Page 3 of Hunting Brooklyn (Stalkers in the Woods #5)

Chapter One

Brooklyn

T hree a.m. in the topmost room of my father’s Johannesburg mansion, and every surface vibrates with his absence.

The air conditioning hisses, a pale and clinical wind—nothing like the dusty, sun-choked drafts of my own flat.

The light here is wrong too, the security lamps outside painting wobbly shadows through the office’s glass doors, silvering the sheaves of paper and coldly backlighting a dozen portraits of men in black suits who are, to my knowledge, all still alive.

But not my father. My father is dead.

Security guards are stationed around this place, the same ones who follow him everywhere, but a fat fucking lot of good they did when he was brutally murdered in his office yesterday.

I sit where he sat, perched at the corner of his massive glass desk, one leg tucked under the other.

My jeans are three days unwashed and my sweater is the only one he ever said looked good on me, which is probably why I keep wearing it even though it makes me itch.

I run my hand over the desk’s surface, careful not to smudge anything important.

The papers are scattered, not in chaos but in a precise sort of manner—memos, blueprints, acquisition contracts, an old dog-eared copy of a thriller annotated in his spidery handwriting.

Beside the monitor, a half-drunk mug of rooibos tea.

Still stained lipstick on the rim, mine, from the other morning when I thought the world was only semi-ruined.

There’s a warmth to the memory, the way I’d curled up in this very chair and watched him swipe through emails, his hands steady and deliberate, his voice already rehearsing arguments for the day’s meetings.

His mug is on the left, always on the left, and always empty except for the lemon wedge he’d savored at the end.

I touch it. I think about moving it. I don’t.

Instead, I reach for the photo frame just beyond…

an old, sun-faded print of me in high school, teeth a disaster, face still round with baby fat, standing in front of a skeleton at the Natural History Museum.

My father’s hand rests on my shoulder, the only place he ever showed physical affection.

I remember the day—he was tired, so tired, but he’d insisted on seeing the T.

rex because “there’s no such thing as time wasted on you.

” I memorize every pixel, even though I already know it by heart.

My fingers tremble as I return the frame to its spot.

Then, deliberately, I go through the stack of folders left open on his desk.

I know what I’m searching for but not what I’ll find.

The process is ritual: scan and save to a file on a thumb drive, lift, replace, repeat.

I read the cover sheets aloud in a voice barely above a whisper, as if invoking some lost office magic might bring him back.

"Board Recommendations - Q2." Useless.

"Strategic Partnerships: EU Export." Not urgent.

"Succession Planning: Brooklyn Marcus." I snort, bitter. Typical Dad—arrange my future before even consulting me. I push it to the side.

Somewhere in the pile, my hand catches on a folder that’s heavier than the rest. Cream-colored, thick, with “Suspicious Activity—Internal” scrawled in red Sharpie.

My pulse skips. The title is so blatantly cliché I want to laugh, but there’s nothing funny about the way the air suddenly feels denser.

I drag the folder closer and flip it open. The first page is a memo: anonymous tip line summary, all blacked-out names and bullet points, the kind of thing that only exists because someone is deeply afraid of being seen. The handwriting is my father’s, bold and slashing, angry in its precision.

“Review: 3 incidents—sabotage? Request audit. Trust no one.”

There’s an arrow drawn from the word “audit” to a list of names. I don’t recognize most, but one jumps out: Thabo M.—the office manager who’d hugged me at the crime scene and whispered, “You are so much like him.” I’m not, but I wish I was.

My hands are sweating now. I wipe them on my thighs and force myself to keep reading.

The next few pages are attached emails, printed screenshots of spreadsheets, and a blurry security cam still of two men shaking hands in a parking garage.

It’s all so melodramatic and cryptic, and it feels like something out of a book I’d read for comfort as a kid.

Except this time, the monster is real, and it killed my father.

I blink and realize my vision’s gone watery. Stupid. I drag a sleeve across my face, but the tears come back, hot and insistent. I try to remember the last time he’d held me—probably never. I try to remember the last time he’d said he loved me—maybe once, in a letter I never threw away.

Breathe, Brooklyn. This is just paperwork. This is not a mystery. This is not your life falling apart.

