Chapter 6 Smoke Beneath the Skin

The name was Daniel Rourke.

A ghost. A whisper between informants too scared to say it twice. A man whose digital footprint had been scrubbed so clean it was like he'd never been born. But Caroline had spent eight years navigating shadows, and she'd learned one unshakable truth:

Every ghost leaves behind a body.

She started with the photo.

Run through facial recognition. Nothing. No hits on social, military, government registries. But a small tattoo half-hidden by the collar-a stylized black flame. It meant nothing to civilians.

But Caroline remembered the old photos. The men who met in corners of docks and whispered under neon signs. Back then, they called themselves Ash Circle-a kill squad turned cleanup crew during the old Montclair conflicts.

If Rourke was one of them, this wasn't just vengeance anymore.

This was war.

The old contact at the East River Terminal hadn't seen her in years, but the moment she walked in, the old man locked the door behind her. No words. Just a nod.

He owed her.

She slid the photo across the table.

"Seen him?"

A pause. Then: "You really wanna poke that hive?"

"I'm already inside it."

The old man chewed his lip. Nodded once. "Used to run with a crew outta Newark. Real ghosts. Got paid in silence. Last I heard, Rourke dropped out-vanished after a job upstate went sideways. People say he torched a building with a man still inside. Said it was a message."

Caroline didn't flinch. "Where?"

"Whitescar. Up in the hills. Old logging town. Half-empty now."

Of course. Remote. Isolated. Easy to disappear in.

She left that night.

Whitescar was more bones than town.

A scattering of gas stations, boarded-up diners, and lonely houses where curtains twitched when her boots hit gravel. No cell towers. No cameras. Just fog and the quiet hum of things buried deep.

She found the house two miles past the last gas station. Run-down. Slumped like a dying animal. But the windows were new. The chimney was clean. Someone lived here.

Caroline waited until dusk.

She moved like silence had raised her. Slipped around the back. Found a work shed. Broken lock. Inside: blueprints. Burned edges. A map of Montclair's industrial sector dated eight years ago. Rourke's handwriting circled Warehouse 9.

Not 17.

Wrong warehouse.

Wrong target.

Her father was never meant to die.

She stepped back, breath frozen in her throat. And then-behind her-

"You shouldn't be here."

Voice. Male. Dry. Cold as ash.

She turned slowly. He was older now, beard shot with grey, but the eyes were the same. The eyes from the photograph.

Daniel Rourke.

He didn't run.

They stood in silence, the truth catching fire in the air between them.

"I didn't know he was there," Rourke said. "I swear to you. We were given coordinates. Target was intel. Smuggler. No family. No witnesses."

"But you lit the match."

"I lit a decoy. The main building was supposed to be empty. But someone changed the files. Someone fed us false intel. By the time we knew-" He looked away.

Caroline's voice was a blade. "My father died screaming."

"I know." Quiet. Honest.

"You should have come forward."

"And ended up another body buried in a landfill?" His voice cracked. "They tied off every loose end. Every one but me. I ran. But I kept digging."

She waited.

"There's a name," he said. "The man who redirected the hit. He called the shots that night. His codename was Monarch. I traced money through dummy accounts, shell companies. All of it loops back to one place."

He opened a drawer. Pulled out a folder. Names. Routes. A picture.

A penthouse in Vienna.

A man standing on the balcony, laughing. Expensive suit. No scorpion pin.

But Caroline recognized the smile.

It was the man who'd bought the lighter fluid.

She took the file.

"You're not safe here."

"I haven't been safe since Montclair."

She paused at the door. "You killed a lot of people."

"I know."

"I'm not done with you."

"I wouldn't expect you to be."

She left as the wind kicked up ash and dust. Behind her, the house faded into the mist. Ahead of her-answers.

Vienna.

The man behind the curtain.

The one who signed her father's death like it was a line item.

Caroline didn't believe in fate.

But fire has a way of finding dry wood.

And she was coming with the match.