Sirens wailed in the distance. The noise bounced off the wet brick walls, growing louder by the second. Red and blue lights began to reflect heavily in the puddles at the far end of the street.
Under the flickering streetlamp, Garret's eyes dropped. He noticed the heavy, dark stain spreading rapidly down the left leg of her jeans. Rain washed over it, turning the puddle near her boot a faint, rusty pink.
She was not just a civilian running from a mugging. She was actively bleeding out.
Realizing he saw the blood, Fallon immediately broke eye contact. She turned her back to him and started walking toward the mouth of the alley. Her left leg dragged slightly across the pavement. A distinct, heavy limp.
"Stop," Garret barked.
He reached to his leather belt and drew his heavy service weapon. He leveled the pistol squarely at the center of her back.
"Put your hands where I can see them. Now. Get on the ground."
Fallon stopped walking. The police sirens were maybe three blocks away, practically vibrating the asphalt beneath her boots. She slowly raised both hands to shoulder height and keept her fingers wide open.
"Turn around. Slow."
She pivoted on her good right foot. The distance between them was less than four feet. A critical, fatal error for a man holding a firearm.
Garret opened his mouth to give another loud order but he never had a chance to finish the sentence.
Fallon dropped her entire body weight instantly. Bending her knees deep, she slipped entirely under Garret's line of sight. Her left hand shot upward like a whip, slapping the outside of his wrist hard to force the pistol barrel away from her chest.
At the exact same second, she stepped aggressively into his personal space, planting her good right foot firmly between his boots.
With Garret's right arm deflected outward, his center of gravity was completely exposed.
Fallon drove the heel of her right palm violently upward into the point of his chin.
His jaw snapped shut and his teeth clicked together with a sickening, audible crack.
Before Garret could even register the blinding flash of pain, Fallon grabbed the thick front collar of his wet jacket. She twisted her hips sharply, hooked her right leg behind his calf, and threw her weight backward.
The brutal sweep ripped his feet out from under him. He slammed onto the wet concrete back-first. The back of his skull bounced hard against the pavement.
The heavy pistol flew from his numb fingers. It clattered off into the dark debris of the alley.
Garret gagged. His vision exploded into chaotic white static. He tried to push himself up off the ground, but his arms felt like dead, useless lead.
Through the blinding rain, he forced his heavy eyelids open. He refused to pass out. He stared straight up into the storm.
She was leaning over him. Her messy chestnut hair hung down, perfectly framing a pale, indifferent face. She did not look angry. Not even scared. Instead, she looked at him the way a mechanic looks at a broken engine part.
Then, she stood up and faded seamlessly into the shadows.
The world faded entirely to black.
---
Sunlight baked the dirty glass windows of the 77th Street Division precinct. It was a Tuesday. Exactly one year later.
Detective Garret Rourke sat at his cramped metal desk. He stared blankly at a bright computer monitor.
A lukewarm cup of terrible precinct coffee rested near his keyboard, untouched. He was not thinking about the massive stack of robbery files sitting on his right. He was thinking about the rain.
He rubbed his jaw and it still clicked sometimes when he chewed hard food.
No one in the department knew what actually happened that night. He told the responding patrol officers he slipped in the alley while chasing a fast shadow. He kept the girl's face locked entirely inside his own head.
The FBI and the CIA had practically torn the city apart looking for Governor Croft's killer, but they found absolutely nothing. Just a burnt-out sedan and a few brass shell casings.
Garret wanted her for himself.
He leaned back in his squeaky office chair and smiled. A quiet, deeply arrogant smirk.
Before taking the police badge, he had spent four years fighting heavily in amateur MMA circuits. He knew exactly how to throw a punch and he knew how to take a hit. He rationalized the alley encounter every single day of his life.
I just let my guard down, he thought. She was just a woman bleeding in the street. I probably felt sorry for her. Caught me completely slipping. A lucky shot in the dark.
It made perfect sense to him. The next time they met, there would be no element of surprise. He was going to put heavy steel handcuffs on the ghost that embarrassed the entire federal government. He was going to wear that major promotion like a crown. He would never forgive her for humiliating him in the mud.
"Detective Rourke."
The sharp, loud voice snapped his daydream in half.
Garret blinked and looked up. Captain Miller stood at the edge of his metal desk. The older man held a thick folder, looking down at Garret with a deeply unimpressed glare.
"You got that suspect report for the bodega shooting?" Miller asked.
Garret sat up straight. "Yes, sir. I was just about to submit it to your desk."
