerked the wheel, swerving around a lumbering truck. Tires screamed across wet asphalt, the chassis rocking hard as they narrowly missed a taxi.“We’ll lose traction—”“Then don’t lose her.”The words weren’t shouted, but they carried more weight than any threat could. The driver’s jaw tightened. His foot pressed the accelera

He needed two things he didn’t yet have: the interior skeleton and the rotation clock. He could steal both if he accepted he wouldn’t touch the hatch tonight.He stayed long enough to watch the drone cycle twice more and catch the overlap when the eastern camera’s slow pan met the western’s fast snap and left a five-second blind in the center. He slipped a gloved hand into the pocket where his chalk lived and marked his thumbnail with a pale line. Ritual. In thirty hours, he would look at that mark and know how much grit the night had given him.He ghosted down the slope, every step in the path his steps had cut coming up. At the base, the driver was a shadow against scrub.Ethan handed him the sealed envelopes. “Drina Gold. Konserva. Nomex tear with flare residue.”The driver turned the baggies in his hand, not understanding what they meant the way Ethan did.“You know them?” he said at last.Ethan’s mouth flattened. “Krstić. Or men trained by men who trained him.”He looked back up

The van squatted in the dirt like it had been abandoned years ago, paint sun-bleached, ladders lashed crooked to the rack. A cover story no one asked questions about. Ethan adjusted his cap, tilted low, and studied the hill through windshield glare. From here it looked like nothing—a knuckle of dirt with no reason to exist. That was the point.He checked his watch. Ten minutes until the drone made its western arc. Five seconds of blindness, if the pattern held. Five seconds to cross open ground that didn’t forgive mistakes.“Let’s move,” he said.They carried their gear like contractors too tired to care—bucket, roll of canvas, aluminum ladder with its rungs scarred from deliberate abuse. From a distance they were two men with a job they hated. Up close, their eyes gave them away.The hill grew larger, more angular, as they closed. Scrub whispered against their legs. Wind dragged grit across their boots. By the time they reached the base, Ethan could taste metal on the air—ventilation