Chapter 7: Office Gossip & Gummy Bears
Sage stepped out of Draya's office with a sharp exhale, the door clicking behind him like punctuation. He barely made it three steps before—
"So, you were really gonna tase Trent's dumb ass?" came Theo Briggs' voice, full volume, no filter.
Theo was propped against a filing cabinet like it was a bar stool, arms crossed, eyebrow cocked, the embodiment of gossip in tactical boots. He was grinning like he'd just witnessed a soap opera brawl and wanted all the behind-the-scenes tea.
Sage smirked, didn't stop walking. "Would've done it for free."
Theo fell into step behind him. "Honestly? Iconic. I had twenty bucks on you knocking him out cold by the vending machine. You robbed me."
The hallway buzzed. Phones ringing. Keyboards clacking. Officers stomping in and out with folders, cups of stale coffee, and face-tight tension. The Houndhouse was fully alive today. Sage moved through it like a shadow slipping between floodlights, calm but coiled.
"You know while you were out, things got real boring around here," Theo continued, voice lowered like a street hustler offering dirty secrets. "Chambers got suspended for stealing evidence, Erica from forensics apparently bangs that new guy from narcotics—you know, the one built like a vending machine—and guess what? HR doesn't even care."
Sage gave him a half-laugh, half-grunt. "You ever talk about anything that doesn't end in someone's pants?"
"Nope. That's why people love me."
They reached their section of the bullpen. Two desks — one semi-tidy and humming with activity. The other? A time capsule.
Sage stared at his desk.
Dust. Literal layers. Like it had aged three centuries in his absence. Paper stacks like ancient ruins. A mug of coffee fossilized into syrup. The chair had cobwebs flirting with the legs.
"Jesus," he muttered, dragging his hand along the desk and watching the dust trail. "I leave for a minute and y'all treat my space like a cursed tomb."
Theo plopped into his own chair, spinning once. "I thought about dusting it for you. Then I remembered I'm not your manservant."
Sage ignored him, grabbing a rag from one of the supply drawers and wiping down the desk with a quiet vengeance. As he worked, other officers glanced up, a few waving or nodding.
"Hey, Marlowe. You back back?" one called.
Sage gave a polite smile. "For my sins."
Theo leaned back, feet on his desk. "He's back. The femme fatale of forensics has returned. Somebody hide the toxicology reports."
Sage finally sat, settling into his freshly cleaned chair. Theo was midway into a recap about an HR meltdown when Sage's phone lit up.
Quinn.
The message preview hit like a gut punch:
Care to explain why your gummy bear pack was at the murder scene?
Sage's eyes went sharp. His entire body stiffened.
"Shit."
Theo caught the shift. "What? Who died now?"
Sage was already grabbing his coat.
"Cover for me."
"Bro—what? Where you going?"
Sage didn't answer. He was halfway across the room, pace clipped and furious, leaving behind his desk, his coffee, and a very confused Theo chewing air.
Back in the storm.
The casino didn't have a name. Just a faded red neon coil above the door, buzzing like it was short-circuiting from all the sin trapped inside.
It was tucked in one of Dusane's oldest industrial sectors, between a textile graveyard and a forgotten rail line. No signs. No cameras. Just a steel door and a camera feed with no one watching on the other end.
But inside?
Chaos. Opulence. Violence.
A roulette table spun under flickering lights, the croupier flipping cards with fingers too steady to be sober. A woman in a fur coat laughed with a voice that sounded like she chewed glass for breakfast. Somewhere behind the velvet curtains, a man screamed. No one flinched.
Until Silas walked in.
His boots hit the floor like gunshots—slow, precise, deliberate. The usual poker-table crowd went dead silent. The torturers paused mid-snap. The girls on the poles slowed their rotations like gravity had shifted.
He didn't have to say a word.
The ripped black shirt hugged his chest like it was stitched on with threats. One sleeve hung loose, torn from a past fight that still echoed in rumors. His chest was out. His eyes unreadable. His aura? Lethal.
Flanking him were two shadows in human form—
One: dark-skinned, heavy-lidded eyes, silver chain slowly wrapping around his knuckles like a countdown.
Two: blonde, lean, always chewing on a toothpick, lips curled in permanent amusement, like he couldn't wait to break someone.
People made way. Instinctively.
A man tried to nod a greeting—Silas didn't look at him.
