All Chapters of The Full Moon Verdict: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Night had teeth. The van hunkered in the torn seam of scrub, ladders lashed like an alibi someone had believed for too long. Wind combed grit across the windshield. In the cab’s dim light, Ethan checked his watch—second hand poised like a trigger—then cracked the door and let the cold swallow him.The hill waited, a darker shape against a dark sky. The drone’s whine carved circles overhead, metronomic, patient. He moved on the seam they’d measured: out of the camera’s sagging arc, under the drone’s five-second drift, across dead ground that punished hesitation. Kyle followed, drop cloth folded over one arm like a tradesman too tired to care who watched.At the grate: ritual. Canvas draped to make a shadowed tent. Talc whispered over Ethan’s fingers. The flat bar slid under the lip; the bolts complained, then surrendered with a soft metal sigh. Cold, used air breathed up his wrists—oil, disinfectant, human hurry. The coil camera nosed into the shaft. Galvanized ribs, left-hand bend, a

The road out of the hills stretched long and dark, the van eating miles like it was being chased by something too close to name. The city had already disappeared behind them, a smear of lights drowned by distance. Out here, there were no towers, no polished glass, no clean sidewalks. Just low roofs, rusted signs, truck stops, and motels whose paint had surrendered years ago.Ethan sat forward in the passenger seat, cap pulled low. He had been silent since they’d left the plateau. His jaw worked every now and then, as if clenching was the only thing that kept words locked inside. His phone, dead to the signal, rested useless in his lap.“The apartment’s gone,” he said at last, his voice low, clipped. “They’ll sweep it before sunrise. Anything left there is burned.”Kyle gave a short nod, eyes locked on the road. “So where?”“Not a hotel,” Ethan said. “Too clean. Too many cameras. Too many questions at the desk. A motel. Ground floor. Doors on the outside. Easy exit.”Anna shifted in th

Kyle had the lights up too bright.Motel fluorescents flattened everything into sick color—the sheeted bed, the tired curtains, the guard cuffed to the frame with a strip of ladder-chain and two zip ties for insurance. A cheap clock on the nightstand bled 12:27 A.M. in red. Four hours since they’d checked in.Kyle stood when Ethan stepped in. No salute, no “boss,” just the quick tuck of a notebook into the back pocket and a look that said: I kept it clean.“He’s been up an hour,” Kyle murmured. “Didn’t need pressure. He talked.”Ethan shut the door, clicked the latch, and let the room settle around him. Through the thin wall came the soft, warning huff of one of the Dobermans rolling in its sleep. Anna’s room.His pulse eased one notch. Then he made it stop easing.“Report,” he said.Kyle hooked a thumb at the man on the bed. Mid-thirties, wiry, the kind of strength built from lifting boxes, not barbells. A bruise blossomed at his temple. Fear rode just under his skin like a fever.“S

Anna stayed in his arms, her head resting against his chest. His heartbeat was steady, solid, the only anchor she trusted in a world that had nearly broken her apart. His chin dipped, his breath stirring against her hair, and for a long, suspended moment neither of them moved.When she finally lifted her face, his gaze was already on her—intense, unflinching, as though he were memorizing her all over again. Ethan reached up, caught a loose tendril that had fallen across her cheek, and brushed it back with a touch that felt far too careful for a man who’d lived most of his life in violence. Her arms tightened around his wiry frame, holding him as if she could fuse herself to the strength in him, as if letting go would return her to the nightmare.They were lovers in truth now. The kiss that had sealed them still burned between them, but here, in the aftermath, the silence carried its own heat. His thumb traced the line of her jaw. Her eyes softened under the weight of his stare, and fo

The holding room smelled of disinfectant and old metal—an antiseptic smell that tried to pretend the place was clean. It could not hide the cold. The concrete under Calder’s palms was a slab that had never known sunlight; the air carried a humidity that turned to ice against his teeth. Fluorescent tubes hummed in the ceiling like insects trapped in glass. The day outside the walls might have had wind and birds, but here time moved in the rhythm of locks: click, clack, the slow, official heartbeat of the facility.They had brought him in the dark, hands bagged, collar chafed; the precinct had been efficient and hoarse with its own adrenaline. Now the restraints were off—taken away with the perfunctory courtesy reserved for men whose usefulness had just become inconvenience. They had given him a chair bolted to the floor and a phone on a metal hook fixed to the wall, a prison-issued handset with a replaceable cord. It was the sort of phone that seemed to belong to a previous, sterner ce