Except it is. I hear my own voice, cracked and childlike, quoting something from Tennyson: “For men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.” My father would have hated that, would have called it “self-pitying tripe,” but I say it anyway, out loud, to the empty room.

“Suspicious,” I whisper, tracing the edge of the Suspicious Activity folder. “Who was it, Dad?”

I let the silence answer me. The room smells like cold tea, old leather, and the lemon-sweet tang of his aftershave. I miss him so much I want to set the whole office on fire.

I slip the folder into my backpack, wedging it between two battered novels (the first a romance, the second an annotated history of Johannesburg).

I close the zipper gently, careful not to catch any of the torn edges.

Then, as if on impulse, I tidy the desk—align the pens, straighten the papers, wipe a stray crumb from the glass. I leave his mug untouched. And mine.

Standing to go, I cast one more look at the office. My reflection peers back from the floor-to-ceiling window, a blur of too-blonde hair and puffy blue eyes, sweater sleeves hanging almost to my knuckles. I am nothing like him, but tonight, I wish I was.

He was strong, where I am weak. He never showed me enough affection, but I knew he loved me in the way he worked his ass off and gave me a life no one else ever could.

I pause in the doorway and mutter a line from an old family proverb: “In the end, all houses belong to the wind.” The words settle on the air, as fragile as the man who used to say them.

I take the stairs down, backpack heavy with evidence and guilt. There’s a story here, and if I don’t tell it, nobody will.

Let the dead rest, Brooklyn. The living have work to do.

Sandton in the morning is a holy city of glass and mirrors, and I am an infidel in thrifted shoes. I could afford designer brands, but there was something about not spending more money than absolutely necessary that always appealed to me. Waste not, want not, or something like that.

My father’s small office is here. One he had built just so I could work close to my school. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he never spared an expense when it came to me, so here I am, ready to try figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to do now.

I tug the cuffs of my cardigan over the sunburnt skin of my arms and stare up at the head office for Marcus Energy Africa.

It's meant to look like a cut diamond, all slanted planes and light, but the effect is more like a spaceship designed by someone who hated people.

I watch my reflection multiply in the tinted doors: wide eyes, too-bright hair, hips that don't so much enter a room as declare war on it.

I feel the old shame rising, and immediately squash it, remembering the last thing my father ever said to me: "You’re meant for bigger things than hiding. "

Yeah, except the world isn’t kind to big girls.

Inside, the lobby is Arctic. Not just the temperature—though I’m fairly certain the AC is set to “cryogenic”—but the decor, the attitude, the way every receptionist is so perfect and so blank they might as well have been printed by a very expensive machine.

I shuffle forward, hugging my backpack to my belly like a shield.

The security desk is manned by a woman in a suit sharper than a razor blade.

She looks me over, and for a second her eyes soften.

“Ms. Marcus?” she says, not even checking the visitor log. “They’re expecting you on 34.”

I nod, the motion making my ponytail bounce like the tail of a nervous rabbit. “Thank you.” My voice comes out too quiet, but I don’t fix it. I have enough battles to fight today.

The elevator is filled with soft jazz. I press the button for 34, then jam my hands into my pockets and stare at my reflection in the doors as we ascend.

I look like a fraud. I feel like a fraud.

But someone has to do this, and my father is gone, and my brother is off in Singapore pretending he can trade Bitcoin for meaning, so that leaves me. Mom died long ago.

The doors slide open into a hushed anteroom.

Everything here is beige and blond wood, the air filled with the hum of people trying not to be overheard.

I step out and am immediately greeted by Thabo, who has been with the company since before my father bought it out.

He is taller than I remember, or maybe I am just smaller now.

His suit is impeccably tailored, and his smile is not so much warm as it is practiced.

My eyes narrow, remembering my father’s note about him in the file. Did he kill my dad? Seems unlikely, given their long partnership, but maybe he helped whoever did it? Bigger payout, perhaps?

“Welcome, Ms. Marcus,” he says, bowing slightly. “We are honored. If you need anything—coffee, tea—please just let us know.”

“Coffee, black,” I say, even though I don’t drink coffee. It feels like the right kind of lie for this setting.