The light in Mr. Crane's office was a thin, clinical thing — morning sun filtered through blinds, slicing the room into neat bars. Elias stepped inside without being asked; Crane was already at his desk, idly arranging a line of silver cufflinks like they were chess pieces.
Crane looked up, amusement creasing the edges of his mouth. "You look… different today." He tapped his fingers against the desk. "Glowing, almost. What did you do, save a kitten?"
Elias said nothing. The smile on Crane's face didn't reach his eyes.
"Sit," Crane said. He pushed a slim folder across the lacquered surface. The leather rasped quietly. "New job. A woman this time." He watched Elias read with the detached curiosity of a man reading the weather.
Elias's jaw moved once. The file clicked shut. "Name."
"Lamina Antonio. Doctor — oncology, by her credentials. Barcelona. Lives and works in Gràcia. Respected in the papers, charitable at the gala dinners." Crane's tone sharpened. "But she's been trafficking — high-grade pharmaceuticals. We found her ledger. She's stolen product that belongs to us. She's been selling a portion back into markets we control. That's theft." He folded his hands. "You have ten days."
Crane tapped the calendar on his desk. The dates were underlined in red, almost theatrical in their certainty: 10 August 2023 — 20 August 2023.
"You leave on the tenth," he said. "Deal with her. Quietly." He smiled, but the smile was a blade. "We don't need another show."
Elias felt the room tighten around him, measured and cool. He asked the questions he always did — the who, the how, the likely witnesses — and Crane answered with the kind of specificity that made planning an execution feel like drawing a map.
"Why her?" Elias asked finally.
Crane shrugged. "Small-time politics get expensive. She moved product that had our mark on it. Some of it was supposed to be diverted elsewhere — to clients who pay for discretion. She sold it. She's messy. She needs to be tidy."
"Ten days is short." Elias's voice was even.
"It's perfect," Crane said. "Short means mistakes, and mistakes make people predictable. You know what to look for."
He slid a boarding pass, an alias passport, and a small envelope of cash across the desk. The passport bore a name Elias had used before; the face in the photograph was unremarkable, the kind of face that blurred into crowds.
Crane added one more thing, almost as an afterthought. "She knows medicine. She's careful. Don't let pity make you clumsy."
Elias closed the folder with a quiet snap and stood. The city beyond Crane's penthouse pressed at the windows with its usual hunger — honking, distant sirens, the steady pulse of lives that were easy to extinguish and harder to forget.
Crane stood as well and held out his hand. "Bring me a clean ledger," he said. "Bring me a tidy ledger and a story that doesn't make headlines."
Elias took the offered hand, an exchange of formality and contract. He turned once toward the windows, saw his reflection stretched long across the glass, and then walked out.
Back in the small apartment he used more for sleeping than living, Elias moved with the practiced calm of someone packing for war. He folded clothes into a worn carry-on, checked the hidden compartment in the lining where he kept the tools he'd never show anyone, and set the passport into the inner pocket of his jacket.
Before leaving he opened the notebook — the same black book where he logged the names and the reasons — and wrote, beneath the single line where Lamina Antonio's name sat now:
Barcelona — doctor. Stole ours. Ten days.
He paused for a breath that did not become a prayer, then zipped the bag closed.
Outside, the city smelled like rain and something older, the pall of small regrets and larger crimes. Elias stepped into that scent and moved toward the train that would carry him to an airport, toward a country that did not yet know his name.
The precinct was half-asleep — early morning light spilling through blinds, dust floating like tired ghosts. Detective Marin Cross sat at her desk, staring at her computer screen but not really seeing it. Her mind kept drifting back to last night — Ethan's words, his warmth, and the ache that followed her even into her dreams.
Her phone buzzed.
An international number. Spain.
Marin frowned and picked up.
"Detective Cross, Homicide Division."
A woman's voice — shaking, accented but clear — came through the line.
"Detective… please, you don't know me. My name is Dr. Lamina Antonio. I—I'm calling from Barcelona."
Marin straightened, her pulse quickening. "How did you get this number?"
"I found your name in an old article about The Interrogator. You've been chasing him."
Marin's pen froze above her notepad. "You know about him?"
"He's coming for me."
Silence. Marin felt the words like a cold knife against her spine.
"What did you say?"
"He's coming here. To kill me. I don't know why, but I know it's him. He called me. He asked… two questions already."
Marin's heart hammered. "Two?"
"Yes." Lamina's voice cracked. "He said there would be three."
Then, static — the line faltered, a rush of noise, a quick intake of breath.
"Detective, please—"
The call cut off.
Marin stared at the phone, frozen. For a heartbeat, she couldn't move. Then she grabbed her coat and the case file from her drawer and sprinted toward Captain Lorne's office.
Lorne looked up as the door burst open. "Marin—"
"Captain, I found him!" she blurted out. "I just got a call — a woman in Barcelona. He's going there to kill her. I can finally stop him."
