The fires had mostly eaten themselves out by the time the three of them stood in the same place again.
What remained was the smell — smoke and scorched stone and something underneath both that Fenix could not name and did not try to, the particular residue of a night that had asked more of the people inside it than nights were supposed to ask. The eastern wing of the estate was still standing but only technically, the way a man with a broken spine is still standing if the wall behind him is doing most of the work. Elsewhere, the assault team was moving through the rooms in the systematic way of people securing something rather than searching it, which meant the decision had already been made somewhere above Fenix's current station that the Richter estate was no longer the Richter estate in any way that mattered.
Kai found him first.
