Chapter 14 - The Empty Office at Midnight
The neon lights of the downtown skyline flickered through the sheet-metal rain like the sickly pulse of a dying organism as I parked my mud-splattered truck in the loading zone behind Tessa’s apartment building. The street was completely deserted save for a stray alley cat scavenging through an overturned plastic bin, the storm having driven every ordinary citizen deep indoors behind deadbolted doors. I kept my head down, pulling the hood of my canvas jacket low against the driving deluge as I slipped through the propped-back service entrance of the complex, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Tessa’s second-floor apartment was dark, the windows completely black, but the deadbolt had been picked with surgical precision—the brass plate around the keyhole was scarred with fresh, bright scratch marks that gleamed under the emergency exit lights. I drew my service-issue folding knife from my pocket, sliding the blade open with a faint, metallic click that sounded deafeningly loud in the narrow, carpeted corridor. Pushing the door open with the toe of my boot, I stepped inside into a room that had been systematically and violently tossed. Every drawer had been pulled out and dumped onto the floor; family photo albums were ripped apart, their pages shredded as if someone was searching for a hidden microfiche; and the desktop computer had been ripped straight out of the wall, leaving only a tangle of frayed copper wires sparking weakly against the baseboard. Yet, amidst the chaos, there was no blood, no sign of a struggle, and no note—just a chillingly clean apartment that looked like it had been scrubbed by professionals who knew exactly what they were looking for and had found it.
