Few hours later
He arrived back at the cavern after Ninja Fox left him abruptly.
The cavern folded around him like a kept secret. Brendon slid into the corner behind the grocery crates the way a tired animal finds the one patch of floor that remembers its weight. The light here was a soft bruise — half-lamp, half-vent — and it made the dust hang like old snow. He let his jacket go slack and felt the ache in his ribs as if a small machine had been left running in his chest all night. The city had put a price on his curiosity; he'd paid it with blood and with the little things that make a person safe in their own skin.
He tasted the brand on his tongue, a copper aftertaste that kept coming back like memory. The satchel at his feet lay heavy with evidence and with new problems: the photos, the invoices, the wooden tubes that now felt like accusation. He had wanted answers and instead had been offered evidences other people's sins. Drago's betrayal had turned the night into a kind of loose calculus where the variables were men with teeth and the constants were pain and smoke.
He rolled onto his back and watched the vents. Sound came distant — cardsharps arguing, shoes shuffled over old concrete — small human noises that suggested the world would continue no matter what he decided. Brendon let his mind rewind the operation as if winding a broken music box: the north alley's blind spot, Camelia's hiss in his ear, the way Ninja Fox moved like a thing bred for narrow spaces. The plan had been elegant; the execution had been messy. And at the end of it, they had Drago's smile and a roomful of men and the knowledge that someone with deep pockets paid hands to watch the city's lower organs be cut open.
He felt miserably small.
The truth he kept folding and shoving into the corners of his mind kept pushing back. Ninja Fox had been right — she knew this town in a way he never allowed himself to learn. She had worked the gutters and the meridians between light and shadow; she had placed evidence where it would be found by the right kind of eyes, and she had left when things heated up. That was strategy. That was cruelty, too, and possibly salvation. Could he trust a thief who had terrorized London eight years ago? Could he trust someone who wore a face mask and handed out salvation with the same hand that could slice a throat?
He pictured her under the porthole lamps in Drago's bunker, smaller than rumour suggested, calculating like a player who never shows her queen until the pieces are developed. He tasted the words he'd told himself in the beginning — cautious man, cautious heart — and then the ghost of a taunt: Is this what the racists think? No. No. No. He shook his head against it like a man flinging rain from his skin. He would not let his doubts fall into easy prejudice. She was fox and thief and possible ally. That did not tell him whether she would save the city or burn it to save herself.
For now, he needed a diversion that was not the thump of his own pulse or the weight of bone and paper in the satchel. He fumbled a burner phone from the bottom of his pack, the plastic warmed by his hand. The number in his head belonged to the one person in the force who had, inexplicably, chosen to trust him enough to feed him truth: Sofie.
He dialled and let the ring crawl into the cavern's hush.
Ring... ring... ring...
The phone felt small and ordinary — a liar's instrument made honest by the right voice on the other end.
Eventually the click came and Sofie answered with a single, guarded syllable. "Who is it?"
"It's me," he said.
Her voice folded around the words, smaller than he remembered. "You okay? You sound—"
"Battered? I am pretty much." he answered before the lie could form. He wanted to be honest with her in a way he hadn't been with anyone. "We got out with the stuff."
There was a pause long enough for him to hear the faint shuffle of papers and the distant hum of the precinct. Sofie's tone went flat then, a professional pivot. "I saw the feeds. You're lucky. The street was full of shitshow tonight."
He closed his eyes and let the cavern breathe in and out. The satchel thudded gently as he shifted. "What about Whitney's murder case?" he asked. The name was a small gravity; everything in him pulled toward it. Whitney Johnson had been more than a case file. She had been a light someone had tried to snuff.
Sofie's breath broke like a distant engine. "Whitney's case has gone cold, Brend. The heat from your other scandal — the one that blew up the market — pulled the cameras and the headlines. Editors are like animals; they want blood that bleeds visibly. The department shifted resources to the market sweep. You know how it is: a big show draws small fires into it. The Whitney file got smothered under the press. People has moved on."
He tasted the words, bitter and metallic. "So that's it? She's gone? We don't even—"
"No." Sofie interjected quickly. "It's not gone. It's... just in a halt for now. We have evidence, bits and threads, but without a clean trail it's hard to go on public. And with the mayor's men breathing hard, Chief isn't moving the case forward. You know how politics is. The lead that landed Robert's scoop? It put a spotlight somewhere else, and Whitney's shadow got stepped on."
Brendon felt that old scab picking at itself. He had been chased by the same badge and uniform he'd once pinned on: they had turned on him when his name became an inconvenient thermometer. He remembered the time the department had closed in like a net — the calls, the warrants, the feeling of being hunted by the law he started to trust. That memory had teeth still. He thought of being a sheriff, of being the kind of man who gave names to the law, and how quickly status turned into a target when the wrong ledger was opened.
"Was there any movement on the cartel link?" he asked. He kept his voice low, a man speaking to a map so the guards did not hear.
Sofie's answer was small and sharp. "There are rumours — shipments tied to shell companies, transferred through a mill in the south docks. Nothing Caroline-grade, but something enough to make the mayor's men nervous. If you kept the evidence, Brend, it's meaningful. Problem is, the press has an attention span like a mouthful of sugar; they chewed that scandal, then spat it out. Whitney got folded into the margins."
He inhaled. The wooden tubes in the satchel seemed heavier, as though they listened. "I got the tubes I talked about previously." he said. "And photos. Invoices with the brand."
Sofie's silence was a small thing that carried weight. "If you've got that, keep it secure. Don't go to the precinct. Don't try to make a scene. I can pass a few things into a file, but I can't do much without paper that will hold up to a lawyer's smell test. And Brend—" Her voice softened in a way it rarely did. "You owe me the caution you haven't paid yet. The Chief's watching everything over this town."
He could hear her worry, like a thread pulled taught. "I know," he said. "I didn't mean to tangle everything."
"You did," she said, softly. "And you did good. But you're not a lone wolf on a ladder. You need people. People you can rely on." The wording was faintly scolding, an old teacher's reprimand disguised as care.
He laughed, a small sound that tasted of rust. "I know. I just don't know who to trust anymore. Except you for sure."
Sofie's answer came low, practical. "Then start with the list you have. Camelia. The fox — but be careful where you call her by name." Her voice cracked at the last, a very human fear. "And Brendon — get patched up. You sound like you were wrapped in rope and left to cool."
He felt the truth of that as if she'd read his bones. He fumbled a hand to his side, touch finding the fresh sore where a blow had been; the memory of pain rose up and made him breathe shallow.
"I will," he said. "I'll lay low for a day. Recheck the files. See if the prints can be cleaned and the timestamps verified."
"Good," she said. "I'll keep an eye on the precinct chatter. Don't do anything stupid for God's sake. Please."
The line went quiet as Sofie ended the call. Brendon let the phone slip from his fingers. The burner sat there, a small useless thing now. He stared at the vents and thought of faces — Camelia's haunted hesitation, Ninja Fox's calm hunger for results, Drago's liquid smile, and Whitney's photographs spread on the wet concrete of the plant like prayers.
He had the tubes, the photos, the invoices. He had the taste of betrayal and the knowledge that the mayor now had cause to squeeze. He had a name rattling in the back of his skull — The Crooked Man — and a heat behind his eyes that was not all anger. He'd been a thief, a prisoner, a sheriff. Now he felt like something in between; a scrap of mythiven blood, a wolf with an ember no one had asked him to carry.
He slid his hand into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette, the paper crinkling like a tiny confession. He didn't light it yet. Instead he lay back and watched the cavern's vents, waiting for whatever small mercy would come next: a call, a clue, or a knock that would make the city remember him again.