He passed the interrogation room. Blood under the door. A soft whimper. A guard casually leaned on the knob, scrolling his phone. He looked up, locked eyes with Silas, and straightened instantly.
No need to bark commands. Silas was the kind of danger you felt in your blood before your brain could process it.
He reached the final hallway. Two massive guards in front of the double black doors.
They didn't speak.
Silas didn't either.
He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a matte black card—thick, weighty, and cold. Embossed on it was a chrome sigil: a lion biting a bullet.
The guards saw it. Their faces stiffened. One opened the door without a word.
Silas stepped through, his boys right behind him.
Inside was a different world: cold, white walls. Surveillance monitors. Velvet chairs. The smell of cigar and antiseptic. And sitting behind a glass desk, watching like a man with no heart—
Was the one Silas came for.
But he didn't sit.
Not yet.
He just stood there, hands in his pockets, chest out, looking like every sin Dusane ever buried had come back walking.
The sky over Dusane was bruised in violet and ash as Sage Marlowe slipped down a narrow alley, heart jogging faster than his feet. The entrance to Brooks Library — a forgotten, grimy hulk of a building with its windows blacked out and a CLOSED FOR RENOVATION sign rusting above the gates — looked like the kind of place bad ideas went to rot.
He didn't slow down.
With a quick glance over his shoulder, Sage jogged to a dented green dumpster, tugged the lid open just enough to reveal a hidden biometric panel. One fingerprint later, the metal groaned. The dumpster clicked, then shifted, revealing a narrow descending staircase lit with amber glow.
He went down.
The air was always cold here, touched by that underground mildew and ink-paper musk. No public readers. No staff. Brooks Library had become their little rabbit hole for confidential meets — a ghost archive where secrets didn't echo.
Quinn was already waiting in the sublevel, perched on a metal desk. Legs crossed. Coffee half-dead in one hand. Her braids were tied back today, and her expression was locked in that sharp scientist bitch mode Sage had grown to both love and fear. She looked up without a smile.
Sage's eyes flicked around. "Devon?"
"Off the grid," Quinn said. "Told me not to tell you where."
Sage rolled his eyes and sighed. "Cute."
Quinn didn't bother wasting breath on it. She waved a plastic evidence bag — and inside, staring back like a joke, was a crumpled pack of gummy bears.
His gummy bears.
Sage stiffened. "Where'd you find that?"
"On the crime scene evidence tray this morning," she said coolly. "And no — it wasn't logged in. Not officially. Meaning someone slipped up. Or slipped it in."
Sage blinked once, twice — and then it hit.
The mall. The man. The cologne.
Yesterday, before the late-night casework, he'd shoved a tall, dangerous-looking man out of the way at Dusane Mall to grab the last pack of his favorite candy. It was petty. The guy didn't even say anything — just stared — and Sage had walked off like nothing. But now…
The scent.
It was the same sharp, spicy cologne that had lingered in Dusane Mansion, clinging to the ornate walls like a ghost. It wasn't perfume you forgot easily — rich, deep, expensive. Not something a random mall stranger should've had in common with a high-profile murder scene.
That man…
Quinn raised an eyebrow. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I think I shoved our suspect," Sage muttered.
Quinn blinked.
He began pacing, trying to hold onto the image — his face was blurry in Sage's mind, but he could remember the vibes: dark energy, dead-calm, and too silent for comfort. Like a storm disguised as a man.
"Do you remember what he looked like?" Quinn asked, hopping off the desk, her interest fully caught now.
Sage rubbed his temple. "I remember his height. Build. Dark skin. Eyes like he could kill a man in silence. Pretty face, though. And that damn cologne."
"Tall, dangerous, and sexy. Wow. That narrows it down to literally everyone I've dated."
"Can we focus, Quinn?"
She smirked. "Get me his photo. Anything. Even a mall security cam grab. If you can ID him, I'll run it through the database. Because whoever he is — if that candy pack connects him to the Durov scene — we have a whole new prime suspect."
"And you trust that trace?"
Quinn nodded. "Fingerprint match. Not yours. Not Devon's. Not from our team. And it showed signs of recent pressure. Someone handled that pack after you dropped it."
Sage sucked in a breath.
This was spiraling fast.
And for the first time in hours, his blood felt ice cold.
That man — the one from the mall — was no innocent bystander.
And now, he was real enough to hunt.