Chapter 5 Chapter 5

Half an hour later, as we emerged out onto the sidewalk, the rain continued, only…softened; Seattle’s version of mercy. It beaded along the edges of Cyne’s coat, rolling down like the city itself was trying to wash him off and failing. We moved through the morning crowds in silence, people brushing past without ever quite seeing us. Maybe that was just the city. Or maybe it was him.

Cityline Weekly was tucked inside a narrow red-brick building off Occidental Avenue, wedged between a yoga studio and a pawn shop. The kind of place that still had a buzzing neon sign in the window and smelled faintly of burnt coffee.

Inside, the air was warm and stale, humming with the low whir of ancient computers. A receptionist in a faded band tee looked up, blinked at Cyne like she wasn’t sure if he was real, then quickly buzzed us through. I didn’t blame her, the man carried stillness like other people carried perfume.

Mara’s editor waited in a glass-walled office near the back, a short woman with iron-gray hair and eyes that looked permanently unimpressed. A nameplate read T. R. Caldwell – Senior Editor.

“Ms. Caldwell,” Cyne said as we stepped inside. His voice softened, measured, but it still had that weight that filled a room. “I appreciate you seeing us on short notice.”

She leaned back in her chair, eyeing him over the rims of her glasses. “You said this was about Mara Keene. You cops?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Private investigation. Her client hired us.”

Her gaze flicked to me, then to Cyne again. “Client, huh. She had a few of those. Most of them trouble.”

Cyne took the seat across from her, uninvited, movements deliberate. “You worked closely with her.”

Caldwell gave a humorless snort. “As close as anyone could. Mara was good, damn good, but she didn’t know when to stop digging. Her last piece was supposed to be about missing persons; homeless folks, night-shift workers, drifters. The ones nobody bothers counting.”

My fingers tightened on the strap of my borrowed jacket. “And she found something?”

“She found someone,” Caldwell said, voice lowering. “Some group calling themselves The Veil. Thought it was a cult at first. Said they were recruiting downtown, targeting people who wouldn’t be missed.”

I shot Cyne a look. His face gave nothing away. But I felt the air shift, a subtle tension, like static before a storm.

“What happened next?” he asked.

“She started sending me notes at odd hours,” Caldwell said. “Half of them didn’t make sense. References to symbols, rituals, and some old church down by the docks. Then, about a week ago, she stopped answering calls. No message, no story draft. Just… gone.”

“Do you still have the notes?” Cyne asked.

The editor hesitated, studying him. “You people official?”

Cyne’s mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile. “Official enough.”

Caldwell exhaled through her nose, then bent to unlock the bottom drawer of her desk. She pulled out a small folder, the corner darkened by coffee stains, and slid it across. “That’s all I’ve got. You can look, but I want it back.”

Cyne opened it carefully. Inside were half a dozen pages of scrawled handwriting, a few photographs, blurry shots of graffiti, alleys, broken glass, and one image that made my pulse jump: a sigil, drawn in thick black ink, jagged and symmetrical, like an eye made of thorns.

“That was the last thing she sent me,” Caldwell said. “Said it was a mark used by The Veil. I told her it looked like bad tattoo art. She didn’t laugh.”

Cyne’s gaze lingered on the page longer than it should have. I caught it, that flicker, like recognition. He knew something.

But when I asked, “You’ve seen this before?” he didn’t answer right away.

He closed the folder, slid it back toward Caldwell, and said only, “We’ll be in touch.”

Caldwell frowned. “That’s it? You show up, ask questions, and walk out with nothing?”

He rose smoothly, coat whispering around him. “Sometimes,” he said, “the answers come later.”

We stepped back into the rain, and I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “You know that symbol,” I said, matching his stride. “You looked at it like it slapped you.”

He didn’t slow. “Keep your voice down.”

“That’s not a denial,” I stated.

Suddenly coming to a stop, he turned toward me, the rain sliding over his face, caught in the edges of his hair like silver wire. “If you ever see that mark again,” he said quietly, “you walk the other way. Understand?”

My heart skipped once, hard. “You’re not gonna tell me what it means?”

“No,” he ground out.

I opened my mouth to argue, but something in his eyes stopped me…something colder than the rain, older than the city. Then, turning he started walking again, voice almost lost to the downpour. “Come on, Sponsor. It’s going to be a long night.”

And as I followed him through the gray streets, one truth settled, heavy and certain, in the pit of my stomach, Mara Keene hadn’t just found The Veil. She’d found Cyne’s past.

The rest of the day passed in motion.

Cyne didn’t say much after we left Cityline Weekly. He made a few calls from a payphone, who even used those anymore, and I pretended not to listen while he spoke in a voice low enough to blur words into static. After that, we drove. Long loops through the city’s industrial spine, where the air always smelled like wet metal and regret.

By evening, the rain had picked up again.

We stopped at a diner off the highway, the kind that looked better from a distance. He ordered black coffee, I ordered pancakes I barely touched. Between us sat Mara’s file, the corner still stained with someone else’s mistake.

“You think The Veil’s using that church as a base?” I asked.

“I think,” Cyne said, eyes on the rain outside, “it’s the only place they could go that no one would question.”

“Because it’s condemned?”

“Because it’s forgotten.”