Prologue 

The city never sleeps. Not in the way people think. The lights stay on, the cars hum in the distance, and somewhere, always, somebody is up to no good. That’s where I come in. Name’s Douglass Hines—private investigator, occasional problem solver, and full-time chain smoker.

I was just finishing my second cup of coffee—black as a moonless night—when he walked in. Not a client. Not a cop. Edwaard Spasma.

If there was a handbook on how to be an eccentric, this guy wrote it. His coat was too big, his hat too small, and his face looked like he hadn’t slept since the last election. But Spasma had something most people didn’t: an instinct. A gut feeling that was usually spot on, even if the rest of him looked like it had lost a fight with a revolving door.

“Douglass,” he said, out of breath. “We got a case.”

I exhaled smoke through my nose. “You’re not my partner, Spasma.” He ignored me and dropped a file onto my desk.

Inside were police reports, a school yearbook photo, and a grainy shot of a girl disappearing into an alley.

Helena Smith. Nineteen. College student. Freelance journalist. Locals called her “The Troubled Girl” too curious for her own good, always asking the wrong questions to the wrong people.

She’d been missing for four days.

Spasma pointed to a note taped to one of the reports. A scrawl of jagged handwriting.

I looked up. Spasma was grinning.

“We find her, Douglass,” he said. “Or we find what’s left of her.”