Lorne's expression shifted from irritation to concern. "Slow down. What are you talking about?"
Marin shoved the notes onto his desk. "Lamina Antonio. A doctor. She said he's already contacted her — twice. He's following the same pattern. Three questions, Lorne. He's still playing the same game."
The Captain leaned back, sighing heavily. "Cross… this sounds like another wild lead. We can't authorize an international pursuit based on a panicked phone call from Spain."
"You don't get it!" Marin's voice broke. "He's real. He killed my father. And now he's about to kill again. I can't just sit here."
Lorne rubbed his face, the weight of years in the gesture. "Marin, you've been chasing this ghost since you joined the force. Every lead ends the same way — nothing. You're running yourself into the ground."
She stepped closer, eyes wet but steady.
"Then let me fall, Captain. But at least let me fall forward."
For a long moment, the only sound was the rain starting up again outside — steady, insistent, like the ticking of a clock that refused to stop.
Finally, Lorne sighed. "You'll have to make it unofficial. I can't give you travel clearance. But I won't stop you either."
Marin nodded once — a spark of something fierce and alive in her eyes. "That's all I need."
As she turned to leave, Lorne's voice followed her, low and tired.
"Cross… when you find him — if you find him — don't forget what happens when you stare too long into someone else's darkness."
She paused in the doorway, her hand on the frame.
"I already did, Captain. Now I just want to see who's staring back."
By the time Marin reached her apartment, the decision was already made. She packed lightly — a few clothes, her badge, her gun, and the worn photograph of her father smiling in uniform.
She looked at the picture one last time.
"I'm coming, Dad. This ends in Spain."
Outside, dawn broke across the city, pale and uncertain. Marin Cross stepped into it, carrying her ghosts across the ocean — toward Barcelona, and toward the man who'd taken everything from her.
The private clinic on the outskirts of Barcelona didn't look like much — pale walls, quiet corridors, a perfect front for something less clean.
Behind a locked door marked Research Storage, Dr. Lamina Antonio leaned over a table, her white coat unbuttoned, a cigarette burning low between her fingers. Around her stood four men in dark suits — not patients, not doctors, but the kind of men who kept empires standing in the shadows.
"The plan is simple," Lamina said, her voice calm, precise — the same tone she used when explaining surgical risks. "The Interrogator is coming for me. Crane sent him. We'll use that."
One of the men — stocky, scarred — frowned. "Use him how, doctora?"
She flicked ash into a tray shaped like a human heart. "We let him come. And we let the policewoman follow."
The men exchanged uneasy glances.
"Detective Marin Cross," Lamina continued, pulling up a picture on her tablet — a photo clipped from an old article. "She's been hunting him for years. And now she's coming here because I asked her to."
"Trap them both?"
She nodded. "Yes. Once the Interrogator is dead, Crane's iron grip weakens. He loses his most loyal weapon. The detective dies too — no witnesses, no trail. We erase both and rise while Crane bleeds in confusion."
Her tone stayed clinical, detached, but her eyes burned with something harder than ambition.
"I wouldn't have gone down this road," she said quietly, almost to herself. "But someone—" she stabbed the air with the cigarette "—someone messed up the orders. The wrong shipment got seized. Crane blamed me. So now, he'll pay for that mistake."
The scarred man nodded. "We'll set watchers at the airport, at the clinic, at your apartment."
"Good," Lamina said. "Be vigilant. The Interrogator isn't like the others Crane sends. He doesn't miss. And he doesn't stop."
She put out the cigarette, the ember dying with a hiss.
"So neither will we."
Later that same morning, El Prat Airport hummed with the noise of departures — luggage wheels, announcements in multiple languages, the thousand quiet beginnings and endings that airports are built from.
Marin Cross rushed through security, tucking her passport back into her jacket. She was tired, unshowered, running on adrenaline and determination. Her mind was fixed entirely on the name Lamina Antonio — the woman who might finally lead her to Elias Vale.
She didn't see him until they collided.
"Sorry," she murmured, catching her balance, clutching her bag before it fell.
Elias turned slightly, steadying her by the elbow. His touch was brief, polite — the kind of touch that left no memory, no reason to look twice.
"No harm done," he said, voice calm, accent softened into neutrality.
Marin offered a distracted nod, too focused on her thoughts to really meet his eyes. "Yeah. Sorry again."
She hurried off toward her gate. Elias watched her go for a heartbeat — something faintly familiar in the set of her shoulders, the fire in her stride — then turned away, retrieving his boarding pass.
Neither knew that their tickets bore the same destination:
Barcelona, Spain.
As the plane lifted into the pale morning sky, two strangers sat separated by ten rows and a thousand secrets — the hunter and the hunted, unknowingly sharing the same air, the same path, and a destiny about to collide in fire and water.