Trace Evidence Book Novels & Stories

To avoid being the topic of gossip, I could only use disposable items every time I went to my girlfriend, Erica Livingston's, house. She made me use disposable slippers in her house, and disposable utensils when we had our meals. Even when I stayed the night, she prepared disposable sheets for me. "If someone saw any of your things at my house, I wouldn't know how to explain it," she would tell me every time. "I'll get you everything you deserve once we go public." I waited three years for that to happen, and I had to enter her house every time as if I was a guest. This continued until one day, when she held a birthday party for her assistant, Ryan Strobe, at her house. When I opened the

It was an uncomfortable sensation. Unable to resist, Heloise shifted her gaze from the book. Just as she was about to look up, a transparent green jar was placed on her book. The jar was full of peppermints. A hand with well-defined joints rested on top of the jar, the nails trimmed short and clean. "For you." A low, magnetic voice descended from above her head. On her textbook for "Criminalistics," there was now a jar of colorful macarons. In the next moment, her textbook on "THE PHOENIXFELL EMPIRE Legal History" had another jar... of diamonds.

Skylo said, his voice sinister but, I knew Old marcello wasn't. He had no idea about my possession of the red ledger and definitely had no business taking Tracey. Someone else was behind all of this but, I still couldn't figure who. I frowned, the thought of being on the losing end was making me feel weak and I hated the feeling “Let's go... there's no time” I said to him and he nodded swiftly. We left 12B as quietly as we entered, the Polaroid squeezed into my pocket. I couldn't afford to let go of the only clue I have of Tracey.

But he was already being pulled away, his mouth still forming words she couldn't hear, his final, desperate look burning into her soul. The scene bled and dissolved. She was in her father's silent study. Her hands, shaking, pulled the heavy, leather-bound volume from the shelf. The Foundations of Justice: Great Trials of the 20th Century. She saw a silver letter opener from his desk, its edge glinting. The dream slowed, focusing on the careful slice into the thick spine, the peeling back of the aged leather. Tucked deep inside, wrapped in a small piece of foil, was a tiny SIM card.

However, he refused to think that he might be wrong and hollered at me, "Cheryl! What tricks are you up to this time? You can't fake evidence. The brooch was found in your belongings. That's concrete proof in itself!" "Concrete proof?" I scoffed coldly and slammed the brooch on the table with a loud, clear bang. "Mr. Curran, would you like to tell them that the real 'Heart of the Sea' has a unique serial number laser-engraved into the inside folds of the clasp in the back? "And would you also like to tell them that the real brooch has a tiny microchip embedded in the facets of the gemstone that can only be seen if magnified by 20 times?"

Cameron had arranged the room through two intermediaries to prevent exactly this kind of exposure, but the trace had to have started somewhere — a booking, a conversation, a record that had been found by someone who was looking for it. The trace went back to Cara Ellison. Tobias laid it out at the table after the other returners had left — most of them departing quickly once the device was found, the instinct toward dispersal stronger than the instinct to stay and understand. He laid it out for Nyla and Cameron and Sophia, who had stayed.

I had searched the obvious places, not the hidden ones. Kaelum moved inside me, alert and quiet. This room smelled old, but under the dust, there were faint traces of Kathy. Not enough to follow, but enough to make my chest tight. I ran my fingers along the shelf edges. Some books had not moved in years. Others had been touched more recently. I stopped at a row of old legal records. One book sat slightly forward compared to the rest. I pulled the book out. Nothing happened. I checked the space behind it and found a small metal catch fixed inside the wood. My fingers paused on it for a second before I pressed it.

She set the case on the floor and opened it. Inside were two measuring stones, a small notebook, a pen, and a thin glass vial containing a pale silver liquid Kael did not recognize. "What is that?" he asked, pointing at the vial. "Resonance trace compound," she said. "It reacts to probability fluctuations. If your luck field is active, it will change color." Kael looked at it. "You… made that?" "I adapted the formula from a secondary archive text," she said. "It took most of yesterday evening."

"Tomorrow, answer only what you know. Don't guess at anything. Don't fill a gap for them." Something pulled at the side of his mouth, close enough to a smile that it counted. "I wouldn't know how." Callum and Drake had the evidence room open when I came up. One long table down the middle, every item out on it, bagged and labeled in Callum's hand. Cloth off the branch in the eastern woodland. The thread from under Cora Maren's fingernail. A strip of green wool off Doctor Marlow's window frame. The clinic records. The mug. The timings.

There's always a paper trail. The hallway sits empty, lantern light flickering shadows across stone. I move silent on the old wood floor, trained to leave no trace of having been there at all. The records room door gives without resistance. Unlocked. That should stop me from getting a cold. It doesn't. I tear through the shelves, scanning dates and signatures. Twenty minutes in, I find it a requisition form buried under older paperwork, dated the same week as the second attack. Scent-masking herbs, the expensive kind, the kind only an elder could authorize.