The Envelope

The high didn't last.

Two days later, they had the lead. They were building a case. Ryan was actually smiling in the office. He had even watered Herbert the succulent.

But the plot of *City of Shadows* was a cruel machine.

Zoe was walking to her car in the precinct parking garage at dusk. Shadows stretched long and thin between the concrete pillars.

"Officer Chen."

Zoe turned. A man in a slick suit stepped out from behind a van. Vinnie.

"You haven't been answering my texts," Vinnie said, smiling with too many teeth. "Your dad is getting worried. He thinks you're going soft."

"I'm done, Vinnie," Zoe said, clutching her keys. "Don't talk to me."

"Done?" Vinnie laughed. "You don't get to be done, sweetheart. You cashed the checks. You're in the family business."

He stepped forward and shoved a thick manila envelope into her hands.

"This week's cut. The shipment goes out tonight at the Cannery. Make sure your boy Graves is busy elsewhere. Or we’ll make him busy. Permanently."

Zoe froze. She held the envelope, her mind racing. She needed to take it to Evidence. She needed to show Ryan.

"Zoe?"

The voice cracked like a whip.

Zoe spun around. Ryan was standing ten feet away. He had come to walk her to her car.

He was looking at the envelope in her hands. Then at Vinnie, who smirked and melted back into the shadows.

"Ryan," Zoe started, stepping forward. "It's not what it looks like."

Ryan’s face shut down. The warmth, the trust, the almost-smiles—they vanished, replaced by the cold, hard mask of the detective she had met in Chapter 1.

"I actually believed you," Ryan said. His voice was quiet, which made it worse. "The donuts. The plants. The 'new leaf.' It was just to get close to the investigation. To keep tabs on me for your dad."

"No!" Zoe tried to hand him the envelope. "Ryan, take it. Open it. I'm turning it in!"

"Don't," Ryan stepped back, revulsion in his eyes. "Stay away from me, Chen. If you follow me, I'll arrest you myself."

"Ryan, Vinnie said they're moving the guns tonight! It's a trap!"

"I know where they are," Ryan said coldly. "And I'm going to finish this. Alone. Like I should have done from the start."

He turned and walked to his car. He didn't look back.

Zoe stood in the empty garage, holding the envelope of dirty money, watching the taillights of the only person she had ever wanted to impress fade away.

The timeline was correcting itself. Ryan was going to the Cannery alone. He was going to get ambushed.

Zoe looked at the envelope. She looked at her reflection in the car window.

"Not today, Satan," she whispered.

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