Hudson’s stomach twisted. He could taste the bile making a resurgence up his esophagus. His mouth began to salivate and a cold sheen of sweat beaded on his neck and forehead only to be instantly wicked away by the cold. His eyes drifted to Garrison. He almost didn’t look real, like he was made of wax. His skin was too ashen, his blood too bright. Shaking, Hudson knelt to examine Garrison’s trauma plate. His uniform was unzipped; he’d undoubtedly been reaching into his vest’s center pocket to pay for his coffee when the shooter entered the store. One bullet had chipped his ID card; it looked like a hole punch had bitten the edge from it. He saw the photograph of Garrison’s family; it was worn, the corners rounded. A piece of faded red paper peeked out from beneath it. It looked like a raffle ticket, the kind torn from a roll at bars and high school football games.

He checked to see if anyone had eyes on him. No one did. They were all searching for casings and latent prints. Hudson tugged the ticket from Garrison’s pocket. Crouched, he examined it, shielding it in his hands like a flame. The bottom right corner was singed. On the front, the words ADMIT ONE were stamped, and on the back, a message:

Welcome to The Ruins

Where your true self dwells

“The Ruins,” he whispered. The place didn’t ring a bell. He stood and was about to google it when another whoosh of cold air assaulted him.

“Christ.” ME Winthorp appeared next to him. Her black earmuffs looked like giant bolts screwed into her skull. “Why’d it have to be him?” She knelt beside the body, pressed two latex fingers to Garrison’s throat. “Deceased. You got the time, Officer?”

He was “Investigator” now, but Hudson didn’t correct her. He touched the center button on his phone. “Eleven forty-seven.”

“December nineteen, twenty-three forty-seven hours,” she said into her recorder. “You know how much longer they got?”

He didn’t remember answering. Time crashed into him hard as a wave and when he broke free, it was around 2:00 A.M. and Garrison was stiff with rigor mortis. He watched as three men from the coroner’s office arrived and lifted him into a black polyethylene bag. The zipper’s teeth connected as the bag swallowed Garrison, and he felt the ugly, finite sound of it, like a serrated knife ripping him from bottom to top, gutting him like a fish.

3 MORGAN

“Sorry for all the pomp and circumstance.” Bennett’s gaze rose over the edge of his cocktail glass to meet Morgan’s as he sipped his Manhattan. The drink was a lurid color, like blood in the water. “You must think we’re some real grade-A snobbery.”