Lucy spent her life reading about private eyes, but when she followed her boss into the night, she learned that real shadows have teeth.
The Fourth Night Shift
The streetlights in the Heights don’t illuminate; they just bruise the darkness. Lucy leaned against the cold brick of an alleyway, her Nikon dangling like a heavy silver tongue. For three nights, Rick Borhers had been a man of beige habits—dry cleaners, overpriced scotch, and a silent house by ten.
Tonight, the beige turned to ink.
At 11:30 PM, Rick had emerged looking like a shadow given bone and muscle. The matte black of his jacket swallowed the porch light. But it was the heavy, utilitarian weight of the Glock in his hand that made Lucy’s pulse drum against her ribs. Click. Click. Click. The shutter was a tiny guillotine, capturing the fall of her boss’s reputation.
She trailed his taillights through the industrial district, where the smell of salt and rotting grease hung thick. He killed the engine on a dead-end street. Lucy parked a block back, her heart a frantic bird in a cage. She moved like a ghost, feet barely touching the cracked asphalt, fifty meters of silence between her and a secret she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep.
Then, the world stopped.
“Lucy, what are you doing?”
The voice didn’t come from the car. It came from the darkness three feet behind her. She froze. The metallic slide of a firearm racking echoed in the narrow space—a sharp, final sound. Lucy didn’t turn. She could feel the heat of him, the scent of his expensive cologne mixed with gun oil.
“I thought we were friends, Lucy,” Rick whispered, his voice devoid of its usual office warmth. “But friends don’t bring cameras to a graveyard.”
He stepped into her peripheral vision, the barrel of the gun leveled at her chest. He didn’t look angry; he looked disappointed.
“Give me the SD card,” he said, reaching out a gloved hand. “And maybe we can pretend you were never here. Or, we can find out how well you’ve learned from those books of yours.”
How does Lucy escape the shadow of her own fantasy? Does she hand over the evidence, or is there a move she’s learned from her paper protagonists that can save her life? The ending is yours to write.