It was a total lie. He had not even started typing the first paragraph.
Miller nodded slowly and tapped the thick folder against his leg. "Make it fast. The brass from downtown just dropped a massive headache on our laps. You remember the Croft hit last year?"
Garret's stomach tightened but he kept his face completely neutral. "I remember. Feds took over the scene entirely. Why?"
"Because Langley just shared a classified profile with the chief," Miller said, lowering his voice so the rest of the bullpen couldn't hear. "They think Croft wasn't an isolated local job. They believe the phantom who pulled that trigger is the exact same person who erased a dozen high-level targets across Europe and Asia over the last four years."
Garret stopped breathing for a full second.
"An elite, world-class professional," Miller muttered, shaking his head. "They think she operates entirely off the grid. A true ghost."
Miller walked away to bark at a uniform standing across the noisy bullpen.
Garret sat perfectly still but cold sweat suddenly prickled under his stiff collar. The arrogant smile completely vanished from his face.
A world-class assassin? Not a lucky amateur?
He swallowed hard and reached up and touched his jaw again, feeling the slight grind of the bone.
Interesting, he thought. The delusion held on tight.
---
Thousands of kilometers away, the morning fog rolled off the deep green pines of the Pacific Northwest.
A small, beautiful cabin sat at the very top of a forested ridge. The nearest neighbor was twelve miles down a washed-out dirt logging road. The air smelled strongly of wet cedar and cold dirt.
Inside the bright kitchen, Fallon stood over a cast-iron skillet. She wore baggy grey sweatpants and an oversized white t-shirt. Her bare feet rested quietly on the warm wooden floor.
She stared fiercely at the eggs cooking in the pan.
"Just fold over," she whispered.
Using a cheap plastic spatula, she tried to flip the edge of the omelet. The entire center collapsed instantly.
Wet, uncooked egg washed over the side of the hot pan and sizzled violently against the electric burner. Smoke immediately plumed into the air.
Fallon sighed. She scraped the ruined, burnt mess onto a ceramic plate.
She could dismantle a sniper rifle blindfolded in under thirty seconds. She could calculate wind drag and bullet drop perfectly in her head.
But cooking a decent breakfast was apparently physically impossible.
She sat at the small wooden table and ate the burnt eggs anyway. It was quiet, so incredibly quiet.
It had been exactly one year since she walked away and cut all ties with "The Foundry."
She burned every fake passport, destroyed every secure phone line, and bought this cabin with cash she kept buried in a safety deposit box.
Her day was aggressively, perfectly boring now.
After forcing down the terrible breakfast, she washed the single plate in the sink. She walked out to the small garden beside the porch and pulled weeds until her fingernails were packed with dirt.
In the afternoon, she sat on the worn living room couch and watched a terrible daytime soap opera. The acting was completely wooden. The plot made absolutely no sense. But she loved every single second of it.
When the sun started to drop behind the distant mountains, she took a long, slow walk down the dirt road.
The evening air chilled her skin. No one was watching her. No tactical teams waiting in the brush. No handlers giving her targets in a dark, secure room. Just the wind blowing through the trees.
By nightfall, she cooked a simple bowl of white rice and chicken. She didn't burn it this time.
Standing in the hot shower, she let the steam loosen the tight muscles in her shoulders. The hot water washed the garden dirt down the drain. She stepped out and wrapped a thick white towel around her damp hair, and threw on a clean pair of pajamas.
She walked barefoot into the kitchen to grab a glass of tap water.
Brrr-ring. Brrr-ring.
The sharp, mechanical noise shattered the silence of the cabin.
Fallon froze. Her hand hovered exactly two inches away from the glass.
She looked at the white landline sitting on the kitchen counter. The plastic receiver was completely dead. The little digital screen was black.
Brrr-ring. Brrr-ring.
The sound was not coming from the counter. It was coming from the floor.
Slowly, she turned her head toward the narrow hallway closet. Her heart rate did not spike. Her breathing remained completely steady.
She walked down the short hall. Dropping silently to her knees, she pushed aside a stack of heavy winter blankets resting at the bottom of the closet. Her fingers found the edge of a loose, hidden floor. She pried the wood up.
Inside the dark hollow space sat a heavy, encrypted black satellite phone. It was the emergency line. The single piece of her old life she had not thrown into the ocean.
The Foundry only used it during an extreme emergency.
The small green light on the top of the black plastic pulsed aggressively in the dark.
Brrr-ring. Brrr-ring.
She reached down into the dark and picked up the phone.