Anna took the document from the traffic officer and the deputy team leader with a sullen expression. A deep blue bruise marred her forehead, and bloodshot eyes hinted at the shock still lingering. It was still a better outcome than the police chief, who had passed out with a nosebleed from a single headbutt, but Anna had clearly taken a beating too.
“Be honest with me, Anna. What the hell did you do to the chief that he’d still let you stay at Linhart PD after ending up like that? You’ve got some kind of dirt on him, don’t you?”
“Who knows. Apparently, I’m a pretty valuable asset to Linhart Police Department. Even I didn’t know that.”
At Anna’s snide retort, the deputy team leader shook his head and sighed as if the ground would cave in beneath him.
Anna McCarthy had committed a blatant act of insubordination that would go down in Linhart PD history. And yet, she hadn’t been fired. Not even demoted. All she received was a mere two-week unpaid suspension and mandatory retraining.
“Fine. Miss Anna McCarthy, invaluable asset of Linhart PD. Please make sure you follow the retraining schedule properly during your suspension.”
Anna flipped through the papers handed to her with a bitter look. The deputy team leader, seeing that she hadn’t properly read the document—and clearly had no intention of ever doing so—let out yet another long sigh.
“You’ll be reporting to the main department’s training center starting next week. Sessions begin at 9 a.m. sharp, so don’t be late.”
“What happens if I don’t show up?”
“It won’t be fun for you. You’ll attend every session—ethics and regulations, conflict management and communication training. And especially anger management.”
His tone was crisp and stern.
Anna looked away like a sulky teenager bent on rebellion, replying with forced indifference.
“I’ll try my best. I’ll be heading out now.”
Leaving the station with a bitter taste in her mouth, Anna briefly glanced at the schedule in the retraining packet before crumpling it into a ball and shoving it into her coat pocket. She got into her car in the parking lot, turned on her phone, and opened a GPS tracking app.
As expected, the icons marked noname1 and noname2, corresponding to Lewis and Siron, were still offline. Anna opened the saved location history. On August 28, the movement logs of both men were recorded by timestamp. They had each vanished at separate times: Siron at 2:51 a.m., Lewis at 7:40 a.m.
The last place both had been before disappearing was the area around the Millander Shelter. The road in front of Millander Shelter was unmarked and unnamed, but it stretched east-west and connected to Owens Road and Hickox Road.
Fucking hell—
That unnamed road wasn’t equipped with an ALPR system (automated license plate reader).
She had hoped to trace nearby vehicles using Owens and Hickox Roads, but all relevant data had been overwritten by other logs, making it impossible to track any cars that passed near the shelter.
Of all days, it had to be that day—when she was trying to uncover the truth behind the missing homeless.
The day the Langford Bridge collapsed and threw everything into chaos.
The bridge that connected Buggers City to Captiva Island had crumbled like a tower made of matchboxes.
As a traffic cop, Anna was dispatched immediately to the scene.
The rising death toll, the missing persons, their families, the press, paramedics—
she had been stuck directing traffic in that nightmare until the following morning.
By the time Anna arrived at the Millander Shelter, all she found was a desolate building and a silent road with not a single car in sight.
She returned several times in the following days, but each time yielded little.
The CCTV wasn’t working, and the newly appointed manager knew nothing about his predecessor.
The irritated look on his face as he politely asked her to leave reeked of classic civil servant fatigue, and Anna had no choice but to retreat empty-handed.
But she had found something—
scattered fragments of a vehicle—car or motorcycle—in the weeds by the roadside.
A piece of a headlight cover had gleamed ominously in the dark like a cursed gemstone.
One grim night, without even a streetlamp to light the way, Anna returned once more to Millander Shelter.
She was wearing a one-piece tactical jumpsuit, her face covered with a mask and goggles for protection.
Strapped to her back like a backpack was a high-capacity compressed sprayer filled with diluted luminol solution.
The day before, she had discreetly unlocked a window at the far end of the first-floor hallway. Now, she quietly slipped through that window.
She turned her flashlight on and off as needed to confirm her location, then began spraying the hallway with the solution.
Nothing showed until she reached the corridor connected to the lobby.
There—when she sprayed—the blue glow of luminol burst forth like flame, then slowly faded away.
“Hemoglobin reaction...”
Staring at the vanishing glow as if entranced, Anna suddenly jerked back to her senses, stiffening.
Then she started pumping the sprayer wildly.
With each press, the solution gushed from the nozzle, revealing faint glimmers of light.
Even if someone had tried to scrub it away with bleach, the blood still clung stubbornly in the grooves of the wood floor.
The trail had a direction.
The scattered bloodstains on the stairs and second-floor hallway led her to the second-to-last room at the end.
It was completely empty—no furniture, nothing.
But the moment she sprayed luminol inside, the entire room lit up in a dazzling phosphorescent glow.
It was so surreal in its beauty that the brutal reality hidden within felt even more unreal.
“...What the hell happened here.”
It wasn’t enough blood for someone to have died from blood loss,
but it was clear that something violent had occurred.
Anna struggled to maintain her composure as she completed her sweep of the second floor.
Then she headed outside to the last place Lewis had been seen—the spot where his signal had vanished.
A hurricane had swept through Hellsota just days earlier.
But not all clues had been washed away.
When she examined the road where Lewis was last seen, she found blood reactions.
The porous concrete had absorbed the iron from the blood, leaving traceable residue.
The problem was the sheer area covered.
“...He’s dead.”
He had to be.
There was no way he survived that.
Anna hastily wiped away the tears pouring down her face.
But then her eyes flared with a sudden shift in thought.
“No. He killed someone.”
The man responsible for all of this—Joseph Miller—had vanished.
That sickening pink-cheeked face still made her stomach turn.
His disappearance had made headlines in the local papers.
The police had launched a massive search for him.
And yet, the position of Homeless Relocation Officer at the support center remained mysteriously vacant.
Just days ago, Anna had realized that a firearm was missing from the gun safe hidden behind her bedroom wardrobe.
If Lewis had taken it... and found himself in a desperate situation...
Joseph Miller would’ve been his most likely target.
Maybe Miller had done something horrible to Siron, and Lewis had snapped.
In her mind’s eye, Anna saw it clearly—
Lewis mowing down Joseph Miller in the middle of the road with a motorcycle.
Then standing over his fallen body, pulling the trigger.
But the vision didn’t end there.
She imagined someone else on the scene, watching it all happen,
raising a gun—and blowing Lewis’s head off.
She tried not to recall the image of her parents, shot dead by an unknown assailant.
But the memory came flooding back in spite of her will.
Fragments of shattered bone. Pools of dark red blood.
A hazy grey smear of brain matter.
The shredded remains of her parents’ faces.
And over all of it... Lewis’s face.
Anna collapsed to the ground, vomiting.
Ten years of struggle to escape that memory were useless.
She hadn’t overcome it at all.
Reality was still hell.
Just then, a sharp, shrill ringtone pierced the air.
An unfamiliar number.
Anna spat the bile from her mouth, wiped her lips, and answered with a blank expression.
—“Anna McCarthy?”
It was a rough male voice she didn’t recognize.
But as the voice continued, clarity returned to her eyes.
Tension rose.
She gripped the phone tighter and growled into it.
“You’re telling me a super hot Asian pretty boy gave you my number?”
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter