Theo Adler, the husband in question, was standing in the Louisburg Police Department's break room, praying that today would not be the day that the old coffee machine finally crapped out and died on him. Coffee, especially to a detective, was basically the elixir of life, and if he was going to put up with a day at work, it was this drink first, and all other things second. Thankfully, the machine was kind today and delivered him the coffee he desperately needed.

Theo headed for his desk. The PD was relatively small, seeing as Louisburg wasn't that big a town, but they had a decent sized police force. Theo and his partner, a thin, shrimpy blond man named Carter Spiro, were the only detectives in the town. They kept their desks beside each other near the back of the department, and used the wall space behind them as one large bulletin board filled with reports, pictures, and various sticky notes related to their cases. Currently, the case filling it was evidence they'd collected while tracking the Hunters, Cyrus Mossberg's gang. The wall was a disaster, Spiro and his whole area was a disaster, but Theo's desk was clean. He had too much experience with losing things, and with Spiro's messy desk beside his, he only got more motivation to keep things neat. He hadn't lost anything in weeks because of the clean desk, unlike Spiro, who was currently digging through the piles of paperwork on the desk, looking slightly panicked.

"What did you lose this time?" Theo asked, settling into his chair.

"The same thing I always lose and the one thing I should never lose," Spiro said, looking a bit more nervous. "...You haven't seen my gun, have you?"

Losing such a potentially dangerous and important item as a gun might have been a cause of great concern for most people, but Theo only sighed. Spiro could keep complicated gang cases perfectly organized in his mind, but the second you gave him something and said 'Don't lose this', it was gone.

"Isn't this the whole reason you put that stupid tracker on it?" Theo questioned. After officially losing his pistol for the fifth time and needing to get a replacement, Spiro had come up with the brilliant idea to take a tracking chip from a cell phone and attach it to the underside of his gun. That way, he figured, he would never lose it.

And yet, here we were.

"Right," Spiro looked at the desk again. "...You haven't seen my phone, have you?" Theo facepalmed.

"Adler! Spiro!" A firm voice demanded. Theo and Spiro shot up as the Chief of the LPD walked over. Chief Edwards was a small, dark woman, and even though both Theo, Spiro, and most of the officers had a good foot of height over her, they were all terrified. The Chief was smart and cunning, and she saw through easy lies like they were freshly cleaned windows. Theo had every reason to be afraid of her— if anyone in the PD was bright enough to figure out all the secrets he was keeping, it was the Chief. It made him both proud to work under her, and extra cautious of everything he did in her presence.

"Can we do something for you?" Spiro asked, trying not to draw attention towards his disaster of a desk.

"First of all, one of the officers found this in the Evidence locker," She held out Spiro's gun and he sheepishly took it back while Theo fought back a laugh. "Secondly," She looked up at the wall behind them, where a grainy photo of Cyrus Mossberg was centered. "I got a call earlier, and apparently the FBI is sending an agent or two down in the next few weeks to check up on the Mossberg case."

"Any particular reason why?" Theo asked casually, shifting his feet. He had mastered the art of the poker face, so his internal worry was hidden well. Why would the FBI be asking about Cyrus?

"They got a census back above overdoses around the country and they don't like our numbers. Seeing as Mossberg's gang is the region's top supplier of illegal substances, they want to see how close you are to taking him down." She looked at Spiro's desk and frowned. "And since you two haven't had a lead in weeks, I take it we're a lot further away from that then the FBI would like."

"It's not easy to find leads on the Hunters," Theo insisted. "Cyrus is smooth and he covers his tracks remarkably well."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were complimenting him," The Chief said. "I want a lead on him before the agents get here. They'll want fresh evidence, and I don't want you two making our department look lazy."

"Lazy!" Spiro said, offended. "It's not easy finding gangsters who don't want to be found!"

"Finding a date for a Tuesday night isn't easy. Finding a gang's headquarters in the middle of nowhere is simple," she shot back. "And while you're at it, I want the Mayfield problem solved."

"That we can do," Theo confirmed.

"You better," The Chief warned, walking away.

"...We're dead." Spiro announced the second she was out of earshot.

"We are not dead," Theo said. "We just have to find a gangster and get him arrested. Easy."

"Easy," Spiro echoed. "Yes, because Mossberg is just wandering around the streets with a neon sign that says 'please arrest me'."

"Oh come on. We both know Mayfield is more likely to do that than Cyrus."

Gangsters may have been the biggest current threat to Louisburg besides wild hipsters, but out of all of them, Oak Mayfield was by far the dumbest. He was a wanted criminal, and yet he still updated his Instagram page every day. His gang headquarters had a banner over the door with their name on it. "The Cardinal Rebels," Oak called them. Why, Theo had no idea. He was pretty sure they didn't even have cardinal birds in town. Oak was an idiot. All of the LPD knew it, and all the other gangsters did too. Cyrus had often pondered the idea of killing him, just to improve the IQ of the town by a few points.

Cyrus, on the other hand, was the exact opposite of Oak Mayfield. Theo and Spiro turned to their wall of evidence on him, and while the board was full, Theo saw so little of it that was actually useful. It had been weeks since they'd even had a whisper as to what the Hunters were going to do next, and although Theo secretly always had an idea of what Cyrus was up to, Spiro and the rest of the police had no clue. Cyrus and his Hunters left no tracks, not even footprints. Their digital footprint— erased. Evidence from rivals they killed— cleaned. Books from money owed, the location of their headquarters, a full list of exactly how many were in the gang, how they even got drugs into the country— there was no proof of any of it, no matter how long they stared at the evidence wall.