Page 40 of These Shattered Memories

F inding Daniel Tang in Senna Police Department’s database doesn’t take much effort.

At only twenty-two, he’s been arrested multiple times for drug charges, including distribution to minors.

I sit at my kitchen table, working through the files after Rowan leaves in the morning.

I still can’t bring myself to step foot in the OCU.

Kane’s probably there, pretending nothing is wrong, like he doesn’t know what happened to Anders.

He got what he wanted in the end.

She’s dead and he’ll get her job.

A few messages filter in from work colleagues, checking in or sharing gossip about Anders.

I ignore them all. I can’t pretend to feel any sadness or remorse.

A few articles report on her tragic death and alleged corruption, but it’s nothing new in the OCU.

The story will lose steam in a few days when a more interesting scandal inevitably breaks out.

It all feels so insignificant.

Rowan texts me Daniel’s address, making sure to remind me to be careful. It’s a simple thing, but it sends a quiet warmth through me. I haven’t stopped thinking about last night and replaying those three words, leaving his lips over and over again.

I love you.

I fight the smile that forms on my lips but fail miserably.

I feel ridiculous, like a teenager who just found out their crush likes them back, but I don’t care.

I let myself believe it might just work out.

We just need to end this and maybe then we’ll have a chance to learn each other again, slowly and properly. For the rest of our lives.

I drive through Senna, out of the colourful Flower District, busy with people despite the rain clouds that loom above. Its modernity fades into the densely packed neighbourhood of Harrow, with tall apartment buildings and neon-lit convenience stores at each corner.

I find Daniel’s apartment block easily. It’s a crumbling relic that has clearly seen better days. Peeling paint mars the facade, with thick swatches of graffiti screaming obscenities.

It’s a Friday afternoon, and the sun barely filters through the thick blanket of clouds, its weak light offering no warmth against the bite of winter in full swing. I bury my hands deeper into my coat pockets, bracing against the chill as I glance up at the building.

Somewhere nearby, kids are playing, their laughter faint and distant, drifting from a run-down park further up the street.

Daniel’s apartment is on the sixth floor and unsurprisingly, the elevator is out of order, so I take the stairs instead.

There are random pieces of furniture along the staircase and overflowing bins cluttering the narrow hallways.

It smells faintly of mildew, beer and stale smoke, the classic odour of Judiciary controlled estates.

When I reach the front door, I glance around, scanning for anyone who might be watching me, but it’s empty, just the muffled noises from other apartments filling the air.

I raise my hand to knock, but the door creaks open as soon as my fist makes contact, the sound echoing down the empty hallway.

I pause, my stomach twisting in a way I don’t like.

Something is off, but I push forward, my heart pounding louder with every step.

“Hello?” I call, but there’s no answer.

The faint buzz of a dying lightbulb fills the silence, and the acrid stench of rot hits me like a wall. I know what I’m going to find before I see it.

Instinct kicks in. I draw my gun, holding it steady as I step into the outdated kitchen, each footfall careful. As I cross the small kitchen and reach the threshold of the dining room, I freeze.

Right there on the floor, Daniel Tang lies. His body is twisted unnaturally; crimson red pooled around him. A dark trail runs from his mouth and a fresh wave of nausea twists my stomach.

He’s dead.

I approach him slowly, kneeling beside him. I lean in, careful not to touch anything. His chest is still, his skin waxy—he’s been dead for hours, maybe more.

I search his body for signs of decomposition, but this isn’t Haze I quickly realise. There’s a close-range gunshot wound on the side of his head.

“Shit,” I mutter.

This wasn’t a suicide. Someone killed him.

My eyes search the open area of the apartment and just then, in the dark, they land on another still mass at the threshold that crosses into a hallway.

I gag, my stomach rolling again as I get on my feet to get to them. They are lying face down, arms sprawled outwards and longish black hair is saturated with thick coagulated blood that pools around them.

I want to see who he is, but I can’t touch him with my bare hands and risk DNA evidence.

I quickly make my way back to the kitchen and reach for the nearest cloth I can find.

Covering my hand with it, I push the man onto his back.

Bile launches up my throat and I stumble, falling on my ass when I see with the side of the victim’s face.

Trist .

His eyes are still open; his lips parted like he was about to scream. Brown eyes stare back at me, his face bloated and waxy just like Daniel’s.

“No.” I push away from him, accidentally getting some of the thick blood onto my hands. It’s sticky and cold. I look down at it in horror.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Calm down, Alex, a voice warns . It doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds like Kane’s.

My stomach lurches again but I swallow down the bile, focusing on the scene like I would do if I was a Homicide detective.

Whoever killed them didn’t leave much of a mess. There are no signs of a struggle, no broken plates, no haphazard furniture. Also, no footprints leading up to the door meaning they were clean, someone who isn’t around much dust.

Both Daniel and Trist must have known them, or they must not have seen whoever it was coming.

I rush to the sink, opening the faucet and washing Trist’s blood off my hands, careful to keep the hot water running for a few seconds to make sure it washes down the drain.

I look into the living room once more, Daniel and Trist’s bodies still completely lifeless.

Another wave of nausea comes over me and that’s my signal to get out.

Staying here puts me in more danger.

I step into the passageway, grateful for the gust of icy wind that rushes past and fills my lungs, replacing the sweet smell of rot.

My eyes scan the corners of the passage but there are no cameras.

No witnesses to tell us who did this, but it’s pretty obvious.

They killed Daniel and Trist because we were getting close

My pulse races, but I keep my focus, rushing down the stairs and crossing the small yard to my car. When I slide into the driver’s seat, I pull out my phone to call the police operator.

“Hello. What’s your emergency?” a male voice answers the line in that practiced cadence.

“I heard gunshots coming from my neighbour’s house. Could you please come and check on it,” I say. “The address is C121 Craven Street, Harrow.”

I cut the line, not giving the operator enough time to trace my call and lean back in my seat, letting out a deep breath.

My mind spins, but my fingers are working before I can stop them. I need to find Avni. I search for her social media page, but it’s gone. My stomach falls. There is no sign of her anywhere and I don’t have another way to reach her.

For a second, I’m tempted to go back upstairs and look for Trist’s phone, but that would be stupid. The police will be here any minute and I can’t be here when they get here.

Another wave of bile rises up in my throat. What if she’s dead?

“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, pulling out of the parking lot, my tyres squealing on the gravel. I race away from Daniel’s apartment, my hands still shaking at the memory of both their faces, frozen in fear, blood pooled around them.

It shouldn’t bother me. I’ve been around death all my life and yet, seeing them like that, knowing what happened to them and why has me terrified.

This is no longer just about kids dying from an unstable drug. Whoever this is won’t stop at Daniel and Trist. They know Rowan is close, which means they know about me, too.

When I’m far away from Harrow, I pull into a grocery store parking lot and call Rowan, my heart still beating too quickly.

He answers on the first ring. “Alex?”

And in a second, the tension in my body eases. “We have a problem.” I swallow. “Daniel is dead. So is Trist. Someone shot them in Daniel’s apartment. No signs of a struggle, so they must have known who it was. I’m guessing it’s whoever is behind Haze.”

“Jesus,” he mutters.

“Yeah.”

“Why would they get rid of them?”

“Only reason I can think of is because they know we’re onto them and they are taking out anyone who might talk,” I tell him.

“This is bad,” Rowan mutters.

“It means it must be one of The Keepers, right?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says. “But there’s something else. Trist is dead which means someone in The Snake broke the treaty. If Moreau finds out, we’re fucked.”

Shit. The treaty. The fragile peace agreement between the clans has held up for years without problems. The one and only rule: no one from one clan kills a member of another. Breaking it means war.

“Can’t you tell him you didn’t sanction this?” I ask. “Get ahead of it before someone else does.”

One dead Raven at the hands of someone in The Snake is all it takes to set the city ablaze.

“I don’t want to set off alarm bells yet,” he says. “We don’t know what Moreau knows.”

“I tried to find Avni, but all her social media has been wiped. She’s in the wind.”

Rowan sighs deeply and I can picture him thinking. “We can’t worry about the Scarlet Ravens right now,” he says. “We need to figure this out before something else goes wrong.”

We .

The word makes my heart stutter. Even though I am from Canning, I realise my loyalty now lies with Rowan—and by extension, The Snake. It’s a choice I’ve already made because I know Rowan is the choice I want .

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Alex?” Rowan says on the other end.

“Yeah?”